Abosch, Kevin, et al. "A Very Crypto Future." On the Media (October 12, 2018) ["The economy is the ultimate exercise in collaboration — with collaborators you don’t necessarily choose, such as governments, which can impoverish you with the stroke of a pen. In response to this vulnerability, a person (or persons) working under the name Satoshi Nakamoto launched Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer currency with a fixed number of tokens, built on a distributed, indelible ledger. Ten years into the life of the cryptocurrency, it has a market cap in the billions of dollars, and has given rise to thousands of copycat and competitor currencies, all built on their own communities and visions of the future. But in many ways, the underlying principle — faith — is as central to the value of money as ever. Bob speaks with Vinay Gupta, Nathaniel Popper, Neha Narula, Mark Blyth and Kevin Abosch about how cryptocurrency fits into the evolution of money."]
Ahmari, Sohrab. Tyranny Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty--and What to Do About It. Crown Publishing Group, 2023. ["The inside story of how our political class enabled an era of unaccountable corporate might that left ordinary Americans isolated and powerless—and how we can fight back—from the acclaimed author of The Unbroken Thread Over the past two generations, U.S. leaders deregulated big business on the faith that it would yield a better economy and a freer society. But the opposite happened. Americans lost stable, well-paying jobs, Wall Street dominated industry to the detriment of the middle class and local communities, and corporations began to subject us to total surveillance, even dictating what we are, and aren’t, allowed to think. The corporate titans and mega-donors who aligned themselves with this vision knew exactly what they were getting: perfect conditions for what Sohrab Ahmari calls “private tyranny”. Drawing on original reporting and a growing chorus of experts who are sounding the alarm, Ahmari chronicles how private tyranny has eroded America’s productive economy and the liberties we take for granted—from employment agreements that gag whistleblowers, to Big Finance’s takeover of local fire departments, to the rigging of corporate bankruptcy to deny justice to workers and consumers—illuminating how these and other developments have left millions feeling that our livelihoods are insecure. And he shows how ordinary Americans can fight back, by restoring the economic democracy that empowered and uplifted millions of working-class people in the twentieth century. Provocative, original, and cutting across partisan lines, Tyranny, Inc. is a revelatory read on the most important political story of our time."]
Akuno, Kali. "Worker Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, and Black Self-Determination." Left Out (January 18, 2018) ["In this episode, we sat down with Kali Akuno — the co-founder and co-directer of Cooperation Jackson. We discuss the emerging network of worker-owned cooperatives and the people behind it building an alternative, solidarity-based economy inside the majority-black and impoverished city of Jackson, Mississippi. ... In Jackson Rising, Akuno helps chronicle the history, present and future of one of the most dynamic yet under-documented experiments in radical social transformation taking place in the United States. The book follows the surprising story of the city’s newly elected Mayor, Choke Antara Lumumba, whose vision is to “encourage the development of cooperative businesses” and make Jackson the “most radical city on the planet.” In the first part of the interview, we ask Akuno about the ongoing organizing and institution building of the black, working-class political forces concentrated in Jackson dedicated to advancing the “Jackson-Kush Plan.” We then dive deeper into the different types of worker-owned cooperatives that makeup Cooperation Jackson; the importance of developing cooperatives with clear political aims; and the need for a nationwide network of cooperatives and solidarity economic institutions as a viable alternative to the exploitative nature of our current economic, social, and environmental relations. Cooperation Jackson is one of the most important stories for those of us struggling for social justice, for human emancipation and self-determination, and for a solidarity economics as a base for working class political struggle and the fight against the systematic economic strangulation."]
Allegretto, Sylvia. "Teachers across the country have finally had enough of the teacher pay penalty." Economic Policy Institute (April 4, 2018) ["Following West Virginia’s lead, teachers in Kentucky and Oklahoma are walking out and demanding change, while teachers in Arizona are considering doing the same. Some teachers say students who participated in the March for Our Lives actions across the country inspired them to speak up. But the tipping point goes deeper than that. Teachers have finally had enough. Why? Because teachers across the country have watched their states make dramatic cuts to investments in schools, students, and teachers—often while those same states implement tax breaks for individuals and corporations."]
Allen, Danielle, et al. "What is Education For?" Boston Review (May 9, 2016)
Almaaita, Zaynah. "Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018 - #22 Big Pharma’s Biostitutes: Corporate Media Ignore Root Cause of Opioid Crisis." Project Censored (October 2, 2018) ["The beginning of the opioid crisis, Martin reported, goes back to drug manufacturing companies hiring “biostitutes,” a derogatory term for biological scientists hired to misrepresent research or commit fraud in order to protect their employers’ corporate interests. As Martin reported, research by biostitutes was used to make the (misleading) case that opioids could treat pain without the risk of addiction. Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, and McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, which distribute that drug and other opioids, suppressed research that showed how addictive opioids are, and they began to push doctors to write more prescriptions on behalf of the “needs” of consumers. In particular, Papantonio said, distributors targeted the nation’s poorer communities, including industrial cities with high unemployment rates, such as Detroit, and economically-stressed mining communities, as in West Virginia. Such mercenary practices not only impacted the individuals who became addicted, they also ravaged the finances of the targeted cities and counties. As Papantonio told The Empire Files, the opioid crisis has required local government expenditures for everything from new training for emergency medical responders, to the purchase of Naloxone (sold under the brand name Narcan) for treating opioid overdoses, to the expansion of dependency courts to handle the cases of neglected or abused children, and the retooling of jails as de facto rehabilitation centers—all of which have come out of city and county budgets. In his Empire Files interview, Papantonio estimated that the cost for a “typical community” fell between “ninety and two hundred million dollars—that’s just the beginning number.”]
Alperovitz, Gar. ""Worker-Owners of America, Unite": Will Cooperative Workplaces Democratize U.S. Economy?" Democracy Now (December 15, 2011)
Alston, Philp. "Extreme Poverty in America: Read the U.N. Special Monitor Report. The Guardian (December 15, 2017) ["Philp Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has spent 10 days touring America. This is the introduction to his report."]
Alt, J.D. "The New Poverty." New Economic Perspectives (December 28, 2017)
Antončič, Emica, Metka Mencin Čeplak and Mirjana Ule. "Struggles for Equality: Feminism in Slovenia." Eurozine (October 9, 2018) ["Liberal feminism has completely overlooked class and other axes of inequality and subjugation, says Metka Mencin Čeplak, as the economically and politically imposed commodification of women comes to the fore, warns Mirjana Ule. What is to be done? In interview, two leading Slovenian feminists consider the options in light of a century of feminist thought."]
Appel, Hannah. "Debtors of the World Unite!" Boston Review (February 27, 2020) ["Debt’s ubiquity is a burden, but also an opportunity."]
Armstrong, Sally, Paul Heinbecker and James Orbinski. "Five Freedoms: Freedom from Want." Ideas (April 11, 2019) ["Poverty has always been a defining issue in the quest to build a better world. Most political systems lay claim to the idea that they alone can create a better world. It's a kind of litmus test: if our political systems can't raise almost everyone out of relative poverty, then what exactly have we achieved? Why poverty exists at all in otherwise wealthy, prosperous democratic countries is a very incisive question, and it's not enough to just shrug and say our system is still better than any other alternative. And those alternatives? Dictatorships take us into the abyss. Right-wing libertarianism has little to offer as solutions to poverty. Soviet-style Communism didn't exactly work either, which leaves some version of western liberal democracy, either what we have now, or some variation that is still to emerge. So once we've got past that, and accepted that we've failed on the poverty file, how do we go about making things more equitable right now, making sure that wealth is distributed to those in need, and creating opportunity for the weak to become stronger?"]
Aronowitz, Stanley, Steve Williams, and Rick Wolff. "A Chronology of Capitalism." Making Contact (May 20, 2009)
Asher-Shapiro, Avi. "Trump Administration Fights Effort to Unionize Uber Drivers." The Intercept (March 26, 2018)
Atkin, Emily and Sarah Jones. "Rural America's Drinking-Water Crisis." The New Republic (February 12, 2018)
Auerbeck, Michael. "White-Collar Criminals Got Off Scot-Free After the 2008 Financial Crisis — and That Helped Fuel President Trump’s Rise." Naked Capitalism (August 28, 2018)
Baker, Dean. "The Hedge Fund Managers Tax Break: Because Wall Streeters Want Your Money." Truthout (April 14, 2014)
Baker, Dean, et al. "The Joy of Tax (Comparing the U.S. and Scandinavian Tax Systems)." The Best of the Left #1253 (March 1, 2019) ["... a look at the social benefits of high taxation as the US gears up for our first genuine debate on raising taxes in a long time with an eye toward the life-improving programs that money could fund."]
Balzarini, John and Les Bernal. "Gambling and Neoliberal Rot - How Our Most Regressive Tax Flies Under the Radar." Citations Needed #63 (January 23, 2019) ["As more and more states turn to casinos and lotteries to ‘fill the gap” in 'falling' state budgets, the predatory and regressive nature of gambling as an alternative to increasing taxes on the rich avoids nearly any media scrutiny among centrists and liberals. Even the Left has mostly ignored the issue––ceding criticism of our most regressive tax to the Christian Right, who largely oppose gambling for all the wrong reasons. In this episode, we explore how lotteries and casinos have come to represent the last throes of the false neoliberal promise of "jobs” and “growth.” Throughout much of the United States, specifically the Rust Belt and Midwest, casinos and prisons are increasingly the only growth industries, entrenching the shift from an industrial economy to one that exclusively preys on the poor and desperate in a never-ending race to the bottom. Beyond the glitz and easy “tax revenue” lies a massive transfer of wealth from the poor, black and elderly to the super wealthy - achieved, slowly over decades, with zero sustained criticism from the media."]
Barlett, Donald and James Steele. "On Media, Govt. Failure to Hold Wall St. Accountable for Financial Crimes." Democracy Now (August 1, 2012)
Barstow, David. "NYT Exposé: “Self-Made Billionaire” Donald Trump Built Empire on Father’s Money, Tax Dodging & Fraud." Democracy Now (October 4, 2018) ["President Donald Trump built his personal brand and presidential candidacy on the claim that he was a self-made billionaire whose only head start was a “small loan of a million dollars” from his father. But a New York Times exposé has revealed that Trump inherited much of his family’s wealth through tax dodging and outright fraud, receiving at least $413 million in inflation-adjusted dollars from his father’s real estate empire. We speak with David Barstow, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times and the lead author on the new investigation, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches from His Father.” Barstow shares a byline with Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner."]
---. "Trump Faces Probe into Tax Fraud After NYT Exposes How He Helped Parents Scam Millions from Gov’t." Democracy Now (October 4, 2018) ["The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has opened an investigation into President Trump for fraud and tax evasion following a major exposé by The New York Times revealing that Trump inherited nearly half a billion dollars of his family’s wealth through tax dodges and outright fraud. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has also called for a city probe, and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has urged the IRSto investigate the president. The Times’ 13,000-word investigative report found the late Fred and Mary Trump transferred more than $1 billion in wealth to their children, paying less than 5 percent of the $550 million in taxes they should have paid under inheritance tax rates. Donald Trump also helped his parents undervalue real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on IRS tax returns in order to reduce taxes."]
Baxter, Joan. "How corporate tax breaks hurt humanity. Truth be told: taxation is only certain for the ordinary law-abiding citizen, the non-rich." Rabble (March 18, 2011)
Baxter, Joan, et al " The Financialization of Nature (And the Nature of Financialization)" Unwelcome Guests #619 (September 1, 2012)
Beardsmore, Jo, Kelly Coogan-Gehr and Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini. "Medicare for All: As Healthcare Costs Soar, Momentum Grows to Guarantee Healthcare for All Americans." Democracy Now (November 30, 2018) ["As Democrats prepare to take control of the House, pressure is growing on the Democratic leadership to embrace Medicare for All. Nearly 50 newly Democratic members of Congress campaigned for Medicare for All. In the last year, 123 incumbent House Democrats also co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation, double the number who supported a Medicare for All bill in the previous legislative session. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital companies are paying close attention. As the Intercept’s Lee Fang reports, over the summer the groups formed a partnership to fight the growing support for expanding Medicare. We speak to three proponents of Medicare for All who have assembled in Burlington, Vermont, for a gathering of the Sanders Institute: Kelly Coogan-Gehr of National Nurses United, British anesthesiologist Dr. Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini and organizer Jo Beardsmore."]
Becker, Richard. "How Four Roses Bourbon Strikers Fought Off Two-Tier." Labor Notes (January 3, 2019)
Beckert, Sven and Seth Rockman. "How Slavery Led to Modern Capitalism." Huffpost (February 24, 2014)
Belasco, Amy. "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11." (Congressional Research Service: September 2, 2010)
Bello, Walden, Kevin Danaher and Njoki Njehu. "Report Back from A16 (The A16 IMF/World Bank Demonstrations in Washington, D.C.)." Unwelcome Guests (April 22, 2000)
Benton, Michael. "Marx's Theory of Exploitation." Dialogic Cinephilia (February 4, 2020)
Berkshire, Jennifer, et al. "Rethinking Schools in the DeVos Era." Open Source (September21, 2017) ["Betsy Devos’s “Rethinking School” tour can feel like a mission to dismantle the whole system, public schools first. Choice, charters and change are DeVos’s keynotes, along with a call for more and more crushing competition. We wondered if this this just another race to the top that will ultimately leave most children behind, or if something new is happening.
According to DeVos, her plan might be the only thing new thing in the last century of education history. On her school tour she likes to say schools haven’t changed in the last 100 years: "For far too many kids, this year’s first day back to school looks and feels a lot like last year’s first day back to school. And the year before that. And the generation before that. And the generation before that. That means your parents’ parents’ parents .. It’s a mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons, and denies futures." We’re trying to offer a counter to DeVos’s vision of public education and it’s discontents. We got schooled on an alternative set of solutions by some educators we like a lot. Jack Schneider gets us started. He’s a school parent in Somerville, and professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He’s on his own mission to “rethink schools,” particularly the metrics we use to measure their worth. He highlights Somerville High School as a case study: a diverse, working-class school thriving despite the odds, but still coming up short in the tests. Jennifer Berkshire—who, along with Jack, co-hosts the education podcast Have You Heard?—gives us the close-up on DeVos. In her reporting, she’s profiled DeVos as one of the leading crusaders in the “holy war against the welfare state” . But she still sees hope in the rising, grassroots resistance to DeVos’s program, which is now one of the most unpopular parts of the Trump platform, even in the red states. Malcolm Harris, the 29-year-old author of Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, accounts for the new pressures placed on the millennial generation of students. “We are poorer, more medicated, and more precariously employed than our parents, grandparents, even our great grandparents,” he writes. The disease, he says, is neoliberalism and unfettered capitalism. It’s a deeper rot that cannot be solved simply through social democratic reform or technocratic tweaks, and it still needs something more than a political revolution to create real change. Finally, Charles Petersen, an editor for N+1 and PhD candidate in the American Studies program at Harvard University, outlines a deeper history of competition in American education. His ideological frame is not neoliberalism, per se, but the myth of meritocracy itself."]
