Andy Grove on Our Electric Future - "Energy independence [viz.] is the wrong goal. Here is a plan Americans can stick to." Perhaps some infrastructure spending^1,2 is in order? [etc., &c., cf.]
posted on Jul 15, 2008 - View this thread

Women's rights: What's in it for men? - "Women in rich countries largely enjoy gender equality while those in poor countries suffer substantial discrimination. This column proposes an explanation for the relationship between economic development and female empowerment that emphasises changes in the incentives males face rather than shifts in moral sentiment. Technological change that raises demand for human capital may give men a stake in women's rights."
posted on Jun 29, 2008 - View this thread

Kiki and Bubu! Austrian art collective monochrom presents the adventures of two sock puppets. Part One: Kiki and Bubu and The Shift. "Bubu wants to know why his dad is busy all the time. And Kiki explains him why... because of the neoliberal shift." Part Two: Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege. "Bubu ran into a bunch of liberals and they gave him a book. They said if he doesn't read it, they're going to beat him up. But Bubu can't read! And so Kiki helps..." [Via BB]
posted on Jun 7, 2008 - View this thread

"The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class"
posted on May 1, 2008 - View this thread

An unprecedented five consecutive years of stagnant funding for the National Institutes of Health is putting America at risk - a few prominent research institutions get together to voice their concern over flat funding of the National Institutes of Health over the past 5 years, in their report The Broken Pipeline (pdf). Bloggers comment [1, 2, 3].
posted on Mar 14, 2008 - View this thread

Mythbusting Canadian Health Care, Part I. Part II: Debunking the Free Marketeers. [Via Orcinus.]
posted on Feb 13, 2008 - View this thread

Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University have compared the recent US subprime mortgage crisis with five downturns in industrialized economies in the past 30 years in their brief paper, Is the 2007 U.S. Sub-Prime Financial Crisis So Different? (pdf). Their conclusion: “given the severity of most crisis indicators in the run-up to its 2007 financial crisis, the United States should consider itself quite fortunate if its downturn ends up being a relatively short and mild one.” Summarized, with some data and charts, here. Via.
posted on Feb 9, 2008 - View this thread

Waving Goodbye to Hegemony. "Just a few years ago, America’s hold on global power seemed unshakable. But a lot has changed while we’ve been in Iraq — and the next president is going to be dealing with not only a triumphant China and a retooled Europe but also the quiet rise of a 'second world.'" [Via The Washington Note.]
posted on Jan 27, 2008 - View this thread

The Rise of China and the Future of the West: Can the Liberal System Survive? "China's rise will inevitably bring the United States' unipolar moment to an end. But that does not necessarily mean a violent power struggle or the overthrow of the Western system. The U.S.-led international order can remain dominant even while integrating a more powerful China -- but only if Washington sets about strengthening that liberal order now."
posted on Dec 29, 2007 - View this thread

The dangers of living in a zero-sum world economy - naked capitalism reprints (with added commentary) an FT article by Martin Wolf on why it's vital for (civilised) society to sustain a 'positive-sum' world, otherwise: "A zero-sum economy leads, inevitably, to repression at home and plunder abroad." Wolf's solution? "The condition for success is successful investment in human ingenuity." Of course! Some are calling for more socialism, while others would press on to build more megaprojects. For me, at least part of the solution lies in environmental accounting and natural capitalism :P
posted on Dec 19, 2007 - View this thread

Countdown to a Meltdown : long but fascinating speculative retrospective on the causes and impact of the 2009-2016 economic collapse. [via Marshall Brain]
posted on Nov 25, 2007 - View this thread

"Here is what makes the rise of supply-side ideology even more baffling. One might expect that a radical ideology that successfully passed itself off as a sophisticated new doctrine would at least have the benefit of smooth, reassuring, intellectual front men, men whose very bearing could attest to the new doctrine's eminent good sense and mainstream bona fides. Yet, if you look at its two most eminent authors, good sense is not the impression you get. Let me put this delicately. No, on second thought, let me put it straightforwardly: They are deranged." Feast of the Wingnuts - How economic crackpots devoured American politics, by Jonathan Chait. Counterlink: Arthur B. Laffer explains his curve.
posted on Sep 5, 2007 - View this thread

Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal by Joel Salatin. This Saturday will mark this article's four year anniversary. Frankly, I was mildly surprised not to have found it mentioned before in MeFi. It's a good read about a sad state of affairs; how our government is turning its own people into outlaws, because freedom has been traded in for an illusion of security. ...but then we already knew that. Don't we?
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

"Dictatorships are not hamstrung by the preferences of voters for, say, a pervasive welfare state," says Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute. Unless we abandon welfare programs, he suggests, the free world might be overwhelmed by the staggering efficiency of free-market totalitarianism. Is it just me, or have conservatives been waxing poetic about the benefits of dictatorship lately?
posted on Jun 1, 2007 - View this thread

