OMNI
US CAPITALISM NEWSLETTER #18, May 6, 2014.
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace,
Justice, and Ecology. (#1
Jan. 30, 2011; #2 August 24, 2011; #3 October 2, 2011; #4 Oct. 29, 2011; #5
Jan. 29, 2012; #6 April 7, 2012; #7 June 8, 2012; #8 July 14, 2012; #9 Nov. 12,
2012; #10 Dec. 27, 2012; #11 Feb. 24, 2013; #12 April 23, 2013; #13, July 7,
2013; #14 August 28, 2013; #15, Nov. 22, 2013; #16 Feb. 18, 2014; #17, March
16, 2014).
The founders of OMNI
recognized the necessity of advocating for a culture of peace, justice, and ecology. That is, the existing culture of wars and
economic rapacity had to be changed. OMNI’s
18 US Capitalism Newsletters examine the dysfunctions of and the alternatives
to US US capitalism by the US capitalist propaganda system is financed
by billions of dollars. OMNI with a
budget so small you can’t find it in your wallet is sitting on the high end of
the teeter-totter (as we are also on US imperialism and related issues), but at
least we are here and, we hope, along with the peace, justice, and ecology
movement, gaining weight. It is this
enormous disparity of resources, by the way, which removes any responsibility
on our part to include pro-US capitalist and militarist arguments in our
newsletters. We are responding to
gargantuan power and advantage. And we
are saying that a better world is possible only if we change the culture of US
capitalism and militarism.
My blog: The War
Department and Peace Heroes
Newsletters:
Index:
See Citizens United/McCutcheon, Class,
Corporate Crime, Corporate Personhood, Corporations, Economics, Globalization,
Go Not to Jail, Greed, Imperialism, Inequality, Information Control, Lobbying,
Marx, Military Industrial Complex, Monopoly, Occupy, Rapacity,
Regulation/Deregulation, Secrecy, Socialism, Too Big To Fail, US Economic
Imperialism, Working Class, and related topics.
Nos. 13-17 at end.
Contents US
Capitalism Newsletter #18
Alternatives to
Capitalism
Naomi Klein, Capitalism
vs. the Climate
Singer, Whose
Millenium? Imagines a “Realistic Utopia”
Hedges: Capitalism/Corporations/Presidential Power Complex
the Problem
Three on US Oligarchy: It’s Worse Than you Suspect
Queally on Krugman
Queally, CEO Pay
Soars in New Gilded Age
Public Citizen, Big Banks Hoarding Commodities
Three Reviews of Piketty’s Capital
Timothy Shenk, Piketty on Inequality
Krugman,
Republican Right and Piketty
Eric Alterman,
Piketty’s Thesis and What Is To Be Done?
Contact
Your Representatives
Numbers 13-17
See
all 1 images
This Changes Everything:
Capitalism vs. The Climate
by . Simon and Schuster, 2014.
The most important book yet from the author of the
international bestseller The
Shock Doctrine, a brilliant
explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free
market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our
political systems.
In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.
In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.
·
Browse »
Tuesday
May 6th, 2014
Whose Millennium: Theirs or Ours?
by
Paperback,
288 pages
ISBN: 0-85345-946-0
Released: January 1999
ISBN: 0-85345-946-0
Released: January 1999
Written with droll wit and lyrical elegance, this visionary book
challenges the chorus of resignation—the notion that there is no alternative,
that profit is the best relationship between people, and that the market
guarantees democracy. Daniel Singer insists that a more free and egalitarian
society can be won, and he predicts that the new millennium will be an age of
confrontation, not consensus, with Western Europe
as a probable first battlefield.
In social criticism of rare scope and insight, Singer probes the
outcome of the Russian Revolution and Russia’s post-1989 turmoil, the
transformation of the Polish trade union movement Solidarity into a reactionary
and clerical force, the failure of social democracy in Western Europe, the
emergence of an unbalanced world after the collapse of one superpower, and the
massive 1995 strikes and demonstrations in France—which, Singer argues, were
the first revolt against the prevailing idea that there is no alternative to
market stringency.