Bernstein, Jake. "Inside the New York Fed: Secret Recordings and a Culture Clash." Pro Publica (September 26, 2014) ["A confidential report and a fired examiner’s hidden recorder penetrate the cloistered world of Wall Street’s top regulator — and its history of deference to banks."]
Berry, Wendell. "The Idea of a Local Economy." Orion (Winter 2001)
Bessner, Daniel. "Making Sense of Soros." The Dig (August 11, 2018) ["That right-wing people in the US and Europe have made George Soros the answer to so many troubling questions is not very surprising: he's a billionaire, he's Jewish and, unlike most of his cohort, he is an actual intellectual who spends much of his money on substantively progressive causes. Daniel Bessner's essay on him in n+1, however, not only sketches out the right's obsessions but also offers a detailed analysis of Soros as a thinker and philanthropist—coming to the conclusion that Soros' hope for an open and pluralistic society will be forever doomed if we continue to live under the very capitalist system that made him so spectacularly rich. Here's Soros's response in The Guardian. "]
Akuno, Kali. "Worker Cooperatives, Economic Democracy, and Black Self-Determination." Left Out (January 18, 2018) ["In this episode, we sat down with Kali Akuno — the co-founder and co-directer of Cooperation Jackson. We discuss the emerging network of worker-owned cooperatives and the people behind it building an alternative, solidarity-based economy inside the majority-black and impoverished city of Jackson, Mississippi. ... In Jackson Rising, Akuno helps chronicle the history, present and future of one of the most dynamic yet under-documented experiments in radical social transformation taking place in the United States. The book follows the surprising story of the city’s newly elected Mayor, Choke Antara Lumumba, whose vision is to “encourage the development of cooperative businesses” and make Jackson the “most radical city on the planet.” In the first part of the interview, we ask Akuno about the ongoing organizing and institution building of the black, working-class political forces concentrated in Jackson dedicated to advancing the “Jackson-Kush Plan.” We then dive deeper into the different types of worker-owned cooperatives that makeup Cooperation Jackson; the importance of developing cooperatives with clear political aims; and the need for a nationwide network of cooperatives and solidarity economic institutions as a viable alternative to the exploitative nature of our current economic, social, and environmental relations. Cooperation Jackson is one of the most important stories for those of us struggling for social justice, for human emancipation and self-determination, and for a solidarity economics as a base for working class political struggle and the fight against the systematic economic strangulation."]
Allegretto, Sylvia. "Teachers across the country have finally had enough of the teacher pay penalty." Economic Policy Institute (April 4, 2018) ["Following West Virginia’s lead, teachers in Kentucky and Oklahoma are walking out and demanding change, while teachers in Arizona are considering doing the same. Some teachers say students who participated in the March for Our Lives actions across the country inspired them to speak up. But the tipping point goes deeper than that. Teachers have finally had enough. Why? Because teachers across the country have watched their states make dramatic cuts to investments in schools, students, and teachers—often while those same states implement tax breaks for individuals and corporations."]
Allen, Danielle, et al. "What is Education For?" Boston Review (May 9, 2016)
Almaaita, Zaynah. "Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018 - #22 Big Pharma’s Biostitutes: Corporate Media Ignore Root Cause of Opioid Crisis." Project Censored (October 2, 2018) ["The beginning of the opioid crisis, Martin reported, goes back to drug manufacturing companies hiring “biostitutes,” a derogatory term for biological scientists hired to misrepresent research or commit fraud in order to protect their employers’ corporate interests. As Martin reported, research by biostitutes was used to make the (misleading) case that opioids could treat pain without the risk of addiction. Purdue Pharma, which manufactures OxyContin, and McKesson, Cardinal Health, and AmerisourceBergen, which distribute that drug and other opioids, suppressed research that showed how addictive opioids are, and they began to push doctors to write more prescriptions on behalf of the “needs” of consumers. In particular, Papantonio said, distributors targeted the nation’s poorer communities, including industrial cities with high unemployment rates, such as Detroit, and economically-stressed mining communities, as in West Virginia. Such mercenary practices not only impacted the individuals who became addicted, they also ravaged the finances of the targeted cities and counties. As Papantonio told The Empire Files, the opioid crisis has required local government expenditures for everything from new training for emergency medical responders, to the purchase of Naloxone (sold under the brand name Narcan) for treating opioid overdoses, to the expansion of dependency courts to handle the cases of neglected or abused children, and the retooling of jails as de facto rehabilitation centers—all of which have come out of city and county budgets. In his Empire Files interview, Papantonio estimated that the cost for a “typical community” fell between “ninety and two hundred million dollars—that’s just the beginning number.”]
Alston, Philp. "Extreme Poverty in America: Read the U.N. Special Monitor Report. The Guardian (December 15, 2017) ["Philp Alston, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has spent 10 days touring America. This is the introduction to his report."]
Antončič, Emica, Metka Mencin Čeplak and Mirjana Ule. "Struggles for Equality: Feminism in Slovenia." Eurozine (October 9, 2018) ["Liberal feminism has completely overlooked class and other axes of inequality and subjugation, says Metka Mencin Čeplak, as the economically and politically imposed commodification of women comes to the fore, warns Mirjana Ule. What is to be done? In interview, two leading Slovenian feminists consider the options in light of a century of feminist thought."]
Appel, Hannah. "Debtors of the World Unite!" Boston Review (February 27, 2020) ["Debt’s ubiquity is a burden, but also an opportunity."]
Arablouei, Ramtin, et al. "The Labor of Love." Throughline (May 9, 2024) ["There's a powerful fantasy in American society: the fantasy of the ideal mother. This mother is devoted to her family above all else. She raises the kids, volunteers at the school, cleans the house, plans the birthday parties, cares for her own parents. She's a natural nurturer. And she's happy to do it all for free. Problem is? She's imaginary. And yet the idea of her permeates our culture, our economy, and our social policy – and it distorts them. The U.S. doesn't have universal health insurance or universal childcare. We don't have federally mandated paid family leave or a meaningful social safety net for when times get rough. Instead, we have this imaginary mother. We've structured our society as though she exists — but she doesn't. And we all pay the real-life price. Today on the show, we look at three myths that sustain the fantasy: the maternal instinct, the doting housewife, and the welfare queen. And we tell the stories of real-life people – some mothers, some not – who have fought for a much more generous vision of family, labor, and care."]
Archer, Diane. "Here's What 22 Separate Studies Found: Medicare for All Would Cost Less Than the For-Profit Status Quo." Common Dreams (February 24, 2020) ["No matter how you design a single-payer public health insurance system, it would have lower overall health care costs, so long as for-profit private health insurers no longer exist to drive up health care costs."]
Archer, Diane. "Here's What 22 Separate Studies Found: Medicare for All Would Cost Less Than the For-Profit Status Quo." Common Dreams (February 24, 2020) ["No matter how you design a single-payer public health insurance system, it would have lower overall health care costs, so long as for-profit private health insurers no longer exist to drive up health care costs."]
Armstrong, Sally, Paul Heinbecker and James Orbinski. "Five Freedoms: Freedom from Want." Ideas (April 11, 2019) ["Poverty has always been a defining issue in the quest to build a better world. Most political systems lay claim to the idea that they alone can create a better world. It's a kind of litmus test: if our political systems can't raise almost everyone out of relative poverty, then what exactly have we achieved? Why poverty exists at all in otherwise wealthy, prosperous democratic countries is a very incisive question, and it's not enough to just shrug and say our system is still better than any other alternative. And those alternatives? Dictatorships take us into the abyss. Right-wing libertarianism has little to offer as solutions to poverty. Soviet-style Communism didn't exactly work either, which leaves some version of western liberal democracy, either what we have now, or some variation that is still to emerge. So once we've got past that, and accepted that we've failed on the poverty file, how do we go about making things more equitable right now, making sure that wealth is distributed to those in need, and creating opportunity for the weak to become stronger?"]
Asher-Shapiro, Avi. "Trump Administration Fights Effort to Unionize Uber Drivers." The Intercept (March 26, 2018)
Auerbeck, Michael. "White-Collar Criminals Got Off Scot-Free After the 2008 Financial Crisis — and That Helped Fuel President Trump’s Rise." Naked Capitalism (August 28, 2018)
Baker, Dean, et al. "The Joy of Tax (Comparing the U.S. and Scandinavian Tax Systems)." The Best of the Left #1253 (March 1, 2019) ["... a look at the social benefits of high taxation as the US gears up for our first genuine debate on raising taxes in a long time with an eye toward the life-improving programs that money could fund."]
Balzarini, John and Les Bernal. "Gambling and Neoliberal Rot - How Our Most Regressive Tax Flies Under the Radar." Citations Needed #63 (January 23, 2019) ["As more and more states turn to casinos and lotteries to ‘fill the gap” in 'falling' state budgets, the predatory and regressive nature of gambling as an alternative to increasing taxes on the rich avoids nearly any media scrutiny among centrists and liberals. Even the Left has mostly ignored the issue––ceding criticism of our most regressive tax to the Christian Right, who largely oppose gambling for all the wrong reasons. In this episode, we explore how lotteries and casinos have come to represent the last throes of the false neoliberal promise of "jobs” and “growth.” Throughout much of the United States, specifically the Rust Belt and Midwest, casinos and prisons are increasingly the only growth industries, entrenching the shift from an industrial economy to one that exclusively preys on the poor and desperate in a never-ending race to the bottom. Beyond the glitz and easy “tax revenue” lies a massive transfer of wealth from the poor, black and elderly to the super wealthy - achieved, slowly over decades, with zero sustained criticism from the media."]
Barber, William. "Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith Jokes About Hangings, But Her Policies Will Strangle the Poor." Democracy Now (November 26, 2018) ["Mississippi voters will head to the polls Tuesday in the state’s hotly contested runoff senate election, as incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith faces off against Democrat Mike Espy. In a state that Donald Trump won by 20 percentage points two years ago, Espy is attempting to become Mississippi’s first African-American senator since Reconstruction. His opponent, incumbent Sen. Hyde-Smith, attended and graduated from an all-white segregationist high school and recently posed for photos with a Confederate Army cap and other Confederate artifacts. Earlier this month, a viral video showed Hyde-Smith praising a campaign supporter, saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Mississippi was once considered the lynching capital of the United States. We speak with Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach. He recently traveled to Mississippi to get out the vote."]
---. "Trump Faces Probe into Tax Fraud After NYT Exposes How He Helped Parents Scam Millions from Gov’t." Democracy Now (October 4, 2018) ["The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has opened an investigation into President Trump for fraud and tax evasion following a major exposé by The New York Times revealing that Trump inherited nearly half a billion dollars of his family’s wealth through tax dodges and outright fraud. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has also called for a city probe, and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden has urged the IRSto investigate the president. The Times’ 13,000-word investigative report found the late Fred and Mary Trump transferred more than $1 billion in wealth to their children, paying less than 5 percent of the $550 million in taxes they should have paid under inheritance tax rates. Donald Trump also helped his parents undervalue real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on IRS tax returns in order to reduce taxes."]
Batista, Ysanet, Susan Chin and Karen Washington. "From Farm To Coop To Table: Food Justice in Urban Agriculture." The Laura Flanders Show (December 26, 2019) ["Food — from where it grows, to where it goes, all of it matters to our bodies and our communities. A conversation about how farmers are creating equitable food systems inside cities, from urban agriculture to worker-owned cooperatives."]
Baumann, Anna. "New Analysis Shows Kentucky’s New Tax Plan Is a Millionaire Tax Cut." Kentucky Center for Economic Policy (April 4, 2018)
Baxter, Joan, et al " The Financialization of Nature (And the Nature of Financialization)" Unwelcome Guests #619 (September 1, 2012)
Beardsmore, Jo, Kelly Coogan-Gehr and Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini. "Medicare for All: As Healthcare Costs Soar, Momentum Grows to Guarantee Healthcare for All Americans." Democracy Now (November 30, 2018) ["As Democrats prepare to take control of the House, pressure is growing on the Democratic leadership to embrace Medicare for All. Nearly 50 newly Democratic members of Congress campaigned for Medicare for All. In the last year, 123 incumbent House Democrats also co-sponsored Medicare for All legislation, double the number who supported a Medicare for All bill in the previous legislative session. Meanwhile, pharmaceutical, insurance and hospital companies are paying close attention. As the Intercept’s Lee Fang reports, over the summer the groups formed a partnership to fight the growing support for expanding Medicare. We speak to three proponents of Medicare for All who have assembled in Burlington, Vermont, for a gathering of the Sanders Institute: Kelly Coogan-Gehr of National Nurses United, British anesthesiologist Dr. Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini and organizer Jo Beardsmore."]
Becker, Richard. "How Four Roses Bourbon Strikers Fought Off Two-Tier." Labor Notes (January 3, 2019)
Belasco, Amy. "The Cost of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Other Global War on Terror Operations Since 9/11." (Congressional Research Service: September 2, 2010)
Bello, Walden, Kevin Danaher and Njoki Njehu. "Report Back from A16 (The A16 IMF/World Bank Demonstrations in Washington, D.C.)." Unwelcome Guests (April 22, 2000)
Benton, Michael. "Marx's Theory of Exploitation." Dialogic Cinephilia (February 4, 2020)
Berkshire, Jennifer, et al. "Rethinking Schools in the DeVos Era." Open Source (September21, 2017) ["Betsy Devos’s “Rethinking School” tour can feel like a mission to dismantle the whole system, public schools first. Choice, charters and change are DeVos’s keynotes, along with a call for more and more crushing competition. We wondered if this this just another race to the top that will ultimately leave most children behind, or if something new is happening.