Clean water is a right: "The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) published its annual report on human development. It denounces the world's complacent disregard for such unglamorous subjects as standpipes, latrines and the 1.8m children who die each year from diarrhoea because the authorities cannot keep their drinking water separate from their faeces. The study is both coldly analytical and angry..."
posted on Nov 24, 2006 - View this thread

Thomas Friedman:

The First Law of Petropolitics, in short, argues that the price of oil and the pace of freedom operate in an inverse correlation. As the price of oil goes up in what I call petroauthoritarian states—like Iran, Sudan, Venezuela—the pace of freedom goes down. These regimes can afford to be less responsive to their people and outside pressure. And as the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up because these regimes have to open up to the world if they want to deliver for their people, and they have to empower their people more.

But how to lower oil prices and help freedom on its proverbial march? Many, from Alan Greenspan to Andrew Sullivan to Ray Magliozzi from Car Talk think the answer may be to . . . raise the gas tax? The Pigou Club is an ever-updated list of economists, politicians and others who have advocated Pigouvian (or is it Pigovian?) taxes to not only lower oil prices, but reduce greenhouse gases, fix the federal deficit and strengthen our national security. Though some remain more than a little hesitant to jump on the bandwagon and others remain skeptical that the movement is anything more than "just talk," this could be an idea whose time has come, especially since the gas tax isn't as regressive one would think.
posted on Oct 25, 2006 - View this thread

As Labor Day 2006 winds to a close, America's long & twisted history with Organized Labor seems to never come to rest on any one side of the fence, opinion wise. While we hate the idea of the evil CEO crushing the employees underfoot, there's something profoundly un-American about bolshevikism. This excellent collection of political cartoons from Life Magazine from the early decades of the 20th Century explores both sides of the debate, reminding us at the end of the day that nobody loves a fat man.
posted on Sep 4, 2006 - View this thread

The Wealth of Networks. Yochai Benkler is a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. A few years ago he wrote one of the seminal papers on Commons-based production, Coase's Penguin, or Linux and the Nature of the Firm. Now he has a new book - The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. You can buy it, download it or add to it.
posted on Apr 16, 2006 - View this thread

The avuncular state - "A smarter, softer kind of paternalism is coming into style"
posted on Apr 12, 2006 - View this thread

President Bush on the state of the US Economy, including a discussion of the national debt and rising global interest rates, from today's news conference.
posted on Mar 21, 2006 - View this thread

Economist Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, has long posited a controversial thesis that legalized abortion help reduced crime, by reducing unwanted children, prone to crime. However, a new paper argues that Levitt (& Donohue) made serious errors in their research. Properly analysed, abortion has no significant effect on crime. Levitt disagrees, of course.
posted on Dec 4, 2005 - View this thread

The Utopian Nightmare : "What is utopianism? It is promising more than you can deliver. It is seeing an easy and sudden answer to long-standing, complex problems. It is trying to solve everything at once through an administrative apparatus headed by “world leaders.” It places too much faith in altruistic cooperation and underestimates self-seeking behavior and conflict. It is expecting great things from schemes designed at the top, but doing nothing to solve the bigger problems at the bottom." Also, be sure to check out the the 16 ideas, values and institutions that may not be with us 35 years from now written by a variety of interesting people and compiled as part of Foreign Policy's 35th anniversary (although not all are free or available without registration).
posted on Aug 31, 2005 - View this thread

What if we can't afford to save the world? An interesting debate between Sierra Club’s Carl Pope and the outspoken Bjørn Lomborg. (The “saving the world” bit might seem like hyperbole, but the really interesting question this debate sparks for me is this: Hypothetically, if it really came down to it, would anyone be willing to save the world for free? And if not, what does that imply about our values system and personal priorities? What does it say about the practical utility and limitations of monetary-based economic systems?
posted on Jul 28, 2005 - View this thread

Embracing Illegals: Companies are getting hooked on the buying power of 11 million undocumented immigrants - The Underground Labor Force Is Rising To The Surface [pdf]
posted on Jul 11, 2005 - View this thread

Foreign Exchange TV with Fareed Zakaria - I'd heard about it, but thought it was only showing on OPB; checked again and lo and behold all the episodes are online! Watched a couple episodes so far; they're pretty good, esp if you're into foreign policy and stuff :D
posted on May 26, 2005 - View this thread

How America Works

In the tradition of They Rule, Jonathan Schwarz from A Tiny Revolution provides some context in regards to the 1996 funeral of Thomas Enders.
posted on Apr 19, 2005 - View this thread