As alternative,
Singer calls for “realistic utopia”: a politics engaged with present-day
possibilities but daring to pursue a world beyond capitalism, one that would
put into consistent practice the ideals of democracy and equality.
Are we doomed to accept history, instead of creating it? Clone
days, routines of pain, injustice as Destiny? Whose Millennium? helps us to believe that tomorrow is
not another name for today.
For many years Daniel Singer has been one of the best, and
certainly the sanest, interpreter of things European for American readers. Now,
in Whose Millennium?, he has expanded his—and
our—horizon to give a view of what may be the next stage in humanity’s zig-zag
course toward, if not the stars, a new social balance. Also, thanks to his
Balzacian eye for human detail, his prose is a delight to read—as ever.
Magisterial in its historical sweep, fiercely democratic in its
vision, Whose Millennium? is the thinking person’s `bridge to
the 21st Century.’ There is an alternative to rampant inequality and the
corruptions of power, and— ever so modestly and persuasively—Daniel Singer
points the way.
I can think of no journalist more versed, more hip to what is
happening in Europe today than Daniel Singer.
His humor and smarts make Whose Millennium? a must read for those who want to know
where world politics is heading.
An erudite yet accessible, elegant yet straightforward,
inspirational yet practical, sophisticated yet uncynical credo for the next
century. Aux armes citoyens.
Daniel Singer
is the left’s most brilliant arsonist. He sets ablaze whole forests of
desiccated cliches about the `end of history’ and the `triumph of the market’
in order to light the way forward for the next generation of radical thinkers
and activists.
Truthout
Tuesday, 06 May 2014 / TRUTH-OUT.ORG
Chris Hedges | Capitalism, Not Government Is the Problem
Demonstrators
against the NDAA in January, 2012. (Photo: Justin Norman)
The U.S. Supreme Court decision to
refuse to hear our case concerning Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA), which permits the military to seize U.S. citizens and
hold them indefinitely in military detention centers without due process, means that this provision will
continue to be law. It means the nation has entered a post-constitutional era.
It means that extraordinary rendition of U.S.
citizens on U.S.
“In
declining to hear the case Hedges v. Obama and declining to review the NDAA,
the Supreme Court has turned its back on precedent dating back to the Civil War
era that holds that the military cannot police the streets of America,” said
attorney Carl Mayer, who along with Bruce Afran devoted countless unpaid hours
to the suit. “This is a major blow to civil liberties. It gives the green light
to the military to detain people without trial or counsel in military
installations, including secret installations abroad. There is little left of
judicial review of presidential action during wartime.”
Afran,
Mayer and I brought the case to the U.S. Southern District Court of New York in
January 2012. I was later joined by co-plaintiffs Noam Chomsky, Daniel
Ellsberg, journalist Alexa O’Brien,
RevolutionTruth founder Tangerine
Bolen, Icelandic parliamentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir, and Occupy London activist Kai Wargalla.
Later
in 2012 U.S.
The
government swiftly went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. It
asked, in the name of national security, that the court stay the district
court’s injunction until the government’s appeal could be heard. The 2nd
Circuit agreed. The law went back on the books. My lawyers and I surmised that
this was because the administration was already using the law to detain U.S. citizens in black sites, most likely dual
citizens with roots in countries such as Pakistan ,
Afghanistan , Somalia and Yemen U.S.
The
2nd Circuit overturned Forrest’s ruling last July in a decision that did not
force it to rule on the actual constitutionality of Section 1021(b)(2). It
cited the Supreme Court ruling in Clapper
v. Amnesty International, another case in which I was one of the
plaintiffs, to say that I had no standing, or right, to bring the NDAA case to
court. Clapper v. Amnesty International challenged the secret wiretapping of U.S.
In
refusing to hear our lawsuit the courts have overturned nearly 150 years of
case law that repeatedly holds that the military has no jurisdiction over
civilians. Now, a U.S.
citizen charged by the government with “substantially supporting” al-Qaida, the
Taliban or those in the nebulous category of “associated forces”—some of the
language of Section 1021(b)(2)—is lawfully subject to extraordinary rendition on U.S.
