Analytical Summaries of Key Stories of the Week on Economics and Public Policy
A Setback on Jobs (New York Times)
In an analysis of unexpectedly high job losses reported for June, David Leonhardt describes the state of the economy as “stepped back from the precipice of depression” but far from being in good shape.
As U.S. Celebrates July 4th, Rest Assured that Obama is No Socialist (Chicago Tribune)
Citing opinions from economists and other experts, columnist David Greising characterizes the widespread cries of “socialism” from President Obama’s critics as intellectually lazy, arguing that the administration’s policies have been working “at all times from a capitalist frame of reference.”
In a Crisis, Rethinking Fiscal Federalism (New York Times)
Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and Ed Kilgore, Managing Editor of The Democratic Strategist, contend that complex fiscal crises occurring across the U.S. at the state and local levels reflect “a frayed partnership between states and the federal government.”
New White House Office to Redefine What Urban Policy Encompasses (Washington Post)
President Obama’s newly created Office of Urban Affairs seeks to “redefine the word urban and set the tone for policies not only for inner cities but for nearby suburbs as well, according to this report from Robin Shulman of the Washington Post
Taking Stock: Economy and Government on July 2, 2009 (The Atlantic)
Continuing to characterize the present crisis as a “depression,” Richard Posner cautions that, in spite of signs of “incipient recovery,” prospects for the economy remain uncertain amidst continuing fundamental problems of unemployment, underemployment, declining home prices, and reduced personal consumption.
U.S. Stimulus a Small Patch for Big Economic Hole (Reuters)
In this news analysis piece, Emily Kaiser takes stock of the impact thus far of the federal stimulus package, especially in the context of the daunting difference in magnitude between the federal program’s $787 billion scale vs. the “$12 trillion in household wealth that has been wiped out since the recession began.”
Why This Recession is Hitting Men Harder (Wall Street Journal)
Featuring commentary by experts from the Economic Policy Institute and the Center for Economic Policy and Research, this report from Andrea Coombes examines the factors behind and social impact of the gap in unemployment levels between men (10.5 percent in May) and women (8 percent), especially given that male dominated industries account for half of job losses since the beginning of the recession.
Sphere: Related Content
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
Welcome!
Economics is often called "the dismal science." But our current crisis has taught us that it’s a science we all need to understand better. Over the past thirty years, the leaders we chose here in the U.S. implemented policies that created the conditions that made our current crisis possible.
Even now, it appears that we may not yet have learned our lesson. The public dialogue that frames the current crisis often seems inadequate and based on premises that may by now be very outdated, using the language of such old, simplistic dichotomies as liberalism vs. conservatism, socialism vs. capitalism, etc. Newsweek runs a story with the headline We Are All Socialists Now,” while conservative pundits continue to insist that all the government needs to do to get us out of the hole is cut taxes, cut spending, and get out of the way.
Both sides of this dichotomy are based on ideas that come from a very different world. Isn’t getting government out of the way, through such actions as deregulating financial markets and castrating anti-trust laws, exactly what we did, starting thirty years ago? And don’t those actions have a precise cause-effect relationship to the boom-and-bust cycles we’ve witnessed over three decades and, especially, to the the insane financial practices that gave rise to the current crisis?
But on the flip side, the vocabularies of socialism or New-Deal-style liberal democracy are just as inadequate to helping us comprehend and see our way out of the current predicament. If centralized planning proved ineffective in the 20th-century Soviet Union, just think how much more inadequate it is to the complex, fast-paced, technology-driven world we have today. Centralized planning isn’t what will get us out of this hole. What will get us out are the grass-roots efforts that individuals and organizations, out of sheer self-preservation. are already making to deal with the current situation, responding to such practical, everyday challenges as: How can I make sure that my family continues to have food on the table? How can I make sure my small business will have adequate cashflow to continue to operate? What innovative venture of my own could I launch to replace the income from the job I just lost?
Yet the chatter of the popular media seems to be locked into the framework of old ideas. That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t new ideas out there or that there aren’t contemporary thought leaders who, behind the scenes, are quietly influencing those currently vested with decision-making authority. So, the question is: who are the current thought leaders in economics, and what do they have to say? And will the ideas shaping the decisions of those we have placed at the helm help put our society, 30 years from now, in a better place than where we are now, a more stable place where we will be safer from the vagaries of the bubble-and-bust roller coasters of the past three decades?