According to DeVos, her plan might be the only thing new thing in the last century of education history. On her school tour she likes to say schools haven’t changed in the last 100 years: "For far too many kids, this year’s first day back to school looks and feels a lot like last year’s first day back to school. And the year before that. And the generation before that. And the generation before that. That means your parents’ parents’ parents .. It’s a mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons, and denies futures." We’re trying to offer a counter to DeVos’s vision of public education and it’s discontents. We got schooled on an alternative set of solutions by some educators we like a lot. Jack Schneider gets us started. He’s a school parent in Somerville, and professor of education at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He’s on his own mission to “rethink schools,” particularly the metrics we use to measure their worth. He highlights Somerville High School as a case study: a diverse, working-class school thriving despite the odds, but still coming up short in the tests. Jennifer Berkshire—who, along with Jack, co-hosts the education podcast Have You Heard?—gives us the close-up on DeVos. In her reporting, she’s profiled DeVos as one of the leading crusaders in the “holy war against the welfare state” . But she still sees hope in the rising, grassroots resistance to DeVos’s program, which is now one of the most unpopular parts of the Trump platform, even in the red states. Malcolm Harris, the 29-year-old author of Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials, accounts for the new pressures placed on the millennial generation of students. “We are poorer, more medicated, and more precariously employed than our parents, grandparents, even our great grandparents,” he writes. The disease, he says, is neoliberalism and unfettered capitalism. It’s a deeper rot that cannot be solved simply through social democratic reform or technocratic tweaks, and it still needs something more than a political revolution to create real change. Finally, Charles Petersen, an editor for N+1 and PhD candidate in the American Studies program at Harvard University, outlines a deeper history of competition in American education. His ideological frame is not neoliberalism, per se, but the myth of meritocracy itself."]
Berry, Wendell. "The Idea of a Local Economy." Orion (Winter 2001)
Bessner, Daniel. "Making Sense of Soros." The Dig (August 11, 2018) ["That right-wing people in the US and Europe have made George Soros the answer to so many troubling questions is not very surprising: he's a billionaire, he's Jewish and, unlike most of his cohort, he is an actual intellectual who spends much of his money on substantively progressive causes. Daniel Bessner's essay on him in n+1, however, not only sketches out the right's obsessions but also offers a detailed analysis of Soros as a thinker and philanthropist—coming to the conclusion that Soros' hope for an open and pluralistic society will be forever doomed if we continue to live under the very capitalist system that made him so spectacularly rich. Here's Soros's response in The Guardian. "]
Black, Julia. "The “Dark Elf” Leading Tech’s Extreme Right." Tech Won't Save Us (October 17, 2024) ["Paris Marx is joined by Julia Black to discuss who Curtis Yarvin is and how his anti-democratic, far-right writings have influenced the politics of Silicon Valley and the wider American extreme right.
Julia Black is a features reporter on The Information’s Weekend Team."]
Blackford, Linda. "‘A constant struggle.’ Survey finds many University of Kentucky students face hunger, food insecurity." Herald-Leader (January 11, 2019)
Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black People in America from the Civil War to WWII. NY: Doubleday, 2008.
Blanc, Eric. "'This is a Struggle of Working People': An Interview with Nema Brewer." Jacobin (April 2, 2018)
Blanc, Eric, et al. "Teachers at the forefront of a resurgent progressive labor movement." Best of the Left #1250 (February 15, 2019) ["Today we take a look at recent teachers union strike in the Los Angeles school district and see it as another event in an emerging pattern of progressive uprisings that have been stirring for the last decade, fighting back against the status quo, the neoliberal instinct to privatize everything for the ultimate benefit of billionaires."]
Blyth, Mark. "Sovereigns, Citizens and Suckers." Open Source (September 6, 2011)
Blyth, Mark and Bill Maurer. "Money, Then and Now." On the Media (October 12, 2018) ["Most schoolchildren learn that money arose when barter proved insufficient for meeting everyday trade needs. People required more complex transactions, so they invented currency: a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. It's a compelling story...but a false one. Instead, most evidence suggests that money arose from recordkeeping — or, as UC Irvine professor Bill Maurer explains to Bob, "in the beginning was not the coin... in the beginning was the receipt." In this segment, Bob speaks with Maurer and Brown University's Mark Blyth about past and present myths about money, and what the history of money might suggest about its future."]
Blyth, Mark, David Kaiser and Vanessa Williamson. "The French Sensation: Income Inequality in 700 Pages and a Hundred Graphs." Radio Open Source (May 1, 2014)
Boggs, Grace Lee. "Becoming Detroit: Grace Lee Boggs on Reimagining Work, Food, and Community." On Being (July 18, 2013)
Bond-Graham, Daniel. "It's a Banker World: LIBOR Litigation to Recoup Damages After the Biggest Financial Fraud in World History has been Thrown Out." Counterpunch (April 4, 2013)
Boone, Alastair. "What Airbnb Did to New York City." City Lab (March 5, 2018)
Bosworth, David. "American Individualism and the Cultural Maintenance of Capitalism." Revolutionary Left Radio (September 11, 2017) ["Brett and David sit down to discuss American Individualism, its philosophical roots, and its cultural manifestations. Topics include: The Enlightenment, American culture, The philosophical and historical roots of Individualism, the connections between individualism and capitalism, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Paine, and how 40 years of capitalist decadence has given rise to Donald "The U.S. Id Monster" Trump."]
Boyle, Greg. "The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service, Kinship." On Being (February 26, 2013)
Bregman, Rutger. "Rutger Bregman's Utopias, and Mine." The Ezra Klein Show (July 22, 2019) ["Universal basic income. A 15-hour work week. Open borders. These ideas may strike you as crazy, fantastical, maybe even utopian... but that’s exactly the point. My guest today is Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, whose book Utopia for Realists is not only about utopian visions but about the importance of utopian thinking. Imagining utopia, he writes, “isn’t an attempt to predict the future. It’s an attempt to unlock the future. To fling open the windows of our minds.” He’s right. And so this isn’t just a conversation about his utopia, or mine. It’s a conversation about how to think like a utopian, and why doing so matter most when the days feel particularly dystopic."]
---. "Utopia for Realists." Panpsycast #56 (March 10, 2019) ["Rutger Bregman is a historian and author, best known for his bestselling book, Utopia for Realists: and how we can get there. Arguing for new utopian ideas such as a fifteen-hour work week and universal basic income, Utopia for Realists has been translated into over 30 different languages, making headlines and sparking movements across the world. ... At best, Bregman provides us with a desirable and achievable vision of human progress; a world with no borders, 15-hour work weeks and a universal basic income for everybody. At worst, Bregman wakes us up from our dogmatic slumber, encouraging us to ask important questions about 21st-century life. In his own words: “Why have we been working harder and harder since the 1980s despite being richer than ever? Why are millions of people still living in poverty when we are more than rich enough to put an end to it once and for all? And why is more than 60% of your income dependent on the country where you just so happen to have been born?”"]
Briggs, Laura. "Struggling Households." Against the Grain (October 2017) ["Reproductive politics -- that is, the politics of keeping households fed, sheltered, educated, and cared for, as well as creating the next generation -- are central to contemporary capitalism. And reproductive politics are fundamentally about class, race, and sexuality, as Laura Briggs argues. She discusses why we should recognize the household as a key site of struggle for both left and right."]
Brophy, Megan. "In Iowa, Pioneering Undergrad Workers Union Keeps Growing." Labor Notes (November 6, 2018)
Brown, Ellen. "Robbing Main Street to Prop Up Wall Street: Why Jerry Brown's Rainy Day Fund Is a Bad Idea for California." TruthOut (May 7, 2014)["There is no need to sequester funds urgently needed by Main Street to pay for Wall Street's malfeasance. Californians can have their cake and eat it too – with a state-owned bank."]
Reosti, Ron. "Making the American Socialist Revolution." Law and Disorder Radio (July 15, 2013)
Requiem for the American Dream (USA: Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared Scott, 2015: 72 mins) ["In Requiem for the American Dream, renowned intellectual figure Noam Chomsky deliberates on the defining characteristics of our time—the colossal concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few and fewer, with the rise of a rapacious individualism and complete collapse of class consciousness. Chomsky does this by discussing some of the key principles that have brought this culture to the pinnacle of historically unprecedented inequality by tracing a half century of policies designed to favour the most wealthy at the expense of the majority, while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. The film serves to provide insights into how we got here, and culminates as a reminder that these problems are not inevitable. Once we remember those who came before and those who will come after, we see that we can, and should, fight back."]
Siegel, Jacob. "Send Anarchists, Guns and Money." The Baffler #39 (May 2018)
Julia Black is a features reporter on The Information’s Weekend Team."]
Blackford, Linda. "‘A constant struggle.’ Survey finds many University of Kentucky students face hunger, food insecurity." Herald-Leader (January 11, 2019)
Blanc, Eric, et al. "Teachers at the forefront of a resurgent progressive labor movement." Best of the Left #1250 (February 15, 2019) ["Today we take a look at recent teachers union strike in the Los Angeles school district and see it as another event in an emerging pattern of progressive uprisings that have been stirring for the last decade, fighting back against the status quo, the neoliberal instinct to privatize everything for the ultimate benefit of billionaires."]
Blyth, Mark and Bill Maurer. "Money, Then and Now." On the Media (October 12, 2018) ["Most schoolchildren learn that money arose when barter proved insufficient for meeting everyday trade needs. People required more complex transactions, so they invented currency: a medium of exchange, unit of account and store of value. It's a compelling story...but a false one. Instead, most evidence suggests that money arose from recordkeeping — or, as UC Irvine professor Bill Maurer explains to Bob, "in the beginning was not the coin... in the beginning was the receipt." In this segment, Bob speaks with Maurer and Brown University's Mark Blyth about past and present myths about money, and what the history of money might suggest about its future."]
Blyth, Mark, David Kaiser and Vanessa Williamson. "The French Sensation: Income Inequality in 700 Pages and a Hundred Graphs." Radio Open Source (May 1, 2014)
Boggs, Grace Lee. "Becoming Detroit: Grace Lee Boggs on Reimagining Work, Food, and Community." On Being (July 18, 2013)
Bond-Graham, Daniel. "It's a Banker World: LIBOR Litigation to Recoup Damages After the Biggest Financial Fraud in World History has been Thrown Out." Counterpunch (April 4, 2013)
Boone, Alastair. "What Airbnb Did to New York City." City Lab (March 5, 2018)
Bosworth, David. "American Individualism and the Cultural Maintenance of Capitalism." Revolutionary Left Radio (September 11, 2017) ["Brett and David sit down to discuss American Individualism, its philosophical roots, and its cultural manifestations. Topics include: The Enlightenment, American culture, The philosophical and historical roots of Individualism, the connections between individualism and capitalism, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Paine, and how 40 years of capitalist decadence has given rise to Donald "The U.S. Id Monster" Trump."]
Bregman, Rutger. "Rutger Bregman's Utopias, and Mine." The Ezra Klein Show (July 22, 2019) ["Universal basic income. A 15-hour work week. Open borders. These ideas may strike you as crazy, fantastical, maybe even utopian... but that’s exactly the point. My guest today is Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, whose book Utopia for Realists is not only about utopian visions but about the importance of utopian thinking. Imagining utopia, he writes, “isn’t an attempt to predict the future. It’s an attempt to unlock the future. To fling open the windows of our minds.” He’s right. And so this isn’t just a conversation about his utopia, or mine. It’s a conversation about how to think like a utopian, and why doing so matter most when the days feel particularly dystopic."]
---. "Utopia for Realists." Panpsycast #56 (March 10, 2019) ["Rutger Bregman is a historian and author, best known for his bestselling book, Utopia for Realists: and how we can get there. Arguing for new utopian ideas such as a fifteen-hour work week and universal basic income, Utopia for Realists has been translated into over 30 different languages, making headlines and sparking movements across the world. ... At best, Bregman provides us with a desirable and achievable vision of human progress; a world with no borders, 15-hour work weeks and a universal basic income for everybody. At worst, Bregman wakes us up from our dogmatic slumber, encouraging us to ask important questions about 21st-century life. In his own words: “Why have we been working harder and harder since the 1980s despite being richer than ever? Why are millions of people still living in poverty when we are more than rich enough to put an end to it once and for all? And why is more than 60% of your income dependent on the country where you just so happen to have been born?”"]
Briggs, Laura. "Struggling Households." Against the Grain (October 2017) ["Reproductive politics -- that is, the politics of keeping households fed, sheltered, educated, and cared for, as well as creating the next generation -- are central to contemporary capitalism. And reproductive politics are fundamentally about class, race, and sexuality, as Laura Briggs argues. She discusses why we should recognize the household as a key site of struggle for both left and right."]
Brophy, Megan. "In Iowa, Pioneering Undergrad Workers Union Keeps Growing." Labor Notes (November 6, 2018)
Brown, Ellen, Paul Jay, and Richard Wolff. "The Public Banking Revolution." TUC Radio (February 9, 2020) ["Does Public Banking Work – Project Censored named The Public Banking Revolution one of the top 25 most censored stories of 2020. The independent media pointed out that a public banking system on a national scale could finance the Green New Deal, as Roosevelt’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation did. A state or city based Public Bank can keep money local and fund projects like affordable housing and infrastructure without concern for maximizing profits or shareholder returns. A living example for such a bank already exists for 100 years in the Bank of North Dakota. Economist Richard Wolff appreciated Gov. Gavin Newsom’s approval of a bill allowing local governments in California to establish public banks. Wolff said if people only knew how public banking works they would campaign to get them established. Professor Richard Wolff is the founder of Democracy at Work and host of their nationally syndicated show Economic Update. Longtime critic of the private for profit banking system, Ellen Brown, campaigns to return control of money and credit to states, cities, and communities."]
Brown, Pamela. "Rolling Jubilee: Buying Up Distressed Debt, Occupy Offshoot Bails Out the People, Not the Banks." Democracy Now (November 15, 2012)
Brown, Pamela and David Harvey. "1T Day: As U.S. Student Debt Hits $1 Trillion, Occupy Protests Planned for Campuses Nationwide." Democracy Now (April 25, 2012)
Brown, Wendy. "A Neoliberal Pandemic." Economics & Beyond (June 18, 2020) ["UC Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown talks to Rob Johnson about how the pandemic and protests against police brutality lay bare a crisis of neoliberalism."]