Judge Forrest, in her 112-page ruling against the
section, noted that under this provision of the NDAA whole categories of
Americans could be subject to seizure by the military. These might include
Muslims, activists, Black Bloc members and any other Americans
labeled as domestic terrorists by the state. Forrest wrote that Section 1021(b)(2)
echoed the 1944 Supreme Court ruling in Korematsu v. United States, which
supported the government’s use of the military to detain 110,00
Japanese-Americans in internment camps without due process during World War II.
Of
the refusal to hear our lawsuit, Afran said, “The Supreme Court has left in
place a statute that furthers erodes basic respect for constitutional
liberties, that weakens free speech and will chill the willingness of Americans
to exercise their 1st Amendment rights, already in severe decline in this
country.”
The goals of corporate capitalism are increasingly indistinguishable
from the goals of the state. The political and economic systems are subservient
to corporate profit. Debate between conventional liberals and conservatives has
been replaced by empty political theater and spectacle. Corporations, no matter which politicians are in office, loot the
Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil
society, gut regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute
endless war and dismantle public institutions and programs that include
schools, welfare and Social Security. And elected officials, enriched through
our form of legalized corporate bribery, have no intention of halting the
process.
The government,
by ignoring the rights and needs of ordinary citizens, is jeopardizing its
legitimacy. This is dangerous. When a citizenry no longer feels that it can
find justice within the organs of power, when it feels that the organs of power
are the enemies of freedom and economic advancement, it makes war on those
organs. Those of us who are condemned as radicals, idealists and dreamers call
for basic reforms that, if enacted, will make peaceful reform possible. But
corporate capitalists, now unchecked by state power and dismissive of the
popular will, do not see the fires they are igniting. The Supreme Court ruling
on our challenge is one more signpost on the road to dystopia.
It is capitalism, not government, that
is the problem. The fusion of corporate and state power means that government
is broken. It is little more than a protection racket for Wall Street. And it
is our job to wrest government back. This will come only through the building
of mass movements.
“It
is futile to be ‘anti-Fascist’ while attempting to preserve capitalism,” George
Orwell wrote. “Fascism after all is only a development of capitalism, and the
mildest democracy, so-called, is liable to turn into Fascism.”
Our
corporate masters will not of their own volition curb their appetite for
profits. Human misery and the deadly assault on the ecosystem are good for
business. These masters have set in place laws that, when we rise up—and they
expect us to rise up—will permit the state to herd us like sheep into military
detention camps. Section 1021(b)(2) is but one piece of the legal tyranny now
in place to ensure total corporate control. The corporate state also oversees
the most pervasive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. It can
order the assassination of U.S.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or
license.
Chris Hedges
Chris
Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America,
the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He
has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor,
National Public Radio, The Dallas
Morning News and The New York Times, for
which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.
US AND CHINA
China
f you have all the money in the world, but
there’s nothing in the world worth buying, then what’s the point of having so
much money in the first place?
Two crucial new tidbits of information coming out of China
are helping to paint a fuller picture of the long-lasting damage from the
unrestrained capitalism that’s evident in the world’s most populous nation. A
newly-released Chinese state secret revealed that one-fifth of China’s farmland is
unusable due to toxins
in the soil leaked by industry. Worse still, 60 percent of China ’s groundwater is undrinkable,
for the same reasons.
When you
combine China ’s dwindling
natural resources with its massive population that encompasses 20 percent of
the planet, it’s easy to see how China will inevitably lead itself
to societal collapse if it continues its brand of entirely unregulated
capitalism. While China is
technically known as a Communist country, it's actually outdoing the US
when it comes to establishing a completely unregulated business environment.
Labor regulations in China are almost nonexistent –
30,000 workers just recently went on strike at a factory that produces Nike and
Adidas shoes, protesting low pay and dangerous working conditions. And China ’s
Foxconn plant, responsible for the manufacturing of Apple technology, has
gotten plenty of attention since its workers – many of them children – threatened mass suicide several
years ago.
