Mark Dempsey: American government has the legal right to create literally unlimited dollars, so it can never be insolvent. It will run out of dollars when the Bureau of Weights and Measures runs out of inches.
The Jobs Crisis, the “Unemployable,” and the Fiscal Cliff
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Shamus Cooke: Aside from some sparse rhetoric, neither Democrats nor Republicans have offered a solution to job creation. Most politicians seem purposefully myopic about the jobs crisis, as if a healthy dose of denial might get them through the electoral season unscathed.
Enlightened Economics: There Is an Alternative
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Mark Dempsey: One Modern Monetary Theory economist suggests sending each American household $50,000 to pay down debts, which would not only be cheaper than the $16-$29 trillion Wall Street bailout, it would bail out Main Street instead of the banks.
Friday Feedback: LIBOR and Super PACs
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Friday Feedback: True democracy – ‘capitalist’ or otherwise – doesn’t need or use a special class of politicians, let alone politicians whose concentrated power makes them attractive and ready recipients of corruption.
We Twisted King’s Dream, So We Live With His Nightmare
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Tim Wise: If double-digit unemployment had been viewed as the emergency it is, when only people of color were experiencing it (as they typically have been, in good times or bad, year after year throughout this century), perhaps lawmakers might have seen fit to address the problem.
Palm Springs Weekend
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Sharon Kyle: The billionaire Koch brothers, David and Charles, are hosting their bi-annual meeting of right-wing billionaires. Odds are you’re probably not a right-wing billionaire and weren’t invited to their event. But, no worries, a coalition of progressive organizations has planned an event just for you.
Color Blindness
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Steve Hochstadt: Our nation also has far to go. Claiming that we are color blind, that whites no longer have privileges in America, that we need no longer worry about preventing discrimination is nonsense. One need only have observed the reception of our first black President to know how important skin color still is in America.
Reagan v. F.D.R.
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Adam Eran: Acting together solved problems in FDR’s philosophy. Such action was the problem, in Reagan’s. Now we have experienced roughly 40 years of each. Which one produces better results?
Why A Civil Society Extends Unemployment Benefits
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Robert Reich: A record number of Americans is unemployed for a record length of time. This is a national tragedy. It is to the nation’s credit that many are receiving unemployment benefits. This is good not only for them and their families but also for the economy as a whole, because it allows them to spend and thereby keep others in jobs.
The End of the Ownership Society?
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In his second inaugural address, President George W. Bush offered a vision of an “ownership society” In America’s ideal of freedom, citizens find the dignity and security of economic independence… To give every American a stake in the promise and future of our country, we will… build an ownership society. We will widen the ownership [...]
If They’re Too Big To Fail, They’re Too Big Period
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by Robert Reich – According to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, the biggest Wall Street banks now getting money from the government are just “too big to fail.” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke uses a different euphemism – he calls them “systemically critical.” The point is that if any of them goes down, it could take the [...]
Politics, Art, and California’s Public Policy Failure
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California is mired in a $16 billion dollar deficit, without the political will to overcome deliberately designed structural impediments to solving the problem. For most government and nonprofit organizations, mission determines function. The United States Constitution clearly lays out the ‘mission’ of the government in the Preamble: “to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, [...]
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