Take a Nobel economist who has devoted his career to studying the effect of social and political change on microeconomic theory. Combine with the most prolific legal scholar of the past half-century and federal judge with immeasurable influence on American jurisprudence. Add Moveable Type and a bit of technical help from our fearless leader, and you've got the Becker-Posner Blog, which debuts today.
posted on Dec 5, 2004 - View this thread

Oligopoly Watch. An Oligopoly tracking weblog.
posted on Aug 23, 2003 - View this thread

This Guy in Minnesota just got laid-off and he's spending his time following around Bush's economic team on their tour of the upper midwest as they share their "upbeat outlook" on our nation's economy. He's following their tourmobile with his own tourmobile and has been chasing them around in parkinglots and at fast food places. He finally cornered the Treasury Secretary whose advice to the job-seeker was to "just wait." What's your economic reality? Is it closer to the sunny optimism of the big shiny tourbus, or the laid-off reality of the homemade minivan? (Check out the particularly funny bit about how he stumbled on the entire press corps only when he was looking for a dumpster.)
posted on Jul 30, 2003 - View this thread

National Budget Simulation Think Washington is doing a poor job of allocating funds? See if you can eliminate the deficit with this little game.
posted on Feb 28, 2003 - View this thread

The New Global Job Shift. The next round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include basic research, chip design, engineering--even financial analysis.
posted on Jan 31, 2003 - View this thread

How Bush's economic stimulus proposal may affect you. An easy to understand explanation of what we might expect from Bush's tax cut proposal to be announced on Tuesday.
posted on Jan 6, 2003 - View this thread

My Union Is Bigger Than Your Union: On May 1 2004 the European Union will become 25-country strong and the most powerful political and economic force in the world. And? [More inside.]
posted on Dec 15, 2002 - View this thread

Doomsayers refuted yet again, this time by the United Nations and the Institute for International Studies, who independently released studies declaring that humanity is, for the most part, in the best condition it’s ever been. (Former MeFi-er DenBeste comments here.) With more and more studies reaching similar conclusions as Bjørn Lomborg's "Skeptical Environmentalist" and the CATO Institute's "It's Getting Better All the Time", I'm on my way to buy myself a new pair of shades. The future does indeed look bright!
posted on Oct 11, 2002 - View this thread

What a real depression looks like. Total collapse of the middle class, malnutrition, starving bands of marauders eating road-kill, it's every survivalists dream come true. Until last year, Argentines were part of the richest, best-educated and most cultured nation in Latin America. Not anymore.
posted on Aug 6, 2002 - View this thread

The CEO White House has yet another CEO with credibility problems. On Mr. O'Neill: "Administration officials "need to bring in someone with real credibility, with a good understanding of economics and who understands politics," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee."
posted on Jul 18, 2002 - View this thread

Understanding what makes America tick "The belief that America is exceptional, in the double sense that it is superior and that it is different...The United States had a mission, a manifest destiny, to change the world in its image. This conviction echoes down through American history....Other countries—France, Britain, Russia—have from time to time in their history felt a sense of mission, of carrying their civilisation to other peoples and territories. But in their cases it has been episodic and not deeply rooted—usually limited to when their power was at its zenith and usually clearly recognisable as a rationalisation for what they were doing for other reasons. In the case of the United States, it has been constant and central." [Centre of Independent Studies in Sydney via aldaily] American Exceptionalism. Mix it with sole super power status and massive military might. Should make it quite an intoxicating ride these next few years.
posted on Apr 4, 2002 - View this thread

Walk for Capitalism is scheduled for this weekend (Sunday, December 2nd) in over 100 cities around the world. One of the few rallies actually for something, and certainly first global campaign for capitalism in history. Will you stand up for the principles set forth in their position statement?
posted on Nov 29, 2001 - View this thread

White House predicts budget deficits until 2005. Uh... cause of the war, not monster tax cuts to businesses and billionaires... yeah, that's the ticket!
posted on Nov 28, 2001 - View this thread

Voters voting their concience rather than their pocketbooks (via IHT). Now, this is a good development IMHO. More inside.
posted on Mar 27, 2001 - View this thread

All Good No Bad Singapore is a country where markets are perfect and it is known globally as the economic miracle. A country where politics, intellectual life and criticism is sacrificed on the altar of the market. A nightmare, should I say?
(Link courtesy of Arts & Letters Daily)
posted on Feb 24, 2001 - View this thread

"Mr Bush, the World Doesn't Want to Be American"

"... it is time for America's electorate to be told the blunt truth: that the present situation of the United States, with a part of its population able to enjoy a life of extraordinary comfort and privilege, is not tenable as long as an enormous portion of the world lives in abject poverty, degradation and backwardness."
posted on Dec 31, 2000 - View this thread