Environmental regulations are similarly loose in China ,
which is home to 16 of the world’s 20 most polluted
cities. China
also burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined, meaning much of the
air is so polluted that residents of certain cities can’t go outside without a
mask. Lung cancer rates have skyrocketed by 465 percent in just the last three
decades, and 1.2 million people died prematurely due to pollution in 2010
alone.
One thing China has in common with the US is cronyism, evident in some
businesses getting favorable treatment and paying no penalties for breaking the
law. In China ,
state-owned businesses get around having to abide by laws passed by the central
government. And in the US ,
the business-owned government, purchased through campaign donations and
lobbying, allows rampant abuse of workers and the environment with very little
accountability.
The End Game of Oligarchy
American politicians purchased through the campaign
donation and lobbying processes are quick to enable US corporations by
dynamiting regulations and further reducing their tax obligations. When David
Koch ran as the nominee for vice president on the Libertarian ticket in 1980,
one of his talking points wasabolishing the minimum wage. He also proposed
dismantling the entire social safety net, including Social Security, Medicare,
and welfare programs. Other proposed reforms included repealing laws passed to
protect workers on the job, like the Occupational Safety and Health Act;
privatizing all domestic water sources that supply houses, businesses and
agriculture; and eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency.
Koch’s
platform would also abolish all agencies responsible for protecting citizens
from predatory corporate behavior like the Consumer Product Safety Commission,
get rid of state usury laws that protect debtors from high interest rates, and
deregulate medical insurance companies to make it easier for them to rip off
poor and sick people. The Libertarian platform of 1980 also called for the
repeal of all taxes that weren’t paid by consumers, like capital gains taxes
for investors and corporate income taxes, and the immediate cessation of
criminal and civil penalties for tax evasion.
Even though that failed campaign happened 34 years ago,
Koch is actively using his billions to push for all of the above as a behind-the-scenes string-puller for other candidates in the state and
federal political arenas. None of Koch’s reforms would make our country any
more “free” – all they would do is rapidly distribute wealth from the poor to
the very rich and strip all protections and safety nets from the vulnerable,
all so the very rich could become richer. The idea of “trickle-down” economics
is a myth, given that we saw most of the wealth created in the last decade
concentrate into a smaller group of hands while wagesstagnated or decreased.
Profit or Planet?
US corporations are quick to complain about “unfair”
regulations and taxes that don’t allow them to “compete.” To corporate
oligarchs like David Koch and their pet politicians, the only things stopping
corporations from being successful are the critical laws passed in the 20th
century that protect consumers, workers’ basic rights, and the environment.
Business leaders openly salivate over the “Chinese model” of doing business,
complimenting China
for its “pro-growth” economic
policies and “business-friendly” laws
and regulations. Even though corporate profits are already hitting consistent
record highs and stock numbers have never been higher, corporations are still
making the argument that the US
business climate is too hostile for them.
While China
is indeed outpacing the rest of the world when it comes to Gross Domestic
Product, its citizens suffer from the side effects of rampant, unrestrained
capitalism. The US
is at a crossroads. One road leads to a new economy that values meeting human
needs over GDP. The other leads to an autocratic corporate state where
oligarchs gorge themselves in celebration of the end of workers’ rights and
environmental protections in their never-ending, greed-inspired quest for more
profits.
Do we really
want to be a country where we neuter every law that creates a fair playing
field for the average citizen, so a few tax-dodging oligarchs can have even
more money they’ll never be able to spend? Do we want to become a country where
the vast majority of citizens have largely unusable farmland and water as a
result of corporate destruction of natural resources? If we deregulate
everything and sacrifice our land, air, and water all for a slightly higher GDP
output, is that really worth not having a world to pass on to future
generations?
Carl Gibson,
26, is co-founder of US
Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action
movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax
avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He
currently lives in Madison ,
Wisconsin
Reader
Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to
republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported
News.
|
THREE FROM COMMON DREAMS APRIL 20, 2014
Krugman: Worried About Oligarchy? You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet by Jon Queally "Even those of you who talk about the 1%, you don't really get what's going on. You're living in the past." |
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US Is an Oligarchy Not a
Democracy, says Scientific Study
by Eric Zuesse "Research shows that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies the |
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CEO Pay Soars, Workers Toil in
Capitalism's New Gilded Age
by Jon Queally "The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay is 'unconscionable,' says the AFl-CIO, as a prominent economist argues this level of inequality proves the current capitalist system 'cannot work.'" |
Bleeding our economy dry
From Public CitizenTo:Sue Skidmore
[suesactivism@mchsi.com]
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Wall Street banks are behaving like parasites draining
the blood from our economy.