Bruenig, Matt. "Free Public Childcare and Pre-K Is Popular and Affordable." Jacobin (February 24, 2020)
Brunori, David. "Where is the Outrage Over Corporate Welfare?" Forbes (March 14, 2014)
The Brussels Business (Belgium/Austria/USA/France/Switzerland/Indonesia/UK: Matthieu Lietaert and Friedrich Moser, 2012: 85 mins) ["Brussels, the capital and largest city of Belgium, has a long history of hosting the institutions of the European Union within its European Quarter; while the Union itself claims it has no capital and no plans to declare one—despite the fact that Brussels hosts the official seats of the European Commission, Council of the European Union, and European Council, as well as a seat of the European Parliament. In any event, it is here—in this centre of smoke and mirrors—that exists one of the largest concentrations of lobbyist power in the world. The Brussels Business scratches the surface of this extensive world hidden-from-view by looking at the direct influence of lobbyists and the complete lack of transparency in the decision-making processes. Speaking with lobbyists and activists themselves, The Brussels Business reveals the beginnings of a vast landscape of PR conglomerates, front companies, think-tanks and their closely-interlinking networks of power and ties to political and economic elites. The questions then become: Who actually runs the European Union? How? And why?]
Buford, Talia, et al. "Home sweet home (Housing and Homelessness)." Best of the Left #1040 (September 2, 2016) ["Today we take a look at a couple of solutions to homelessness as well as some of the forces at play that effect how and where people live across the country."]
Bybee, Roger. "The Great Corporate Tax Swindle." In These Times (September 1, 2011)
"The Card Game." Frontline (Documentary and resource website: November 24, 2009)
Carrion, Maria. "General Strike Sweeps Europe as Millions Reject Austerity as Solution to Economic Crisis." Democracy Now (November 14, 2012)
Chang, Ha Joon. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. ["Using irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a battery of examples, Chang blasts holes in the "World Is Flat" orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and other liberal economists who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers-from the U.S. to Britain to his native Korea-all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry. We have conveniently forgotten this fact, telling ourselves a fairy tale about the magic of free trade and-via our proxies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization-ramming policies that suit ourselves down the throat of the developing world. Unlike typical economists who construct models of how the marketplace should work, Chang examines the past: what has actually happened. His pungently contrarian history demolishes one pillar after another of free-market mythology. We treat patents and copyrights as sacrosanct-but developed our own industries by studiously copying others' technologies. We insist that centrally planned economies stifle growth-but many developing countries had higher GDP growth before they were pressured into deregulating their economies. Both justice and common sense, Chang argues, demand that we reevaluate the policies we force on nations that are struggling to follow in our footsteps."]
Brown, Pamela. "Rolling Jubilee: Buying Up Distressed Debt, Occupy Offshoot Bails Out the People, Not the Banks." Democracy Now (November 15, 2012)
Brown, Pamela and David Harvey. "1T Day: As U.S. Student Debt Hits $1 Trillion, Occupy Protests Planned for Campuses Nationwide." Democracy Now (April 25, 2012)
Brown, Wendy. "A Neoliberal Pandemic." Economics & Beyond (June 18, 2020) ["UC Berkeley political theorist Wendy Brown talks to Rob Johnson about how the pandemic and protests against police brutality lay bare a crisis of neoliberalism."]
Bruenig, Matt. "Free Public Childcare and Pre-K Is Popular and Affordable." Jacobin (February 24, 2020)
Brunori, David. "Where is the Outrage Over Corporate Welfare?" Forbes (March 14, 2014)
Buchheit, Paul. "Yes, Half of Americans Are In or Near Poverty: Here's More Evidence." Common Dream (October 16, 2017)
Buford, Talia, et al. "Home sweet home (Housing and Homelessness)." Best of the Left #1040 (September 2, 2016) ["Today we take a look at a couple of solutions to homelessness as well as some of the forces at play that effect how and where people live across the country."]
Buller, Adrienne. The Value of a Whale: The Illusions of Green Capitalism. Manchester University Press, 2022. ["Public understanding of, and outcry over, the dire state of the climate and environment is greater than ever before. Parties across the political spectrum claim to be climate leaders, and overt denial is on the way out. Yet when it comes to slowing the course of the climate and nature crises, despite a growing number of pledges, policies and summits, little ever seems to change. Nature is being destroyed at an unprecedented rate. We remain on course for a catastrophic 3°C of warming. What's holding us back? In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to climate and environmental breakdown, and asks: are the ‘solutions’ being proposed really solutions? Tracing the intricate connections between financial power, economic injustice and ecological crisis, she exposes the myopic economism and market-centric thinking presently undermining a future where all life can flourish. The book examines what is wrong with mainstream climate and environmental governance, from carbon pricing and offset markets to 'green growth', the commodification of nature and the growing influence of the finance industry on environmental policy. In doing so, it exposes the self-defeating logic of a response to these challenges based on creating new opportunities for profit, and a refusal to grapple with the inequalities and injustices that have created them. Both honest and optimistic, The Value of a Whale asks us – in the face of crisis – what we really value."]
"Busted: America's Poverty Myths." On the Media (September 28 - October 28, 2016) ["On the Media’s series on poverty is grounded in the Talmudic notion that “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Brooke Gladstone traveled to Ohio to learn from people living the varied reality of poverty today, and to unpack the myths that shape our private presumptions as well as our policy decisions. In each episode, we feature the voices and complex stories of individuals, as well essential context from scholars, to lay open the tales we tell ourselves."]
"Busted: America's Poverty Myths." On the Media (September 28 - October 28, 2016) ["On the Media’s series on poverty is grounded in the Talmudic notion that “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.” Brooke Gladstone traveled to Ohio to learn from people living the varied reality of poverty today, and to unpack the myths that shape our private presumptions as well as our policy decisions. In each episode, we feature the voices and complex stories of individuals, as well essential context from scholars, to lay open the tales we tell ourselves."]
"The Card Game." Frontline (Documentary and resource website: November 24, 2009)
Carrion, Maria. "General Strike Sweeps Europe as Millions Reject Austerity as Solution to Economic Crisis." Democracy Now (November 14, 2012)
Chang, Ha Joon. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism. NY: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. ["Using irreverent wit, an engagingly personal style, and a battery of examples, Chang blasts holes in the "World Is Flat" orthodoxy of Thomas Friedman and other liberal economists who argue that only unfettered capitalism and wide-open international trade can lift struggling nations out of poverty. On the contrary, Chang shows, today's economic superpowers-from the U.S. to Britain to his native Korea-all attained prosperity by shameless protectionism and government intervention in industry. We have conveniently forgotten this fact, telling ourselves a fairy tale about the magic of free trade and-via our proxies such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization-ramming policies that suit ourselves down the throat of the developing world. Unlike typical economists who construct models of how the marketplace should work, Chang examines the past: what has actually happened. His pungently contrarian history demolishes one pillar after another of free-market mythology. We treat patents and copyrights as sacrosanct-but developed our own industries by studiously copying others' technologies. We insist that centrally planned economies stifle growth-but many developing countries had higher GDP growth before they were pressured into deregulating their economies. Both justice and common sense, Chang argues, demand that we reevaluate the policies we force on nations that are struggling to follow in our footsteps."]
Childers, Chandra. "Rooted in racism and economic exploitation: The failed Southern economic development model." Economic Policy Institute (October 11, 2023) ["Southern politicians claim that “business-friendly” policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity for all Southerners. The data actually show a grim economic reality."]
"Chile Learns the Price of Economic Inequality." The New York Times (October 22, 2019) ["Chile is often praised as a capitalist oasis, a prospering and stable nation on a continent where both prosperity and stability have been in short supply. But that prosperity has accumulated mostly in the hands of a lucky few. As a result, Chile has one of the highest levels of economic inequality in the developed world."]
"Chile Rising." Fault Lines (Documentary video posted on Youtube: January 2, 2012)
Cho, Joshua. "Corporate Looting as ‘Rescue Plan,’ Robber Barons as ‘Saviors.'" FAIR (May 1, 2020)
Chomsky, Noam. "The Occupy Movement to the Arab Spring." On Point (June 11, 2012)
---."The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival." Needs No Introduction (April 21, 2011)
Chossudovsky, Michel and Michael Parenti. "The Costs of Empire at Home and Abroad." Unwelcome Guests (March 22, 2000)
Churchwell, Sarah. "The Lehman Trilogy and Wall Street's Debt to Slavery." NYR Daily (June 11, 2019)
Clark, Anna and Barry Meier. "The Opioid Narratives." On the Media (March 27, 2019) ["Purdue Pharma has settled a lawsuit with the state of Oklahoma for $270 million, a larger figure than two other cases the company has settled with other states. In doing so, the company also avoided a televised trial in May at a time when there's been growing public pressure on Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, amid allegations that they misled the public about the dangers of OxyContin. Back in 2017, Bob spoke with Barry Meier about how public discourse about chronic pain and treatment have been shaped by companies like Purdue with help from physicians, consultants, and the media. Meier is a former reporter for The New York Times and author of Pain Killer: A "Wonder" Drug's Trail of Addiction and Death. Bob also interviewed journalist Anna Clark about her reporting for the Columbia Journalism Review on opioid-related death notices. Sites like Legacy.com, she explained, have often chronicled the crisis' individual human toll. "]
Claude, Cheryl and Charles Khan. "We Can Do Better Than Capitalism." Economic Update (July 30, 2018) ["This week on Economic Update, Prof. Wolff delivers updates on a New Zealand firm that succeeds with a 4 day work week, Vienna's public housing successes, Fordham adjuncts' union wins big, Burberry destroys millions of dollars worth of unsold product, precarious U.S. jobs worsen alcoholism among young and U.S. airlines raises profits by shrinking bathroom space. In the second half of the show, Prof. Wolff interviews Cheryl Claude, a former Toys ‘R Us manager and organizer Charles Khan on the collapse of Toys ‘R Us."]
Clausing, Kim. "5 Questions: Kim Clausing on Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital." Harvard University Press Blog (March 27. 2019)
Cohan, William and Michael Hudson. "Jon Corzine’s MF Global Firm Collapses in Biggest Wall Street Failure Since Lehman Brothers." Democracy Now (November 3, 2011)
Collender, Stan. "GOP Tax Bill Is The End Of All Economic Sanity In Washington." Forbes (November 19, 2017)
Cooper, Donna. "Infographic: Tax Breaks vs. Budget Cuts." Center for American Progress (February 22, 2011)
Copps, Michael. "Former FCC Commissioner Warns About Comcast-Time Warner Merger, "Mindless" Media Consolidation." Democracy Now (February 17, 2014)
"Costs of War." Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University (2019 Report)
Craven, Jasper. "Veterans of Domestic Wars." The Baffler #51 (April 2020) ["On the home front, vets battle for decent health care."]
Crawford, Neta C. "United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post-9/11 Wars through FY2020: $6.4 Trillion." Costs of War (November 13, 2019) ["Since late 2001, the United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 Trillion through Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to and caused by the post-9/11 wars—an estimated $5.4 Trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 Trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the next several decades. 2 The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries — becoming a truly “global war on terror.” Further, the Department of Homeland Security was created in part to coordinate the defense of the homeland against terrorist attacks. These wars, and the domestic counterterror mobilization, have entailed significant expenses, paid for by deficit spending. Thus, even if the United States withdraws completely from the major war zones by the end of FY2020 and halts its other Global War on Terror operations, in the Philippines and Africa for example, the total budgetary burden of the post-9/11 wars will continue to rise as the US pays the on-going costs of veterans’ care and for interest on borrowing to pay for the wars. Moreover, the increases in the Pentagon base budget associated with the wars are likely to remain, inflating the military budget over the long run."]
"Chile Learns the Price of Economic Inequality." The New York Times (October 22, 2019) ["Chile is often praised as a capitalist oasis, a prospering and stable nation on a continent where both prosperity and stability have been in short supply. But that prosperity has accumulated mostly in the hands of a lucky few. As a result, Chile has one of the highest levels of economic inequality in the developed world."]
"Chile Rising." Fault Lines (Documentary video posted on Youtube: January 2, 2012)
Cho, Joshua. "Corporate Looting as ‘Rescue Plan,’ Robber Barons as ‘Saviors.'" FAIR (May 1, 2020)
Chomsky, Noam. "The Occupy Movement to the Arab Spring." On Point (June 11, 2012)
---."The State-Corporate Complex: A Threat to Freedom and Survival." Needs No Introduction (April 21, 2011)
Chossudovsky, Michel and Michael Parenti. "The Costs of Empire at Home and Abroad." Unwelcome Guests (March 22, 2000)
Churchwell, Sarah. "The Lehman Trilogy and Wall Street's Debt to Slavery." NYR Daily (June 11, 2019)
Clark, Anna and Barry Meier. "The Opioid Narratives." On the Media (March 27, 2019) ["Purdue Pharma has settled a lawsuit with the state of Oklahoma for $270 million, a larger figure than two other cases the company has settled with other states. In doing so, the company also avoided a televised trial in May at a time when there's been growing public pressure on Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, amid allegations that they misled the public about the dangers of OxyContin. Back in 2017, Bob spoke with Barry Meier about how public discourse about chronic pain and treatment have been shaped by companies like Purdue with help from physicians, consultants, and the media. Meier is a former reporter for The New York Times and author of Pain Killer: A "Wonder" Drug's Trail of Addiction and Death. Bob also interviewed journalist Anna Clark about her reporting for the Columbia Journalism Review on opioid-related death notices. Sites like Legacy.com, she explained, have often chronicled the crisis' individual human toll. "]
Clausing, Kim. "5 Questions: Kim Clausing on Open: The Progressive Case for Free Trade, Immigration, and Global Capital." Harvard University Press Blog (March 27. 2019)
Collender, Stan. "GOP Tax Bill Is The End Of All Economic Sanity In Washington." Forbes (November 19, 2017)
Connolly, N.D.B. "Race and Real Estate in Miami." Who Makes Cents #5 (September 5, 2014) ["N.D.B. Connolly discusses how examining the ownership of real estate in Miami changes our perspective on the history of capitalism and African American history in the twentieth century. Ever wondered how real estate factors into American history? Curious about the impact of landlord-tenant struggles on the history of race in America? Listen to find out. N.D.B. Connolly is Assistant Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida."]