This blog was conceived as a forum for exploring those very questions. Our current predicament shows that we need a better understanding of what we are assenting to through the authority we vest in our representatives. When our country bought into Ronald Reagan’s evangelism for low taxes, “free” markets, and deregulation, did we understand that the result would be allowing mega-banks to gamble all of our financial futures by placing risky bets on assets leveraged 30 to 1, or that we were creating an illusion of prosperity by building a debt-driven economy? Of course not. We cast our votes and acquiesced to the policies without understanding what we were getting ourselves into.
Let’s avoid making the same mistakes again. Let’s make sure we understand why we believe what we believe. Let’s make sure we truly know our leaders on both the dominant and opposition sides. And, perhaps more importantly, let’s make sure we know the thought leaders who are shaping their opinions, so that, when we exercise our democratic rights through our votes and through the ongoing feedback we provide to our chosen representatives, we are advocating for our own self-interest, from a fully informed context.
I’m not a credentialed expert on economics -- I’m just a reasonably well educated dude with some halfway-decent research skills and, I like to think, a knack for putting together a fairly readable English sentence. So it’s an exploratory undertaking for me, and I invite all interested to join me and, especially, to contribute to the discussion. Sphere: Related Content
Even now, it appears that we may not yet have learned our lesson. The public dialogue that frames the current crisis often seems inadequate and based on premises that may by now be very outdated, using the language of such old, simplistic dichotomies as liberalism vs. conservatism, socialism vs. capitalism, etc. Newsweek runs a story with the headline We Are All Socialists Now,” while conservative pundits continue to insist that all the government needs to do to get us out of the hole is cut taxes, cut spending, and get out of the way.
Both sides of this dichotomy are based on ideas that come from a very different world. Isn’t getting government out of the way, through such actions as deregulating financial markets and castrating anti-trust laws, exactly what we did, starting thirty years ago? And don’t those actions have a precise cause-effect relationship to the boom-and-bust cycles we’ve witnessed over three decades and, especially, to the the insane financial practices that gave rise to the current crisis?
But on the flip side, the vocabularies of socialism or New-Deal-style liberal democracy are just as inadequate to helping us comprehend and see our way out of the current predicament. If centralized planning proved ineffective in the 20th-century Soviet Union, just think how much more inadequate it is to the complex, fast-paced, technology-driven world we have today. Centralized planning isn’t what will get us out of this hole. What will get us out are the grass-roots efforts that individuals and organizations, out of sheer self-preservation. are already making to deal with the current situation, responding to such practical, everyday challenges as: How can I make sure that my family continues to have food on the table? How can I make sure my small business will have adequate cashflow to continue to operate? What innovative venture of my own could I launch to replace the income from the job I just lost?
Yet the chatter of the popular media seems to be locked into the framework of old ideas. That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t new ideas out there or that there aren’t contemporary thought leaders who, behind the scenes, are quietly influencing those currently vested with decision-making authority. So, the question is: who are the current thought leaders in economics, and what do they have to say? And will the ideas shaping the decisions of those we have placed at the helm help put our society, 30 years from now, in a better place than where we are now, a more stable place where we will be safer from the vagaries of the bubble-and-bust roller coasters of the past three decades?
This blog was conceived as a forum for exploring those very questions. Our current predicament shows that we need a better understanding of what we are assenting to through the authority we vest in our representatives. When our country bought into Ronald Reagan’s evangelism for low taxes, “free” markets, and deregulation, did we understand that the result would be allowing mega-banks to gamble all of our financial futures by placing risky bets on assets leveraged 30 to 1, or that we were creating an illusion of prosperity by building a debt-driven economy? Of course not. We cast our votes and acquiesced to the policies without understanding what we were getting ourselves into.
Let’s avoid making the same mistakes again. Let’s make sure we understand why we believe what we believe. Let’s make sure we truly know our leaders on both the dominant and opposition sides. And, perhaps more importantly, let’s make sure we know the thought leaders who are shaping their opinions, so that, when we exercise our democratic rights through our votes and through the ongoing feedback we provide to our chosen representatives, we are advocating for our own self-interest, from a fully informed context.
I’m not a credentialed expert on economics -- I’m just a reasonably well educated dude with some halfway-decent research skills and, I like to think, a knack for putting together a fairly readable English sentence. So it’s an exploratory undertaking for me, and I invite all interested to join me and, especially, to contribute to the discussion. Sphere: Related Content
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