These "too big to fail" institutions - which survived their own recklessness only because We the People bailed them out - have become more bloated than ever.
*Ever unsatisfied, the Big Banks are now literally hoarding basic commodities, like fuels and metals, that are essential to feeding our families, heating our homes and growing our economy.*
Tell the Federal Reserve: Ban the Big Banks from stockpiling physical commodities. [http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12461 ]
Goldman Sachs - one of the Wall Street titans we bailed out in 2008 - is a prime example of why the financial industry should be forbidden from buying up commodities.
*Here's just one example of what's happening:*
Not far from Detroit, Goldman Sachs owns 27 warehouses stocked with thousands of tons of the aluminum needed to make cans for vegetables, beans, soda, sardines and so on.
In an elaborate scheme only Wall Street could cook up, Goldman shuffles the aluminum from warehouse to warehouse, exploiting rules designed to stabilize the metal market in a way that instead lets more and more aluminum pile up and go unused.
The longer the aluminum sits locked away in its warehouses, the more Goldman rakes in - hundreds of millions so far. Meanwhile, warehousing the metal hurts consumers and manufacturers by artificially inflating the price of any product packaged in an aluminum container.*
*Goldman Sachs' absurd scheme has cost American shoppers more than $5 billion over the past three years.*
*That's enough to employ 100,000 people for a year at a $50,000 salary.*
Tell the Fed: Forbid Wall Street from buying up fuel, metal and other basic materials that have nothing to do with banking. [ http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12461 ]
It's time to stand up to Wall Street's schemes to suck the lifeblood from our economy.
Thanks for all you do,
Rick Claypool
Public Citizen's Online Action Team
action@citizen.org
*To learn more, read A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html ] in The New York Times.
donate [ https://secure.citizen.org/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=6116&track=w14icBLP0226 ]
Visit our Financial Reform page [ http://www.citizen.org/financial-reform ] to learn more about Public Citizen's work to hold banks and financial corporations accountable. Go to http://action.citizen.org/unsubscribe.jsp if you do not want to receive future emails from Public Citizen.
© 2014 Public Citizen •1600 20th
Street, NW Washington ,
D.C. 20009
These "too big to fail" institutions - which survived their own recklessness only because We the People bailed them out - have become more bloated than ever.
*Ever unsatisfied, the Big Banks are now literally hoarding basic commodities, like fuels and metals, that are essential to feeding our families, heating our homes and growing our economy.*
Tell the Federal Reserve: Ban the Big Banks from stockpiling physical commodities. [http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12461 ]
Goldman Sachs - one of the Wall Street titans we bailed out in 2008 - is a prime example of why the financial industry should be forbidden from buying up commodities.
*Here's just one example of what's happening:*
Not far from Detroit, Goldman Sachs owns 27 warehouses stocked with thousands of tons of the aluminum needed to make cans for vegetables, beans, soda, sardines and so on.
In an elaborate scheme only Wall Street could cook up, Goldman shuffles the aluminum from warehouse to warehouse, exploiting rules designed to stabilize the metal market in a way that instead lets more and more aluminum pile up and go unused.
The longer the aluminum sits locked away in its warehouses, the more Goldman rakes in - hundreds of millions so far. Meanwhile, warehousing the metal hurts consumers and manufacturers by artificially inflating the price of any product packaged in an aluminum container.*
*Goldman Sachs' absurd scheme has cost American shoppers more than $5 billion over the past three years.*
*That's enough to employ 100,000 people for a year at a $50,000 salary.*
Tell the Fed: Forbid Wall Street from buying up fuel, metal and other basic materials that have nothing to do with banking. [ http://action.citizen.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12461 ]
It's time to stand up to Wall Street's schemes to suck the lifeblood from our economy.