Cooper, David, et al. "Women would lose $4.6 billion in earned tips if the administration’s ‘tip stealing’ rule is finalized: Overall, Workers Would Lose $5.8 Billion." Economic Policy Institute (January 17, 2018)
Copps, Michael. "Former FCC Commissioner Warns About Comcast-Time Warner Merger, "Mindless" Media Consolidation." Democracy Now (February 17, 2014)
"Costs of War." Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University (2019 Report)
Craven, Jasper. "Veterans of Domestic Wars." The Baffler #51 (April 2020) ["On the home front, vets battle for decent health care."]
Crawford, Neta C. "United States Budgetary Costs and Obligations of Post-9/11 Wars through FY2020: $6.4 Trillion." Costs of War (November 13, 2019) ["Since late 2001, the United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 Trillion through Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to and caused by the post-9/11 wars—an estimated $5.4 Trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 Trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the next several decades. 2 The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries — becoming a truly “global war on terror.” Further, the Department of Homeland Security was created in part to coordinate the defense of the homeland against terrorist attacks. These wars, and the domestic counterterror mobilization, have entailed significant expenses, paid for by deficit spending. Thus, even if the United States withdraws completely from the major war zones by the end of FY2020 and halts its other Global War on Terror operations, in the Philippines and Africa for example, the total budgetary burden of the post-9/11 wars will continue to rise as the US pays the on-going costs of veterans’ care and for interest on borrowing to pay for the wars. Moreover, the increases in the Pentagon base budget associated with the wars are likely to remain, inflating the military budget over the long run."]
Currie, Ron and Martin Skladany. "The Next Netflix Should Be Owned By Screenwriters." NOEMA (September 21, 2023) ["Industry upheaval is an opportunity for Hollywood’s screenwriters to wrest back control of their stories — and their livelihoods."]
Danticat, Edwidge, et al. "Climate Change & The End of Eden." Open Source (September 28, 2017) ["Puerto Rico, a territory of three-and-a-half million US citizens, is unplugged, de-sheltered and desperate for months to come. This tiny little island in the Caribbean, with more people than the Dakotas, Wyoming, Alaska and Vermont combined, now sits in the dark: lights out, refrigeration, too; hospitals closed; food crops destroyed; communication systems collapsed. In a fully foreseeable crisis, some combination of forces seems to have chosen unreadiness as the first response. It’s a man-made pattern of history that turns storms into unnatural disasters — empire, money and power sorting out who lives, who dies, and who pays for the destabilization of the human habitat. A succinct and dignified case against the unfairness of this picture has been laid out before the United Nations by Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of tiny Dominica. His island and his own home were smashed to bits by Hurricane Maria."]
"David Harvey’s Course on Marx’s Capital: Volumes 1 & 2 Now Available Free Online." Open Culture (November 20, 2014)
Davies, Dave. "Dark Towers Exposes Chaos And Corruption At The Bank That Holds Trump's Secrets." Fresh Air (February 19, 2020)
Davis, Mike. "On Coronavirus in a Plague Year." Jacobin (March 14, 2020) ["As coronavirus spreads rapidly around the world, outpacing our capacity for testing let alone treatment, the long-anticipated monster is finally at the door. And with global capitalism so impotent in the face of this biological crisis, our demands must be for properly international public-health infrastructure."]
Day, Meagan. "The Feeble Strength of One." Jacobin (May 25, 2018) ["The Supreme Court has handed bosses a license to divide workers and break the law."]
Dayen, David. "The Dialysis Industry is Spending $111 Million To Argue That Regulating It Would Put It Out of Business." The Intercept (October 31, 2018)
Deaton, Angus. "On How the Flaws in Capitalism are Fatal for America’s Working Class." Keen On (March 13, 2020) ["Over the last two hundred years, nothing has divided us more than our free-market economic system. Is it the source of every social injustice, from exploitation to alienation to inequality, or is it essential to our freedom and democracy? This debate is as relevant today in 2020 as it was in 1920 or 1820."]
The Debt Resistors' Operations Manual. (A Project of Strike Debt and Occupy Wall Street, 2012)
Demby, Gene and Maria Paz Guttierez. "Why Shouldn't We Pay Student Athletes." Code Switching (March 23, 2018)
Demby, Gene, Kara Frame and Maria Paz Guttierez. "Housing Segregation is Everything." Code Switch (April 11, 2018) ["Housing segregation is in everything. But to understand the root of this issue, you have to look at the government-backed policies that created the housing disparities we see today. Gene Demby explains how these policies came to be, and what effect they've had on schools, health, family wealth and policing."]
Denton, Stacy. "After the Farm Crisis: The Critique of Neoliberal Society in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" Film Criticism 42.1 (March 2018) ["Neoliberalism restructured both national and local economies, including rural areas in the Midwest that were simultaneously hard-hit by the 1980s Farm Crisis. The struggle for the people who inhabit these small communities, along with the opportunity to reimagine an alternative, sets the stage for Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape?"]
Derber, Charles, et al. "The End of Work." Open Source (July 31, 2014)
Danticat, Edwidge, et al. "Climate Change & The End of Eden." Open Source (September 28, 2017) ["Puerto Rico, a territory of three-and-a-half million US citizens, is unplugged, de-sheltered and desperate for months to come. This tiny little island in the Caribbean, with more people than the Dakotas, Wyoming, Alaska and Vermont combined, now sits in the dark: lights out, refrigeration, too; hospitals closed; food crops destroyed; communication systems collapsed. In a fully foreseeable crisis, some combination of forces seems to have chosen unreadiness as the first response. It’s a man-made pattern of history that turns storms into unnatural disasters — empire, money and power sorting out who lives, who dies, and who pays for the destabilization of the human habitat. A succinct and dignified case against the unfairness of this picture has been laid out before the United Nations by Roosevelt Skerrit, the prime minister of tiny Dominica. His island and his own home were smashed to bits by Hurricane Maria."]
"David Harvey’s Course on Marx’s Capital: Volumes 1 & 2 Now Available Free Online." Open Culture (November 20, 2014)
Davies, Dave. "Dark Towers Exposes Chaos And Corruption At The Bank That Holds Trump's Secrets." Fresh Air (February 19, 2020)
Davis, Mike. "On Coronavirus in a Plague Year." Jacobin (March 14, 2020) ["As coronavirus spreads rapidly around the world, outpacing our capacity for testing let alone treatment, the long-anticipated monster is finally at the door. And with global capitalism so impotent in the face of this biological crisis, our demands must be for properly international public-health infrastructure."]
Day, Meagan. "The Feeble Strength of One." Jacobin (May 25, 2018) ["The Supreme Court has handed bosses a license to divide workers and break the law."]
Dayen, David. "The Dialysis Industry is Spending $111 Million To Argue That Regulating It Would Put It Out of Business." The Intercept (October 31, 2018)
Deaton, Angus. "On How the Flaws in Capitalism are Fatal for America’s Working Class." Keen On (March 13, 2020) ["Over the last two hundred years, nothing has divided us more than our free-market economic system. Is it the source of every social injustice, from exploitation to alienation to inequality, or is it essential to our freedom and democracy? This debate is as relevant today in 2020 as it was in 1920 or 1820."]
Demby, Gene and Maria Paz Guttierez. "Why Shouldn't We Pay Student Athletes." Code Switching (March 23, 2018)
Denton, Stacy. "After the Farm Crisis: The Critique of Neoliberal Society in What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" Film Criticism 42.1 (March 2018) ["Neoliberalism restructured both national and local economies, including rural areas in the Midwest that were simultaneously hard-hit by the 1980s Farm Crisis. The struggle for the people who inhabit these small communities, along with the opportunity to reimagine an alternative, sets the stage for Lasse Hallström's What's Eating Gilbert Grape?"]
Desmond, Matthew. Poverty, By America. Crown Publishing Group, 2023. ["The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Evicted reimagines the debate on poverty, making a new and bracing argument about why it persists in America: because the rest of us benefit from it. ... The United States, the richest country on earth, has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. Why? Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? In this landmark book, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. Those of us who are financially secure exploit the poor, driving down their wages while forcing them to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. We prioritize the subsidization of our wealth over the alleviation of poverty, designing a welfare state that gives the most to those who need the least. And we stockpile opportunity in exclusive communities, creating zones of concentrated riches alongside those of concentrated despair. Some lives are made small so that others may grow. Elegantly written and fiercely argued, this compassionate book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions. Desmond builds a startlingly original and ambitious case for ending poverty. He calls on us all to become poverty abolitionists, engaged in a politics of collective belonging to usher in a new age of shared prosperity and, at last, true freedom."]
Dewey, Caitlin. "The hidden crisis on college campuses: Many students don’t have enough to eat." The Washington Post (April 3, 2018)
Digital Disconnect (USA: Jeremy Earp and Robert McChesney, 2018: 63 mins) ["Tracing the Internet’s history as a publicly-funded government project in the 1960s, to its full-scale commercialisation today, Digital Disconnect shows how the Internet’s so-called “democratising potential” has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism, and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Based on the acclaimed book by media scholar Robert McChesney, the film examines the ongoing attack on the concept of net neutrality by telecom monopolies such as Comcast and Verizon, explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting our personal data and selling it to advertisers, and shows how these monopolies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs. We also see how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological information bubbles and elevate propaganda at the expense of real journalism. But while most debates about the Internet focus on issues like the personal impact of Internet-addiction or the rampant data-mining practices of companies like Facebook, Digital Disconnectdigs deeper to show how capitalism itself turns the Internet against democracy. The result is an indispensable resource for helping viewers make sense of a technological revolution that has radically transformed virtually aspect of human communication."]
DiLeo, Petrino. "An Economic History of the Great Depression." We Are Many (June 18, 2009)
Eban, Katherine. "Bottle of Lies: How Poor FDA Oversight & Fraud in Generic Drug Industry Threaten Patients’ Health." Democracy Now (May 20, 2019) ["Generic drugs amount to 90% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S., most of them made in plants in India and China. Generic drugs can be more affordable, but in her new explosive book “Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom,” investigative journalist Katherine Eban works with two industry whistleblowers to expose how some manufacturers are cutting corners at the cost of quality and safety. This comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration just issued its own update on the state of pharmaceutical quality that found the drug quality of factories in India and China scored below the world average. FDA officials say that’s because more robust inspections have uncovered problems and that “the quality of the drug supply has never been higher.”"]
Economic Policy Institute ["The Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit Washington D.C. think tank, was created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. Today, with global competition expanding, wage inequality rising, and the methods and nature of work changing in fundamental ways, it is as crucial as ever that people who work for a living have a voice in the economic discourse. EPI was the first — and remains the premier — think tank to focus on the economic condition of low- and middle-income Americans and their families. Its careful research on the status of American workers has become the gold standard in that field. Its encyclopedic State of Working America, issued every two years since 1988, is stocked in university libraries around the world. EPI researchers, who often testify to Congress and are widely cited in the media, first brought to light the disconnect between pay and productivity that marked the U.S. economy in the 1990s and is now widely recognized as a cause of growing inequality. EPI's staff includes eight Ph.D.-level researchers, a half dozen policy analysts and research assistants, and a full communications and outreach staff. EPI also works closely with a national network of prominent scholars. The institute conducts original research according to strict standards of objectivity, and couples its findings with outreach and popular education. Its work spans a wide range of economic issues, such as trends in wages, incomes, and prices; health care; education; retirement security; state-level economic development strategies; trade and global finance; comparative international economic performance; the health of manufacturing and other key sectors; global competitiveness and energy development. Its research is varied, but a common thread runs through it: EPI examines issues through a "living standards" lens by analyzing the impact of policies and initiatives on the American public."]
"The Economics of Immigration and Demonization." Best of the Left #1162 (February 2, 2018)
Einstein, Albert. "Why Socialism?" Monthly Review (May 1949)
Elk, Mike and Jay O'Neal. "From Coal Miners to Teachers: West Virginia Continues to Lead Radical Labor Struggle in the U.S." Democracy Now (May 5, 2018) ["For decades, West Virginia has been at the forefront of labor activism in the United States. As the state’s teachers continue their historic strike, which has shut down every single West Virginia school, we look at the history of the labor activism in the Mountain State. We speak with Jay O’Neal, a middle school teacher and a union activist in Charleston, West Virginia. And we speak with Mike Elk, senior labor reporter at Payday Report. His most recent piece is titled 'West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Fever Starting to Spread to Other States.'"]
---. "'People Have Just Had Enough': West Virginia Teachers Continue Historic Strike into Eighth Day." Democracy Now (March 5, 2018) ["Schools across West Virginia are closed for an eighth day, as more than 20,000 teachers and 13,000 school staffers remain on strike demanding higher wages and better healthcare. The strike, which began on February 22, has shut down every public school in the state. Teachers are demanding a 5 percent raise and a cap on spiraling healthcare costs. For more, we speak with Jay O’Neal, a middle school teacher and a union activist in Charleston, West Virginia. And we speak with Mike Elk, senior labor reporter at Payday Report. His most recent piece is titled “West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Fever Starting to Spread to Other States.”"]
Elk, Mike, et al. "Teachers in Revolt: Meet the Educators in Kentucky & Oklahoma Walking Out over School Funding." Democracy Now (April 4, 2018)
["Oklahoma’s public education budget has been slashed more than any other state since the start of the recession in 2008, and its teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation. Scores of teachers are planning to begin a 123-mile protest march today from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, thousands of teachers continue to protest in Kentucky, demanding a reversal to a provision in a recently passed bill about sewage treatment that gutted their pension benefits. On Monday, every school in the state was closed either due to spring break or in anticipation of a massive rally in the capital of Frankfort, where teachers filled the rotunda of the Kentucky state Capitol, chanting “Fund our schools!” This year’s wave of teacher rebellions began in West Virginia, where teachers won a 5 percent pay raise after a historic strike. We speak to four guests: Oklahoma teacher Andrea Thomas, Kentucky state lawmaker Attica Scott, retired Kentucky teacher Mickey McCoy and labor journalist Mike Elk."]
