Economy Archives - Page 13 of 18

Economy

Why We Need to Forgive Pandemic Debt

In a “Force Majeure Global Catastrophe,” we need to take extraordinary steps

October 22, 2020 • by David McClean

The way economies have weathered the pandemic, so far, has been through very muscular interventions by the world’s central banks. To address the economic damage done by COVID-19, governments have borrowed, in the aggregate, trillions of dollars from central banks, using the money to do everything from prop up falling asset ...

Capitalism

Why Business Depends on Big Government

The economy was meant to be underwritten by tax dollars—but Americans don’t want to know that

October 20, 2020 • by Lawrence Glickman

————— One of the most telling statements of our political era was made by Republican Dick Cheney in a Vice Presidential debate with Democrat Joe Lieberman on October 5, 2000, 20 years ago this month. Lieberman jibed that Cheney, the Republican nominee, had profited handsomely from the job he had recently ...

Capitalism

Can We Trust Monopolies to Play Fair?

Current debates on Big Tech and antitrust law lack a clear definition of “competition”

October 19, 2020 • by Sandeep Vaheesan

----- For the anti-monopoly movement, the past three months have been exciting but sobering. In late July, the House Antitrust Subcommittee held a landmark hearing at which members of Congress forced the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to admit to business practices they would rather have stayed private. Amazon ...

Capitalism

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Higher taxes are necessary, but who will have the political courage to make it happen?

October 1, 2020 • by Kim Phillips-Fein

Early in September, more than 160 executives from companies like Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, the white-shoe corporate law firm Skadden Arps, and a host of real estate developers and financial firms sent a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio. They expressed their fear that “deteriorating conditions” in the city might slow ...

As New York City Rebuilds, Business Can Be Part of the Solution

Capitalism

Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know

How digital behemoths create economically vulnerable communities — and then prey on them

October 1, 2020 • by Pat Garofalo

----- In May, 2020, the city of Gallatin, Tennessee, voted to provide nearly $20 million in tax breaks to an entity called “Project Woolhawk” that proposed building a data center in the area. Local economic development officials refused to confirm who or what was behind that name, only that it was ...

Big Tech May Be Closer to Home Than You Know

Capitalism

QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America

Alienation, anxiety, and religion

September 28, 2020 • by Martin Shuster

QAnon is a conspiracy theory alleging that the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, is battling an organized and criminal deep state—which also happens to be a Satan-worshipping cabal of pedophiles engaged in sex-trafficking—and that this battle is moving towards an apocalyptic showdown in which our president will ...

QAnon as a Byproduct of a Broken America

Capitalism

Charlie Chaplin and Karl Marx in Conversation

On Working and Being in Modern Times

September 21, 2020 • by Steven Stoll

Modern Times, directed by Charlie Chaplin, was released in 1936, in the depths of the Great Depression. It opens with a clock marking the beginning of the working day and a sentence: “A story of industry, of individual enterprise—humanity crusading in the pursuit of happiness.” Stampeding sheep dissolve into men ...

Charlie Chaplin and Karl Marx in Conversation

Capitalism

What the “Gender Reveal” Reveals

And what the party that caused California’s El Dorado fire was really all about

September 10, 2020 • by Benjamin Bernard

The El Dorado fire, one of the many currently burning on the west coast, is getting attention for its somewhat unusual cause: an explosive pyrotechnic device set off at a gender reveal party, something that might more accurately be termed a “genital and chromosome disclosure ritual.” The news reports in ...

Labor

In Honor of Essential Workers

Take a minute on this Labor Day to think about a future for labor beyond Trump

September 3, 2020 • by Helaine Olen

----------- This is our fourth Labor Day weekend in Trump’s America. In no way, can we say it is a good year for American workers. We plunged from record employment to near Great Depression levels of unemployment within a matter of weeks, as the nation all but shut down in response ...

Corporations

Enjoy Your Pandemic Waterpark

A corporation deigns to let taxpayers into a previously private park they paid for

September 2, 2020 • by Pat Garofalo

Back in 2017, Nashville, Tennessee, provided real estate investment trust Ryman Hospitality with about $13.8 million in tax breaks to build a waterpark at its Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center. However, taxpayers weren’t able to access the park unless they stayed overnight at the four-star facility. The hotel limited waterpark access ...

Capitalism

Is Capitalism in Crisis, Dying, Dead — or Very Much Alive, for Better or Worse?

In search of an elusive concept

August 27, 2020 • by Ben Kodres-O'Brien

In 2014, a Museum of Capitalism opened for the first time, as if to commemorate a dying form of life. “The museum began just as capitalism ended,” declared the wall text for the most recent iteration of the travelling museum, at The New School in New York in fall 2019: ...

Is Capitalism in Crisis, Dying, Dead — or Very Much Alive, for Better or Worse?

Economy

How to Reopen the American Economy Now

We don’t have to choose between a depression and tens of thousands of avoidable deaths

August 24, 2020 • by Teresa Ghilarducci

And, of course, economists are on the case. In my favorite economic paper on the COVID-19 economy, Harvard University economist James Stock describes a new family of epidemiological-economic models that provide guidance about how best to reopen the economy. Here are his smart reopening requirements: promote collective behaviors to stop the spread of the ...