Thanks for all you do,
Rick Claypool
Public Citizen's Online Action Team
action@citizen.org
*To learn more, read A Shuffle of Aluminum, but to Banks, Pure Gold [ http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/business/a-shuffle-of-aluminum-but-to-banks-pure-gold.html ] in The New York Times.
donate [ https://secure.citizen.org/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=6116&track=w14icBLP0226 ]
Visit our Financial Reform page [ http://www.citizen.org/financial-reform ] to learn more about Public Citizen's work to hold banks and financial corporations accountable. Go to http://action.citizen.org/unsubscribe.jsp if you do not want to receive future emails from Public Citizen.
© 2014 Public Citizen •
Thomas Piketty and Millennial Marxists on
the Scourge of Inequality
Capitalism’s new critics take on an
economics run amok.
April 14, 2014 | This article appeared in the May 5, 2014 edition of The
Nation. [Title: What Was Socialism?
--Dick]
Books Reviewed:
Jacobin
A Magazine of Culture and Polemic.
jacobinmag.com
A Magazine of Culture and Polemic.
jacobinmag.com
Cubed
A Secret History of the Workplace.
By Nikil Saval.
Buy this book
A Secret History of the Workplace.
By Nikil Saval.
Buy this book
Utopia or Bust
A Guide to the Present Crisis.
By Benjamin Kunkel.
Buy this book
A Guide to the Present Crisis.
By Benjamin Kunkel.
Buy this book
Capital in the Twenty-First Century
By Thomas Piketty.
Translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer.
Buy this book
By Thomas Piketty.
Translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer.
Buy this book
Read the review:
Council for a Livable World
livableworld.org/
FOCUS:
Paul Krugman | The Piketty Panic
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, Reader Supported News, April 25, 2014
Krugman writes: "The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty's thesis."
READ MORE
Paul Krugman, The New York Times, Reader Supported News, April 25, 2014
Krugman writes: "The really striking thing about the debate so far is that the right seems unable to mount any kind of substantive counterattack to Mr. Piketty's thesis."
READ MORE
The Power of Piketty’s ‘Capital’
A
brilliant book has named the problem of our time. But will anything change?
·
Share
·
·
(Reuters
Pictures)
If you were
among those who followed the reports on French economist Thomas Piketty’s US
book tour in support of his university-press-published, 696-page,
Marxism-tinged treatise on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First
Century, and taxed your brain trying to recall a remotely recent
antecedent for the ensuing excitement, well, relax—there isn’t any.
No less
remarkable is the fact that one can, for once, believe the hype. Beautifully
translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Piketty’s Capital is simultaneously intellectually
rigorous, historically grounded, culturally nuanced and, in important respects,
politically visionary. Even nitpicky economists who take issue with some of his
interpretations of the mountains of data he and his colleagues assembled feel
compelled to shower the book with praise beforehand—and frequently after as
well. Paul Krugman credits
Piketty with inspiring “a revolution in our understanding of long-term trends
in inequality.”
Piketty’s central thesis presents a
profound challenge to our political system and its response to the economic
crisis of the past decade. As he puts it, an “apparently small gap between the
return on capital and the rate of growth can in the long run have powerful and
destabilizing effects on the structure and dynamics of social inequality.”
Moreover, “there is absolutely no doubt that the increase of inequality in the United States
While edifying
intellectually, all this attention to inequality raises the question of what
comes next—or, to borrow a phrase from another famous student of capital: What is to be done? Surprisingly for an
academic economist, Piketty does not demur. On an entirely utopian plane, he
imagines the effect of a progressive
global tax on capital. “Such a tax would also have another virtue: it would
expose wealth to democratic scrutiny, which is a necessary condition for
effective regulation of the banking system and international capital flows.” On
a minutely less unrealistic level, he argues for confiscatory tax rates on the wealthy of up to 80 percent. And on
an ever-so-slightly more imaginable plane, he calls for boosting the minimum wage and improving the education and training
opportunities of the poor and middle class, who are increasingly priced out
of our faux-meritocracy, which is itself shaped by economic inequality.