Elliot, Rebecca, et al. "Can We Afford Our Consumer Society?" LSE IQ #21 (December 2018)
["Economic growth has helped millions out of poverty. The jobs it creates mean rising incomes and consumers who buy more. This drives further growth and higher living standards, including better health and education. Yet WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, has recently warned that exploding human consumption is the driving force behind unprecedented planetary change, through increased demand for energy, land and water. Plastics and microplastics are filling our oceans and rivers and entering the food chain. The production of goods and services for household use is the most important cause of greenhouse gas emissions. The textile industry is responsible for depleting and polluting water resources and committing human rights abuses against its workers. It is also a major source of greenhouse gases, and three fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being made."]
Ellis, C.P. "Why I Quit the Klan." (from American Dreams: Lost and Found by Studs Terkel: 1980)
Ellison, Keith. "GOP Tax Bill Would Reorder Society & Create 'Hereditary Aristocracy' for Rich." Democracy Now (December 4, 2017) ["On Saturday morning, Senate Republicans passed a nearly 500-page tax bill that will have dramatic impacts not only the U.S. tax code, but also healthcare, domestic spending and even oil and gas drilling. The plan would cut taxes by nearly $1.5 trillion. Major corporations and the richest Americans, including President Trump and his own family, would reap the most dramatic benefits. Overall, the bill is expected to add $1.4 trillion to federal budget deficits over the next decade. The bill passed the Senate 51 to 49, with every Democrat voting against the bill and all Republicans voting for it except for Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee."]
Elrod, Andrew. "Elon Musk's Fall From Grace." Boston Review (April 17, 2018)
The End of Poverty (USA: Philippe Diaz, 2008: 106 mins)
Estefan, Kareem, et al. "Understanding Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS)." Best of the Left #1249 (February 12, 2019) ["Today we take a look at both the BDS movement and the backlash response to it resulting in firings and legislation in many states (and pending federally) to restrict employment and business opportunities from those who fail to pledge in writing to not support of the boycott of Israel."]
Family Budget Calculator Economic Policy Institute (ND) ["EPI’s Family Budget Calculator measures the income a family needs in order to attain a modest yet adequate standard of living. The budgets estimate community-specific costs for 10 family types (one or two adults with zero to four children) in all counties and metro areas in the United States. Compared with the federal poverty line and the Supplemental Poverty Measure, EPI’s family budgets provide a more accurate and complete measure of economic security in America."]
Digital Disconnect (USA: Jeremy Earp and Robert McChesney, 2018: 63 mins) ["Tracing the Internet’s history as a publicly-funded government project in the 1960s, to its full-scale commercialisation today, Digital Disconnect shows how the Internet’s so-called “democratising potential” has been radically compromised by the logic of capitalism, and the unaccountable power of a handful of telecom and tech monopolies. Based on the acclaimed book by media scholar Robert McChesney, the film examines the ongoing attack on the concept of net neutrality by telecom monopolies such as Comcast and Verizon, explores how internet giants like Facebook and Google have amassed huge profits by surreptitiously collecting our personal data and selling it to advertisers, and shows how these monopolies have routinely colluded with the national security state to advance covert mass surveillance programs. We also see how the rise of social media as a leading information source is working to isolate people into ideological information bubbles and elevate propaganda at the expense of real journalism. But while most debates about the Internet focus on issues like the personal impact of Internet-addiction or the rampant data-mining practices of companies like Facebook, Digital Disconnectdigs deeper to show how capitalism itself turns the Internet against democracy. The result is an indispensable resource for helping viewers make sense of a technological revolution that has radically transformed virtually aspect of human communication."]
Eban, Katherine. "Bottle of Lies: How Poor FDA Oversight & Fraud in Generic Drug Industry Threaten Patients’ Health." Democracy Now (May 20, 2019) ["Generic drugs amount to 90% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S., most of them made in plants in India and China. Generic drugs can be more affordable, but in her new explosive book “Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom,” investigative journalist Katherine Eban works with two industry whistleblowers to expose how some manufacturers are cutting corners at the cost of quality and safety. This comes as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration just issued its own update on the state of pharmaceutical quality that found the drug quality of factories in India and China scored below the world average. FDA officials say that’s because more robust inspections have uncovered problems and that “the quality of the drug supply has never been higher.”"]
"The Economics of Immigration and Demonization." Best of the Left #1162 (February 2, 2018)
Elk, Mike and Jay O'Neal. "From Coal Miners to Teachers: West Virginia Continues to Lead Radical Labor Struggle in the U.S." Democracy Now (May 5, 2018) ["For decades, West Virginia has been at the forefront of labor activism in the United States. As the state’s teachers continue their historic strike, which has shut down every single West Virginia school, we look at the history of the labor activism in the Mountain State. We speak with Jay O’Neal, a middle school teacher and a union activist in Charleston, West Virginia. And we speak with Mike Elk, senior labor reporter at Payday Report. His most recent piece is titled 'West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Fever Starting to Spread to Other States.'"]
---. "'People Have Just Had Enough': West Virginia Teachers Continue Historic Strike into Eighth Day." Democracy Now (March 5, 2018) ["Schools across West Virginia are closed for an eighth day, as more than 20,000 teachers and 13,000 school staffers remain on strike demanding higher wages and better healthcare. The strike, which began on February 22, has shut down every public school in the state. Teachers are demanding a 5 percent raise and a cap on spiraling healthcare costs. For more, we speak with Jay O’Neal, a middle school teacher and a union activist in Charleston, West Virginia. And we speak with Mike Elk, senior labor reporter at Payday Report. His most recent piece is titled “West Virginia Teachers’ Strike Fever Starting to Spread to Other States.”"]
Elk, Mike, et al. "Teachers in Revolt: Meet the Educators in Kentucky & Oklahoma Walking Out over School Funding." Democracy Now (April 4, 2018)
["Oklahoma’s public education budget has been slashed more than any other state since the start of the recession in 2008, and its teachers are among the lowest paid in the nation. Scores of teachers are planning to begin a 123-mile protest march today from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. Meanwhile, thousands of teachers continue to protest in Kentucky, demanding a reversal to a provision in a recently passed bill about sewage treatment that gutted their pension benefits. On Monday, every school in the state was closed either due to spring break or in anticipation of a massive rally in the capital of Frankfort, where teachers filled the rotunda of the Kentucky state Capitol, chanting “Fund our schools!” This year’s wave of teacher rebellions began in West Virginia, where teachers won a 5 percent pay raise after a historic strike. We speak to four guests: Oklahoma teacher Andrea Thomas, Kentucky state lawmaker Attica Scott, retired Kentucky teacher Mickey McCoy and labor journalist Mike Elk."]
Elliot, Rebecca, et al. "Can We Afford Our Consumer Society?" LSE IQ #21 (December 2018)
["Economic growth has helped millions out of poverty. The jobs it creates mean rising incomes and consumers who buy more. This drives further growth and higher living standards, including better health and education. Yet WWF, the World Wildlife Fund, has recently warned that exploding human consumption is the driving force behind unprecedented planetary change, through increased demand for energy, land and water. Plastics and microplastics are filling our oceans and rivers and entering the food chain. The production of goods and services for household use is the most important cause of greenhouse gas emissions. The textile industry is responsible for depleting and polluting water resources and committing human rights abuses against its workers. It is also a major source of greenhouse gases, and three fifths of all clothing produced ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being made."]
Elrod, Andrew. "Elon Musk's Fall From Grace." Boston Review (April 17, 2018)
Erwin, Blaine and Alyssa Hain. "Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #20 Extravagant Hospital Waste of Unused Medical Supplies." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Estefan, Kareem, et al. "Understanding Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS)." Best of the Left #1249 (February 12, 2019) ["Today we take a look at both the BDS movement and the backlash response to it resulting in firings and legislation in many states (and pending federally) to restrict employment and business opportunities from those who fail to pledge in writing to not support of the boycott of Israel."]
Faux, Zeke. "Crypto: SBF and Beyond." Capitalisn't (November 16, 2023) ["In his new book "Number Go Up," Bloomberg News investigative reporter Zeke Faux takes readers on a wild ride through the world of cryptocurrency, from its origins in the dark corners of the internet, its meteoric rise to mainstream popularity, and finally its equally precipitous fall. A few days after the 'convicted' verdict in the trial of beleaguered crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), Faux joins Bethany and Luigi to make a case for why we should judge cryptocurrency by what it has done and not what it can do. They discuss whether it is too soon to write crypto off, what larger commentary it offers about capitalism, and why Luigi, who teaches a popular MBA course on fintech, feels "crypto is money that can only be created by computer scientists who don't understand history.""]
Ferguson, Charles. "Predator Nation: Corporate Criminals, Political Corruption, and the Hijacking of America." Democracy Now (Posted on Dialogic: May 29, 2012) [Part 2]
---. "Where are We Now?" Inside Job: The Financiers Who Pulled Off the Heist of the Century. OneWorld, 2012.
Ferguson, Leo. "Combating Antisemitism." On the Media (May 3, 2019) ["After the attack in Pittsburgh, Bob spoke with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice organizer Leo Ferguson about how to understand the roots of antisemitism and the way it has functioned throughout history in order to help make sense of the threat it poses today. This week, Bob again speaks with Ferguson, who argues that we need to call out and root out antisemitism where we see it — but that the work of combating antisemitism also includes building cross-cultural coalitions that fight against white supremacy and for economic justice."]
Ferguson, Micheale L. "On the Job: Debating Sex Work." Boston Review (May 14, 2014) ["Does sexual liberation entail a laissez faire attitude toward sex, or can it involve the freedom to critically, consciously, and intentionally explore pleasure and desire?... Sexual liberation is best understood as the freedom to be curious about sex and about the broader economic and social context in which desire and sexuality are produced. It is the freedom to engage in pleasure as something to be indulged not mindlessly, but mindfully: observing our individual relationships to our bodies, to what turns us on or off, to what troubles us, and to how this may change over the course of our lives—observing all of this with curiosity."]
Fernholz, Tim. "If you think the Paradise and Panama papers are bad, wait until you hear about Delaware." Quartz (Updated version November 7, 2017)
Fields, Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America. Verso, 2012. ["Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed. That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions."]
Fife, Carol and Dominique Walker. "Moms 4 Housing: Meet the Oakland Mothers Facing Eviction After Two Months Occupying Vacant House." Democracy Now (January 14, 2020) ["In Oakland, California, a group of mothers fighting homelessness is waging a battle against real estate speculators and demanding permanent solutions to the Bay Area housing crisis by occupying a vacant house with their children. The struggle began in November, when working mothers in West Oakland moved into 2928 Magnolia Street, a vacant house owned by real estate investment firm Wedgewood Properties. The firm tried to evict them, claiming they were illegally squatting on private property, but the mothers went to court and filed a “right to possession” claim, saying housing is a human right. Their name is Moms 4 Housing. The battle for the house came to a head last week when an Alameda County judge ruled in favor of Wedgewood Properties and ordered the mothers to vacate the house. But Moms 4 Housing has stayed to fight eviction. Monday night, hundreds of protesters gathered at the house after receiving a tip that the Sheriff’s Office was coming to evict the families — a show of support that led the sheriff to abandon the eviction attempt. We speak with Carroll Fife, director of the Oakland office for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and Dominique Walker, a member of Moms 4 Housing who has been living at the house with her family."]
Fiorentini, James J., et al. "The Scramble for Amazon." Open Source (October 26, 2017) ["Amazon, the online everything store with the arrow-headed smile in its logo, is ready to build its second headquarters (outside Seattle this time) in a post-industrial urban dreamscape. And there’s barely an American city out there that isn’t begging to be It. Fifty thousand ultra-smart tech jobs in the 100K pay range are the prize. What’ll win the nod from CEO Jeff Bezos is some combination of a smart local workforce, an affordable standard of living and tax breaks galore. So we squint our eyes over this coast-to-coast bidding contest, to see the outline, if we can, of jobs and the workplace coming next. A raging hunger for work itself drives a race that most contestants will lose; that a master of monopoly has already won."]
Fisher, Max. "Map: U.S. Ranks Near Bottom on Income Inequality." The Atlantic (September 2011)
Fitzpatrick, Megan C., et al. "Improving the Prognosis of Healthcare in America." The Lancet (February 15, 2020) ["Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68 000 lives and 1·73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo."]
Flowers, Margaret and Raymond Offenheiser. "Occupy G8: Peoples’ Summit Confronts World Leaders at Camp David, Urging Action on Poverty, Hunger." Democracy Now (May 18, 2012)
Foster, John Bellamy. "Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: The U.S. Case." Monthly Review (July 1, 2011)
Foster, John Bellamy, interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou. "Climate change is the product of how capitalism 'values' nature." Monthly Review (November 18, 2018) ["Climate change is the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. Capitalist industrialization has led us to the edge of the precipice, and avoiding the end of civilization as we know it may require the development of a view in direct opposition to the way in which capitalism “values” nature, according to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review."]
Foster, John Bellamy and Robert W. McChesney. "The Internet's Unholy Marriage to Capitalim" Monthly Review (March 2011)
Foster, John Bellamy, Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna. "The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism." Monthly Review 63.6 (November 2011)
---. "The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital." Monthly Review (June 1, 2011)
---. "Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism." Monthly Review (April 1, 2011)
Fowler, Susan. "'What Have We Done?”: Silicon Valley Engineers Fear They Have Created a Monster." Vanity Fair (September 2018) ["Gig-economy companies like Uber and Instacart are on the verge of overtaking the traditional economy. And the only people who understand the threat are the ones enabling it."]
Fraser, Steve. "Class Dismissed: Class Conflict in Red State America." Counterpunch (April 19, 2018)
Freedman, Carl. "The Supplement of Coppola: Primitive Accumulation and the Godfather Trilogy." Film International #49 (2011): 8-41
Gaffney, Adam. "A History of Putting a Price on Everything: Why policymakers calculate the cost of life and death, sickness and health." The New Republic (December 1, 2017)
---. "Bill of Health: How Market Logic Hobbles Our Nation's Hospitals." The Baffler #52 (July 2020) ["The consequences of this profit-oriented financing system is a combination of deprivation and excess. That kind of inequality of health care supply has a name. In 1971, the British general practitioner Julian Tudor Hart coined a phrase, the “inverse care law,” that describes it well. “The availability of good medical care,” he wrote in The Lancet, “tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served.” Those who need care the most, that is to say, have the least access to it. ... As Hart noted, the “inverse care law operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, and less so where such exposure is reduced.” As such, the inverse care law is today in operation in the United States like no other high-income nation. But we can change that. We could fund new hospitals and new health infrastructure not from profits, but from the public purse, something that the Medicare for All bills now in Congress, particularly the House version, would achieve. Hospital expansion would then be premised on the basis of health needs, not market logic."]
