Tag Archives | Economics

Malls for the ‘Sheeple’

By on March 4, 2013 in News 7

Into Boksburg and ERMDurban, South Africa: Back in 2002, South Africa hosted a UN environmental Summit on sustainability. It drew a rag tag army of green activists from all over the world, many excited to visit the now free South Africa that they fought for through the apartheid years, and hoping to meet members of the liberation movement led by Nelson Mandela

The closest to Nelson Mandela they got was to gather in front of a giant statue, created by a Swedish artist, in a commercial Square named after the South African icon. When they pictured the new South Africa, they probably saw the townships where tens of thousands of people marched for justice.

Instead, they found themselves in Sandton, a “township” that only capitalists could imagine, an upscale enclave within the city of Johannesburg devoted to corporation, banks and giant malls even more opulent than similar temples of consumption in other countries.… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 7

World’s 100 Richest Could End Global Poverty Four Times Over

By on February 23, 2013 in News 33

World’s 100 richest could end global poverty 4 times over

“The richest 1 percent has increased its income by 60 percent in the last 20 years with the financial crisis accelerating rather than slowing the process,” while the income of the top 0.01 percent has seen even greater growth, a new Oxfam report said.

What sense does wealth have in the long run, if we think of ourselves as a species in an enormous cosmos, rather than Americans and Saudi Arabians, or rich and poor?
Crazy talk, for sure. ”Us” and “them.” If we don’t recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters, we’re going to be done for. Nature is far more brutal and unstable on the long run than this little calm blip in history would make us think.

“There are not yet obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours rush inevitably into self-destruction.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 33

May I Recommend a Documentary: ‘The Wobblies’

By on February 12, 2013 in News 11

via chycho

If you want to hear some of the coolest stories that you’ve ever heard from some of the funniest elders that you’ve ever seen then “The Wobblies” is for you. There is so much goodness in this documentary that it’ll put a smile on your face.

The subject matter is the IWW, the Industrial Workers of the World, formed in 1905, it’s considered to be one of the most important labor movements in the history of the United States…

Continue Reading · 11

The Movement To Mint A Trillion Dollar Coin

By on January 9, 2013 in News 11

Have you heard about the Trillion Dollar Coin? No joke, there’s serious talk in Washington about minting one. Joe Weisenthal explains at Business Insider:

There are really two stunning things about the movement to mint a trillion dollar coin to avert a debt ceiling crisis.

FIRST: the movement has gone absolutely nuts.

Everyone is talking about it.

Media outlets and individuals include: BBC, Fox News, CNN, PIMCO’s Bill Gross, Paul Krugman, Reuters, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, The Australian, Ria Novosti (Russia), Stephen Colbert, The Washington Post. That’s just a partial list.

SECOND: Despite the supposed absurdity of it, and despite the fact that it flies in the face of everything everyone thinks about money, there are virtually no good arguments against it.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 11

The Middle Class Has Been Saved – Or Has It?

By on January 6, 2013 in News 7

Long live the middle class now that it has survived the fiscal cliff and been “saved.”

President Obama is basking in the glory of having averted the deepening of a crisis that is more structural than political and hardly resolved.

The markets are cheering, it is said, because markets love stability, unless there is money to be made off of volatility of their own making.

Forget the working class. The term is passé, as is the so-called and usually undefined great mushy middle class moves into its rightful place at the center of everyone’s concerns.

(When asked what class they are in—or aspire to be in—workers, and even the poor say Middle Class. Unless survey questions include the choice of working class that they usually don’t.)

Analysts who looked closely at the big deal so hysterically pushed through Congress as the dramatic end-piece of a year of political warfare, say that there will be very little gain for the middle class with income taxes down but payroll taxes up, insuring that it will be more, at best, of a wash than a redistribution of wealth on any level. Many Americans, not just the rich, will be shelling out more, not less.

Economist Lambert Strether calls it the “fecal cliff,” noting, “cuts and tax increases (especially on the rich) are not commensurate. A “sacrifice” where some give up luxuries and others give up necessities is in no way “shared. A marginal sacrifice for the rich is not commensurate to core sacrifices for the rest…

Continue Reading · 7

Is Sowing Artificial Scarcity The Future Of Business?

By on January 1, 2013 in News 2

Via the The New Inquiry, Peter Frase on where we’re headed:

Where we see scarcity, much of it appears to be imposed by choice. In particular, the increasing weight of intellectual property law heralds a world where the prime objective of business is to make things scarce enough that people will still need to buy them.

Unexpected scarcity long characterized agricultural societies—drought, pestilence, fire, and other natural calamities could bring about famine at any moment. But today’s farmers, who have learned to overcome many of these challenges, now face the prospect of a legal, rather than natural disaster. In a case that will soon appear before the Supreme Court, a 74-year-old farmer named Vernon Bowman was ordered to pay $84,000 in damages for infringing on the patents of agribusiness giant Monsanto. His crime was to plant a seed—a patented “Roundup Ready” seed, whose license agreement prohibits using it to produce new ones.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 2

Desperate Letter Describing Chinese Forced Labor Camp Found Inside Halloween Decorations Kit

By on December 28, 2012 in News 8

Imagine if we understood where everything we have came from. Via Oregonian:

The letter came in a box of Halloween decorations purchased at Kmart, a $29.99 graveyard kit. On a Sunday afternoon in October, Julia Keith intended to decorate her home for her daughter’s fifth birthday, days before Halloween. She ripped open the box and threw aside the cellophane. That’s when Keith found it. Scribbled onto paper and folded into eighths, the letter was tucked between two Styrofoam headstones.

“Sir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization. Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.”

“People who work here have to work 15 hours a day without Saturday, Sunday break and any holidays. Otherwise, they will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark. Nearly no payment (10 yuan/1 month).”

“People who work here, suffer punishment 1-3 years averagely, but without Court Sentence (unlaw punishment).

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 8

Ignoring Warnings Can Be Fatal

By on December 15, 2012 in News 22

Stöwer Titanic2012 has been the l00th anniversary of the famous Titanic disaster. The Captain of that “unsinkable” ship was warned that there were icebergs ahead but he was too busy, out to set a speed record on the way to New York.

The warnings were ignored and we know what happened. What we don’t know is why other urgent warnings go unheeded.

Take the repeated warnings that the easy availability of hand guns and assault rifles would lead to more massacres of innocents. The National Rifle Association operates with impunity (even as it bans weapons in its offices.)

When action is not taken, you increase the likelihood of more deadly incidents like the ones in malls and even elementary schools.

Take the predictions of a storm surge tied to climate change threatening the New York/New Jersey coastline. They were acknowledged but downplayed because right-wingers and their think tanks spent a decade in bogus quibbling about “junk” science.… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 22

The Psyche Of The Wall Street Quant

By on December 12, 2012 in News 38

Via Ghost Exchange, excerpts from a fascinating PBS interview with former hedge fund analyst Cathy O’Neil on the culture within Wall Street:

The basic cultural assumptions were not pleasant to me. The sort of most basic cultural assumption was that as a smart person, we have the right to take advantage of the system and of “dumb people.” And that is sort of — I mean, I guess I should have known, going into a hedge fund, that’s what people think.

I was thinking of it naively, more like, “Oh, there’s a system, and we should see what inefficiencies there are in the system and add information.” I mean, I just sort of drank that Kool-Aid. But once I was inside, I realized that’s not really how people think about it. They think, “Well, of course we’re going to take advantage, because we’re smart, and we can. We have better tools, and our tools are our brains.” Take advantage of absolutely everything and everyone that we can, in any way we can.

… Read the rest

Continue Reading · 38