But to be
brutally honest, it’s hard to imagine any measurable impact from Piketty’s work
on the problem it seeks to address—at least insofar as it relates to America
The ability of
money to win what it wants is the defining characteristic of our politics—one
exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in McCutcheon, and Citizens
United before that. A reflection of this power, and a not-so-silent
partner in the ethical crimes it perpetrates, is the manner in which
demonstrable bullshit is able to dominate our political discourse and thereby
mask all of the above behind ideological assertion and meaningless cliché. In
his discussion of Piketty, Krugman recalls Upton Sinclair’s famous observation
that “it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends on his not understanding it.” Thanks to the simultaneous
corporatization and conglomeratization of our media apparatus, that category
now includes almost every credentialed political pundit in America
As with
Piketty’s data, the proof is in the proverbial pudding. Researching 1,779
national policy outcomes over a period of twenty years, Martin Gilens and
Benjamin Page note in a new study that “economic elites and organized groups
representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S.
This dynamic is
evident in pretty much every policy area where the interests of even a
relatively small number of really rich folk are remotely imperiled. Writing in The American Prospect, Jacob
Hacker and Paul Pierson compare inequality to climate change, a problem “in which a
solution must not only overcome powerful entrenched interests in individual
countries but must be global in scope to be effective.”
Good luck with that. Just prior to Piketty’s arrival here, the
United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released yet another
report warning that only emergency action at this point can save us from the
catastrophic consequences of our fossil fuel addiction. The cost to economic
growth of taking such action would be next to nothing (about 0.06 percent per
year). But so long as the Koch brothers—whose estimated net worth now exceeds
$100 billion—and their puppet politicians and pundits continue to profit from
the poisoning of our planet, you can bet nothing will be done.
Behold, ladies
and gentlemen, the power of capital in the twenty-first century.
Read above:: Timothy Shenk on Thomas
Piketty and millennial Marxists
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Academic Repression and
Scholarly Dissent. . Piya Chatterjee and Sunaina
Maira, Editors. 2014.
From the front
lines of the war on academic freedom, linking the policing of knowledge to
the relationship between universities, militarism, and neoliberalism
The Imperial
University brings together scholars to
explore the policing of knowledge by explicitly linking the academy to the
broader politics of militarism, racism, nationalism, and neoliberalism that
define the contemporary imperial state. Based on multidisciplinary research,
autobiographical accounts, and even performance scripts, this urgent analysis
offers sobering insights into varied manifestations of “the imperial
university.”
The public
space of higher education is under siege. The
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NEWSLETTERS
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May DAY/UN International Workers’ DAY
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Westward Imperialism
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Pentagon Budget
4-18
Climate Change and Media
4-17
Fascism
4-16
Torture, War Crimes
4-15
Snowden
4-15
Military Spending
4-12
War on/of Terror
4-10
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Contact Arkansas
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SENATORS
Sen. John
Boozman
Republican, first term 320 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-4843 Fax: (202) 228-1371 Arkansas offices: FORT SMITH: (479) 573-0189 JONESBORO: (870) 268-6925 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 372-7153 LOWELL: (479) 725-0400 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-0129 STUTTGART: (870) 672-6941 EL DORADO: (870) 863-4641 Website: www.boozman.senate.gov