Galvani, Alison. "Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year." Democracy Now (February 19, 2020) ["As the Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to take to the debate stage tonight, we turn to a central issue of the campaign: Medicare for All. In a new study, Yale scholars have found that Medicare for All will save Americans more than $450 billion and prevent 68,000 deaths every year. The study in The Lancet — one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals — found that Medicare for All, supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will save money and is more cost-effective than “Medicare for All Who Want It, “a model supported by Pete Buttigieg. Sanders referenced the study at a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada. For more, we go to New Haven, Connecticut, where we’re joined by Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale’s School of Public Health. She is the lead author of the new Lancet study, “Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA.”"]
Gambino, Lauren. "Hundreds arrested as activists pick up where Martin Luther King left off." The Guardian (May 14, 2018) ["The Poor People’s campaign kicked off 40 days of nonviolent protest on Monday, reviving King’s anti-poverty efforts and demanding action."]
Gardner, Matthew. "Amazon in Its Prime: Doubles Profits, Pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes." Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (February 13, 2019)
Giles, David HGB. "Dumpster Diving and Smoothies of Wrath." Food Anthropology (January 1, 2006)
Giridharadas, Anand. "'The Billionaire Election': How 2020 Is a Referendum on Wealth Inequality." Democracy Now (February 26, 2020) ["The 10th Democratic presidential debate took place Tuesday in Charleston, South Carolina, and two billionaires were at either end of the stage: Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. Front-runner Bernie Sanders, who has made attacking the power of the “billionaire class” a central theme of his campaign, stood in the middle. It was a visual representation of the split within the Democratic Party, in which a growing number of people are “rising up against plutocracy,” says Anand Giridharadas, editor-at-large at Time magazine and author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.” His recent piece for The New York Times is titled “The Billionaire Election: Does the world belong to them or to us?"]
---. "The Elite Charade of Changing the World." Ralph Nader Radio Hour (November 3, 2018) ["Ralph welcomes journalist and author, Anand Giridharadas to talk about his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, which argues that rich “do-gooders” don’t really want to change the system that made them rich."]
---. "How Philanthropy Lets Rich People Off the Hook." On the Media (April 19, 2019) ["Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World, explains that we're living in a century-old bargain between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of society: the rich get rich, and the rest of us get downstream benefits. Giridharadas and Bob talk about the origins of this bargain — and what needs to shift if we hope to see meaningful structural solutions to society's most pressing challenges."]
Giroux, Henry A. "Neoliberalism, Democracy and the University as a Public Sphere." Truthout (April 22, 2014)
---. "The Slow and Fast Assault on Public Education." Boston Review (May 14, 2018)
Gladwell, Malcolm. "Carlos Doesn't Remember." Revisionist History 1.4 (ND) ["Carlos is a brilliant student from South Los Angeles. He attends an exclusive private school on an academic scholarship. He is the kind of person the American meritocracy is supposed to reward. But in the hidden details of his life lies a cautionary tale about how hard it is to rise from the bottom to the top—and why the American school system, despite its best efforts, continues to leave an extraordinary amount of talent on the table."]
Glantz, Aaron and Vincent Hughes. "Modern-Day Redlining: Banks Face Probes for Refusing Home Loans for People of Color." Democracy Now (February 27, 2018) ["A shocking new investigation by Reveal and the Center for Investigative Reporting has uncovered evidence that African Americans and Latinos continue to be routinely denied conventional mortgage loans, even at rates far higher than their white counterparts, across the country. According to the piece, the homeownership gap between whites and African Americans is now wider than it was during the Jim Crow era. Reveal based its report on a review of 31 million mortgage records filed with the federal government in 2015 and 2016. The investigation found the redlining occurring across the country, including in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and San Antonio, Texas. Since its publication earlier this month, the report has sparked national outrage and, in some states, unusually swift political action. Pennsylvania’s attorney general and state treasurer have both launched investigations into redlining in Philadelphia. We speak to Pennsylvania state Senator Vincent Hughes and Aaron Glantz, senior reporter at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. His new investigation is headlined 'Kept out: How banks block people of color from homeownership.'"]
Global Issues: Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All." [UK/USA: Anup Shah "Welcome to the global issues web site. This web site looks into global issues that affect everyone and aims to show how most issues are inter-related. There are over 550 articles on this site, mostly written by myself. The issues discussed range from trade, poverty and globalization, to human rights, geopolitics, the environment, and much more. Spread over these articles, there are over 7,000 links to external articles, web sites, reports and analysis to help provide credence to the arguments made on this web site."]
Gokey, Thomas and Astra Taylor. "Debt Collective." Team Human #1 (July 29, 2016) ["Joining team human are debt resisters Astra Taylor and Thomas Gokey. Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, activist, and musician. Her films include the documentaries Zizek! and the Examined Life.Taylor’s recent book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age takes a hard look at the persisting and embedded inequalities in today’s digital media landscape. Thomas Gokey is a visual artist, adjunct professor at Syracuse University, and activist. Gokey’s piece entitled, Total Amount of Money Rendered in Exchange for a Masters of Fine Arts Degree to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pulped into Four Sheets of Paper reimagined his own student debt as art. Both Thomas Gokey and Astra Taylor seized the momentum of Occupy Wall Street to help launch a direct action campaign of debt resistance. Working through the collective force of Strike Debt, Rolling Jubilee, and the Debt Collective, Gokey and Taylor are fighting back against the economic injustice of debt in America."]
Gould, Elise, Zane Mokhiber and Julia Wolfe. "Class of 2018: College Edition." Economic Policy Institute (May 10, 2018)
Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. (Melville House Publishing: Audio Version on Unwelcome Guests)
---. "Debt: The First Five Thousand Years." Mute (February 10, 2009)
---. "A Practical Utopian's Guide to the Coming Collapse." The Baffler #22 (2013)
Graeber, David, et al. "Let Your Life Be A Friction (To Stop The Machine)." Unwelcome Guests (March 3, 2012)
---, et al. "Occupy 2.0 (Peer Produced Politics)." Unwelcome Guests (March 10, 2012)
---, et al. "The Psychology of Transition: Undoing Millennia of Social Control." Unwelcome Guests #597 (March 31, 2012)
Graves, Lisa and John Nichols. "Billionaires for Austerity: With Cuts Looming, Wall Street Roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed." Democracy Now (February 26, 2013)
Graves, Lisa and Zaid Jilani. "The Restaurant Industry Ran a Private Poll on the Minimum Wage. It Did Not Go Well For Them." The Intercept (April 17, 2018)
The Great African Scandal (BBC: Robert Beckford, 2007: 48 mins) ["Robert Beckford visits Ghana to investigate the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in ‘natural resources’ is one of the poorest in the world. He discovers child labourers farming cocoa instead of attending school and asks if the activities of multinationals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actually made the country’s problems worse."]
Greenhouse, Steven. "One Job Should be Enough: How workers’ voices were silenced in America—and how they’re fighting back." American Scholar (August 23, 2019) ["Steven Greenhouse was the labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times for 19 years. His last book, The Big Squeeze, is a detailed report on how American workers are being abused by corporations and bosses: freezing wages; replacing long-term employees with contractors, subcontractors, and freelancers; reducing hours. And where full-time employees are to be found, bosses are replacing pensions with 401Ks; trimming down paid holidays, vacations, and sick days; pressuring workers to do more per hour; forcing arbitration instead of lawsuits; mandating non-compete causes—not to mention off-shoring jobs to countries with fewer labor or environmental protections and cheaper wages. In the 10 years since Greenhouse’s book appeared, corporations haven’t exactly changed their tune—but the labor movement has. There’s been a surge in organizing from the service industry to Silicon Valley: the Fight for Fifteen, #REDforED teachers’ strikes, walkouts at Google and Wayfair, and, this month, 11,000 airline catering workers across 28 cities voting to authorize a strike for better conditions. Where did this momentum come from? In his new book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, Steven Greenhouse tries to answer that question, alongside its corollaries. Why did worker power decline so much over the past 50 years? And what can we do to rekindle that collective power?"]
Greenwald, Robert. "Koch Brothers Exposed: The 1% at its Very Worst." Uprising Radio (March 27, 2012)
Gross, Allie. "Charterize, Privatize, Christianize: The DeVos-Backed Policies That 'Gutted' Michigan Public Schools." Democracy Now (March 13, 2018) ["Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is facing new criticism after she struggled in a recent “60 Minutes” interview to explain why schools in her home state of Michigan are faring poorly under the policies she has championed. DeVos is a billionaire Republican activist and the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. She once served as chair of the American Federation for Children in Michigan, where she promoted school choice and worked to expand the state’s use of private charter schools. Many educators say the results of DeVos’s policies in Michigan have been disastrous. For more, we speak with Allie Gross, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. She covered education in Michigan as a freelance reporter and was a Teach for America teacher in a Detroit charter school."]
Gross, Ashley and Jon Marcus. "High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University." All Things Considered (April 25, 2018)
Guevara, Marina Walker. "Paradise Found." On the Media (November 10, 2017) ["A year and a half after the explosive leak of the Panama Papers revealed the shady, yet entirely legal, offshore banking practices of world's richest people and companies, a new trove of documents was announced: the Paradise Papers. This time, the leak discloses the financial dealings of some familiar names and faces, including members of the Trump Administration. The public officials acknowledge and defend the practice of skirting taxes through the use of havens, and deny any possible conflicts of interest. Bob speaks with Marina Walker Guevara, Deputy Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which facilitated reporting on the documents along with hundreds of reporters around the globe. She shares how reporters from such a large network collaborate and explores what kinds of questions we should all be asking after learning that the rich and powerful play by a different set of rules than the rest of us."]
Guevara, Marina Walker, Michael Hudson and Gerard Ryle. "Likely Largest Journalism Collaboration In History." The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (April 3, 2013) ["The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists today launches the next part of a multi-year project aimed at stripping away the biggest mystery associated with tax havens: the owners of anonymous companies."]
Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson. "The Powell Memo: A Call to Arms for Corporations." Moyers & Company (September 14, 2012) ["In this excerpt from Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explain the significance of the Powell Memorandum, a call-to-arms for American corporations written by Virginia lawyer (and future U.S. Supreme Court justice) Lewis Powell to a neighbor working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."]
Hall, Stuart, et al. "The Neoliberal Revolution." ed. Jonathan Rutherford and Sally Davidson. Lawrence & Wishart Books, 2012.
Hall, Suzanne, et al. "Is the Gentrification of Our Global Cities Inevitable?" LSE IQ #19 (October 2018) ["In 1964 the sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term ‘gentrification’ to describe the process of London’s working class neighbourhoods being taken over by the middle classes. Modest two-up two down terrace houses were bought cheap, done up and made into expensive residences. Once grand Victorian houses that had fallen on hard times and become lodging houses or homes to multiple families, were restored once again and sub-divided into luxury flats. Soon the working class residents had been squeezed out of the neighbourhood and its character changed completely. Fifty years on and this process continues apace in London and many other cities."]
Hanna, Thomas and Nomi Prins. "Revolution at the Federal Reserve and Public Banking." The Laura Flanders Show (January 23, 2019) ["As the World Economic Forum takes place in Davos, Switzerland, we talk about the way central banks steer world development and for whom. Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins, author of "Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World," and public ownership researcher, Thomas Hanna, author of “Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States,” and Research Director at The Democracy Collaborative, believe that banking, and development, could be very different."]
Harrington, Brooke. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Hidden." On the Media (November 10, 2017) ["A year and a half after the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers have again thrown back the curtain on the vast world of wealth that exists in offshore tax havens. But even after the two largest data leaks in history, those in the know say that we have still barely glimpsed the extent of this ecosystem. And according to Brooke Harrington, Professor of Economic Sociology at Copenhagen Business School and author of Capital Without Borders, if we really want to understand the situation, we need to look beyond the wealthy themselves and toward the industry devoted to keeping them rich and hidden. Bob talks to Harrington about the profession of "wealth management," why it's a threat to democracy and what can be done."]
Hart-Landsberg, Marty. "Class, Race and Wealth Inequality." Economic Front (January 3, 2018)
---. "Taxes, Inequality and Class Power." Economic Front (December 22, 2017)
---. "Too Many Whites Are In Denial About The Extent Of Race-Based Economic Inequality." Economic Front (January 19, 2018) ["A recently published paper by three Yale scholars reveals “that Americans, on average, systematically overestimate the extent to which society has progressed toward racial economic equality, driven largely by overestimates of current racial equality.”"]
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. NY: Oxford University Press, 2007.
---. "Crises of Capitalism." RSA Animate (June 28, 2010: Video)
---. "Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason." Left Out (November 7, 2017)
---. Reading Marx's Capital with David Harvey." (A close reading of the text of Karl Marx’s Capital Volume I in 13 video lectures by Professor David Harvey: 2011)
Hattingh, Shawn. "Not a Matter of If, but When. Monthly Review (February 13, 2018)
Hedges, Chris. "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt." Law and Disorder Radio (July 30, 2012)
---. "The Death of the Liberal Class." (Video of presentation at The Sanctuary for Independent Media: October 17, 2010)
---. Neoliberalism and Its Effects in the Modern USA." Unwelcome Guests (September 28, 2012)
---. "On 9/11 & Touring U.S. Economic Disaster Zones in "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt" Democracy Now (September 11, 2012)
Hedges, Chris, Jim Powell and Tim Maby. "Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco: drawing America's invisible poor - audio slideshow." The Guardian (July 12, 2012)
Hedges, Chris, Vandana Shiva and Robert Scheer. "Liberalism, Economy, and Corporate Domination." Uprising Radio (October 22, 2010)
Heller, Nathan. "The Philosopher Redefining Equality." The New Yorker (January 7, 2019) ["Elizabeth Anderson thinks we’ve misunderstood the basis of a free and fair society."]