Sen. Mark
Pryor
Democrat, second term 255 Dirksen Office Building Constitution Avenue and First Street NE Washington, D.C. 20510 Phone: (202) 224-2353 Fax: (202) 228-0908 Little Rock office: (501) 324-6336 Website: www.pryor.senate.gov
Rep. Tom
Cotton
4TH DISTRICT Republican, first term 415 Phone: (202) 225-43772 HOT SPRINGS: (501) 520-5892 PINE BLUFF: (870) 536-3376 Website: www.cotton.house.gov |
REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Rick
Crawford
1ST DISTRICT Republican, second term 1771 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4076 Fax: (202) 225-5602 CABOT: (501) 843-3043 MOUNTAIN HOME: (870) 424-2075 Website: www.crawford.house.gov
Rep. Tim
Griffin
2ND DISTRICT Republican, second term 1232 Independence Avenues SE Washington, D.C. 20515 Phone: (202) 225-2506 Fax: (202) 225-5903 LITTLE ROCK: (501) 324-5491 Website: www.griffin.house.gov
Rep. Steve
Womack
3RD DISTRICT Republican, second term 1119 Longworth Office Building New Jersey and Independence Avenues SE Washington 20515 Phone: (202) 225-4301 Fax: (202) 225-5713 Arkansas offices: ROGERS: (479) 464-0446 HARRISON: (870) 741-7741 FORT SMITH: (479) 424-1146 Website: www.womack.house.gov
Con
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Contents #13
Dick, Moyers
& Co.: Victims of US Capitalism in Milwaukee
Scheer, Predatory
Takeover, The Great Stickup
Taibbi, Big Banks Price-Fixing
Dick, Warrior
Capitalism
Taibbi, Everything Rigged
Leech, Capitalism Genocidal, Rev. by Sethness
Richard Wolff
Kroll, 2012 Elections and Billionaires
Remedies
Gibson, Public Banking
Contents #14
Leibovich: US Capitalism Washington , DC
Cox: The Market as God
Moyers: Freeland, Taibbi, Income Inequality
Birdsell: Poverty of
Working Poor
Ockert: SNAP Handouts
Help Short-term
GLOBAL
Hedges: Global US
Capitalism, World’s Elites vs. World’s Poor
Trainor: And Climate
Change, 180 Degree Turn Needed Now
Bennett: Chomsky , Bolivia
Faulkner:
Over-accumulation of Capitalism:
Defenders of a
Modified Capitalism
Admati and Hellwig: Changing the Banking System
Haque: Changing the Economic System
Strong and Mackey: Conscious Capitalists Can Solve World’s
Problems
Welch: Positive Vision Needed
Contents #15 Nov. 22,
2013 (11 essays)
DEREGULATION/MONEY COUP AND DESTRUCTION OF DEMOCRACY
Frontline, JPMorgan Fined $13 Billion, the Price of Business
as Usual
Hedges (2 essays on disintegrating Corporate State
Moyers & Company:
Interview of Heather Gerken and Joyce Appleby
Moyers & Co., Interview of Gretchen Morgenson, Author of
Reckless Endangerment
Nichols and
McChesney, Dollarocracy
Gotesdiener, A Dream
Foreclosed: Black America
NEW SUSTAINABLE, ECONOMICALLY
JUST, DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM
Senator Sanders, Morally and Economically Sound Budget
Speth, Manifesto for a
New Economy
Appleby, Libertarian View of Flexible Capitalism
Brown, Costa Rican (and North Dakotan!) Public Banking
Contents US
Capitalism Newsletter #16,
US “Free”-Market,
Unregulated Greed
Parramore, Ayn Rand
Video Documentary, Frontline,
“To Catch a Trader”
Dick: Jackson ’s Study of Media
Reporting of Unequal Justice
Michael Klare: Carbon Dioxide Increasing
Building a New Economic
System
Pierce, Economic Bill of Rights Needed vs. Corporations
Chomsky, An Economic System for the Common Good
Weissmann, A Different Federal Reserve
Hedges, Public Banks, the North Dakota
Model
Bradbery, Adequate Regulatory Oversight
Stephenson and Miodema, Volker Rule One Step
The People’s Ally, Public Citizen
Staggenborg, Pledge to Amend, Anti-Corruption Act Petition
US Capitalism Newsletter: Dysfunctions and
Alternatives #17
Dysfunctions of US Capitalism
Starkman, Failure of US Journalism to Investigate US
Financial Power
Cynthia Lobeda, Deep Structural Dysfunction of Capitalism
William Greider, Federal Reserve Needs Overhaul
Lee Fang, Corporate Control of TPP
Red Ink, Film by
Kusha Sefat on Money, Politics, and Media in US
Alternatives to US Capitalism
Richard Swift. SOS: Alternatives to Capitalism (May
2014)
The Monthly Review
Sader and Silverstein, Lula and Brazil ’s Workers Party
Google Search March 16, 2014
END US
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