Henwood, Doug. "A Return to a World Marx Would Have Known." The New York Times (March 30, 2014)
Henry, Marsha. "Reimagining Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and Militarisation in the Global Order." The London School of Economics and Political Science (September 20, 2017) ["Marsha Henry argues for reimagining peacekeeping, which starts with a return to critical theories and concepts in order to acknowledge the production of gendered, racial and classed inequalities in peacekeeping spaces and relations. In particular, turning to critical concepts such as standpoint, power geometries and space-time continuum, the colour line, militarised femininities, and intersectionality, the lecture traces the practical and policy dead-ends that arise when peacekeeping studies relies on policy and practice driven objectives, alone. Marsha Henry is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security."]
Hjersted, Tim. The Top 10 Films that Explain Why Occupy Wall St. Exists." Films For Action (December 13, 2011)
Fekete, Andrea. "The Top Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: # 16 $21 Trillion in Unaccounted-for Government Spending from 1998 to 2015." Project Censored (October 2, 2018) ["Two federal government agencies, the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), may have accumulated as much as $21 trillion in undocumented expenses between 1998 and 2015. Independent news sources, including RT and USAWatchdog, reported this finding based on an investigation conducted by Mark Skidmore, a professor of economics at Michigan State University. Skidmore began to research the alleged irregularities in DoD and HUD spending after hearing Catherine Austin Fitts, who was assistant secretary of HUD during the George H.W. Bush administration, say that the Department of Defense’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) had found $6.5 trillion worth of military spending that the Department of Defense could not account for."]
---. "Where are We Now?" Inside Job: The Financiers Who Pulled Off the Heist of the Century. OneWorld, 2012.
Ferguson, Leo. "Combating Antisemitism." On the Media (May 3, 2019) ["After the attack in Pittsburgh, Bob spoke with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice organizer Leo Ferguson about how to understand the roots of antisemitism and the way it has functioned throughout history in order to help make sense of the threat it poses today. This week, Bob again speaks with Ferguson, who argues that we need to call out and root out antisemitism where we see it — but that the work of combating antisemitism also includes building cross-cultural coalitions that fight against white supremacy and for economic justice."]
Ferguson, Micheale L. "On the Job: Debating Sex Work." Boston Review (May 14, 2014) ["Does sexual liberation entail a laissez faire attitude toward sex, or can it involve the freedom to critically, consciously, and intentionally explore pleasure and desire?... Sexual liberation is best understood as the freedom to be curious about sex and about the broader economic and social context in which desire and sexuality are produced. It is the freedom to engage in pleasure as something to be indulged not mindlessly, but mindfully: observing our individual relationships to our bodies, to what turns us on or off, to what troubles us, and to how this may change over the course of our lives—observing all of this with curiosity."]
Fields, Karen E. and Barbara J. Fields. Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in America. Verso, 2012. ["Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed. That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions."]
Fife, Carol and Dominique Walker. "Moms 4 Housing: Meet the Oakland Mothers Facing Eviction After Two Months Occupying Vacant House." Democracy Now (January 14, 2020) ["In Oakland, California, a group of mothers fighting homelessness is waging a battle against real estate speculators and demanding permanent solutions to the Bay Area housing crisis by occupying a vacant house with their children. The struggle began in November, when working mothers in West Oakland moved into 2928 Magnolia Street, a vacant house owned by real estate investment firm Wedgewood Properties. The firm tried to evict them, claiming they were illegally squatting on private property, but the mothers went to court and filed a “right to possession” claim, saying housing is a human right. Their name is Moms 4 Housing. The battle for the house came to a head last week when an Alameda County judge ruled in favor of Wedgewood Properties and ordered the mothers to vacate the house. But Moms 4 Housing has stayed to fight eviction. Monday night, hundreds of protesters gathered at the house after receiving a tip that the Sheriff’s Office was coming to evict the families — a show of support that led the sheriff to abandon the eviction attempt. We speak with Carroll Fife, director of the Oakland office for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, and Dominique Walker, a member of Moms 4 Housing who has been living at the house with her family."]
Fiorentini, James J., et al. "The Scramble for Amazon." Open Source (October 26, 2017) ["Amazon, the online everything store with the arrow-headed smile in its logo, is ready to build its second headquarters (outside Seattle this time) in a post-industrial urban dreamscape. And there’s barely an American city out there that isn’t begging to be It. Fifty thousand ultra-smart tech jobs in the 100K pay range are the prize. What’ll win the nod from CEO Jeff Bezos is some combination of a smart local workforce, an affordable standard of living and tax breaks galore. So we squint our eyes over this coast-to-coast bidding contest, to see the outline, if we can, of jobs and the workplace coming next. A raging hunger for work itself drives a race that most contestants will lose; that a master of monopoly has already won."]
Fitzpatrick, Megan C., et al. "Improving the Prognosis of Healthcare in America." The Lancet (February 15, 2020) ["Although health care expenditure per capita is higher in the USA than in any other country, more than 37 million Americans do not have health insurance, and 41 million more have inadequate access to care. Efforts are ongoing to repeal the Affordable Care Act which would exacerbate health-care inequities. By contrast, a universal system, such as that proposed in the Medicare for All Act, has the potential to transform the availability and efficiency of American health-care services. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system is likely to lead to a 13% savings in national health-care expenditure, equivalent to more than US$450 billion annually (based on the value of the US$ in 2017). The entire system could be funded with less financial outlay than is incurred by employers and households paying for health-care premiums combined with existing government allocations. This shift to single-payer health care would provide the greatest relief to lower-income households. Furthermore, we estimate that ensuring health-care access for all Americans would save more than 68 000 lives and 1·73 million life-years every year compared with the status quo."]
Flowers, Margaret and Raymond Offenheiser. "Occupy G8: Peoples’ Summit Confronts World Leaders at Camp David, Urging Action on Poverty, Hunger." Democracy Now (May 18, 2012)
Foster, John Bellamy. "Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: The U.S. Case." Monthly Review (July 1, 2011)
Foster, John Bellamy, interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou. "Climate change is the product of how capitalism 'values' nature." Monthly Review (November 18, 2018) ["Climate change is the greatest existential crisis facing humanity today. Capitalist industrialization has led us to the edge of the precipice, and avoiding the end of civilization as we know it may require the development of a view in direct opposition to the way in which capitalism “values” nature, according to John Bellamy Foster, professor of sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the socialist magazine Monthly Review."]
Foster, John Bellamy and Robert W. McChesney. "The Internet's Unholy Marriage to Capitalim" Monthly Review (March 2011)
Foster, John Bellamy, Robert W. McChesney and R. Jamil Jonna. "The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism." Monthly Review 63.6 (November 2011)
---. "The Internationalization of Monopoly Capital." Monthly Review (June 1, 2011)
---. "Monopoly and Competition in Twenty-First Century Capitalism." Monthly Review (April 1, 2011)
Fowler, Susan. "'What Have We Done?”: Silicon Valley Engineers Fear They Have Created a Monster." Vanity Fair (September 2018) ["Gig-economy companies like Uber and Instacart are on the verge of overtaking the traditional economy. And the only people who understand the threat are the ones enabling it."]
Gaffney, Adam. "A History of Putting a Price on Everything: Why policymakers calculate the cost of life and death, sickness and health." The New Republic (December 1, 2017)
---. "Bill of Health: How Market Logic Hobbles Our Nation's Hospitals." The Baffler #52 (July 2020) ["The consequences of this profit-oriented financing system is a combination of deprivation and excess. That kind of inequality of health care supply has a name. In 1971, the British general practitioner Julian Tudor Hart coined a phrase, the “inverse care law,” that describes it well. “The availability of good medical care,” he wrote in The Lancet, “tends to vary inversely with the need for it in the population served.” Those who need care the most, that is to say, have the least access to it. ... As Hart noted, the “inverse care law operates more completely where medical care is most exposed to market forces, and less so where such exposure is reduced.” As such, the inverse care law is today in operation in the United States like no other high-income nation. But we can change that. We could fund new hospitals and new health infrastructure not from profits, but from the public purse, something that the Medicare for All bills now in Congress, particularly the House version, would achieve. Hospital expansion would then be premised on the basis of health needs, not market logic."]
Galvani, Alison. "Yale Study Says Medicare for All Would Save U.S. $450 Billion, Prevent Nearly 70,000 Deaths a Year." Democracy Now (February 19, 2020) ["As the Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to take to the debate stage tonight, we turn to a central issue of the campaign: Medicare for All. In a new study, Yale scholars have found that Medicare for All will save Americans more than $450 billion and prevent 68,000 deaths every year. The study in The Lancet — one of the oldest and most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals — found that Medicare for All, supported by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, will save money and is more cost-effective than “Medicare for All Who Want It, “a model supported by Pete Buttigieg. Sanders referenced the study at a campaign rally in Carson City, Nevada. For more, we go to New Haven, Connecticut, where we’re joined by Alison Galvani, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis at Yale’s School of Public Health. She is the lead author of the new Lancet study, “Improving the prognosis of health care in the USA.”"]
Gambino, Lauren. "Hundreds arrested as activists pick up where Martin Luther King left off." The Guardian (May 14, 2018) ["The Poor People’s campaign kicked off 40 days of nonviolent protest on Monday, reviving King’s anti-poverty efforts and demanding action."]
Gardner, Matthew. "Amazon in Its Prime: Doubles Profits, Pays $0 in Federal Income Taxes." Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (February 13, 2019)
Gee, Alastair. "“Bussed Out”: How Cities Are Giving Thousands of Homeless People One-Way Bus Tickets to Leave Town." Democracy Now (December 29, 2017) ["A major new investigation by The Guardian examined how cities are struggling to solve the problem of homelessness throughout the year, and found many have come to rely on an old solution: a one-way ticket out of town. Relocation programs that offer homeless people free bus tickets to move elsewhere have been around for at least three decades. But as the homeless population rises for the first time since the Great Recession, relocation programs are becoming more common and are expanding to more cities. We speak with The Guardian’s homelessness editor, Alastair Gee, about many people who were bused out, remained homeless and eventually returned to the city they had left."]
Giridharadas, Anand. "'The Billionaire Election': How 2020 Is a Referendum on Wealth Inequality." Democracy Now (February 26, 2020) ["The 10th Democratic presidential debate took place Tuesday in Charleston, South Carolina, and two billionaires were at either end of the stage: Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. Front-runner Bernie Sanders, who has made attacking the power of the “billionaire class” a central theme of his campaign, stood in the middle. It was a visual representation of the split within the Democratic Party, in which a growing number of people are “rising up against plutocracy,” says Anand Giridharadas, editor-at-large at Time magazine and author of “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.” His recent piece for The New York Times is titled “The Billionaire Election: Does the world belong to them or to us?"]
---. "The Elite Charade of Changing the World." Ralph Nader Radio Hour (November 3, 2018) ["Ralph welcomes journalist and author, Anand Giridharadas to talk about his book, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, which argues that rich “do-gooders” don’t really want to change the system that made them rich."]
---. "How Philanthropy Lets Rich People Off the Hook." On the Media (April 19, 2019) ["Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: the Elite Charade of Changing the World, explains that we're living in a century-old bargain between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of society: the rich get rich, and the rest of us get downstream benefits. Giridharadas and Bob talk about the origins of this bargain — and what needs to shift if we hope to see meaningful structural solutions to society's most pressing challenges."]
---. "The Slow and Fast Assault on Public Education." Boston Review (May 14, 2018)
Gladwell, Malcolm. "Carlos Doesn't Remember." Revisionist History 1.4 (ND) ["Carlos is a brilliant student from South Los Angeles. He attends an exclusive private school on an academic scholarship. He is the kind of person the American meritocracy is supposed to reward. But in the hidden details of his life lies a cautionary tale about how hard it is to rise from the bottom to the top—and why the American school system, despite its best efforts, continues to leave an extraordinary amount of talent on the table."]
Global Issues: Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All." [UK/USA: Anup Shah "Welcome to the global issues web site. This web site looks into global issues that affect everyone and aims to show how most issues are inter-related. There are over 550 articles on this site, mostly written by myself. The issues discussed range from trade, poverty and globalization, to human rights, geopolitics, the environment, and much more. Spread over these articles, there are over 7,000 links to external articles, web sites, reports and analysis to help provide credence to the arguments made on this web site."]
Gokey, Thomas and Astra Taylor. "Debt Collective." Team Human #1 (July 29, 2016) ["Joining team human are debt resisters Astra Taylor and Thomas Gokey. Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, activist, and musician. Her films include the documentaries Zizek! and the Examined Life.Taylor’s recent book The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age takes a hard look at the persisting and embedded inequalities in today’s digital media landscape. Thomas Gokey is a visual artist, adjunct professor at Syracuse University, and activist. Gokey’s piece entitled, Total Amount of Money Rendered in Exchange for a Masters of Fine Arts Degree to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pulped into Four Sheets of Paper reimagined his own student debt as art. Both Thomas Gokey and Astra Taylor seized the momentum of Occupy Wall Street to help launch a direct action campaign of debt resistance. Working through the collective force of Strike Debt, Rolling Jubilee, and the Debt Collective, Gokey and Taylor are fighting back against the economic injustice of debt in America."]
Goldstein, Dana. "Nation’s First Teachers’ Strike at Charter Network Begins in Chicago." The New York Times (December 4, 2018) ["Charters are funded by taxpayers but independently managed by nonprofit organizations, like Acero, or by for-profit companies. Educators at Acero earn up to $13,000 less than their counterparts at traditional public schools in Chicago and cannot afford to live comfortably in an increasingly expensive city, according to the Chicago Teachers Union, which represents the striking workers. The chief executive of Acero, Richard L. Rodriguez, earns about $260,000 annually to manage 15 schools, a similar salary to that of Janice K. Jackson, the chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools system, which includes over 500 schools. In addition to higher pay for teachers and support staff, the union is asking that more money be spent on special education services for students and on a program that allows classroom assistants to continue their education and become lead teachers. The union also argues that Acero’s class sizes — up to 32 students at every grade level — are too high."]
Goodwin, Jeff. "W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction Is Essential Reading." Jacobin (September 21, 2022) ["Black Reconstruction is not only a towering work of history but also a work firmly embedded in the Marxist tradition. Du Bois reinterprets the Civil War as a social and political revolution “from below” — a workers’ revolution — that brought about the overthrow of both slavery and the Confederate state, thereby opening a door to interracial democracy in the South. The book then reinterprets the subsequent overthrow of this democracy as a class-based counterrevolution that destroyed the possibility of freedom for half the Southern working class and imposed a “dictatorship of capital” that brought about “an exploitation of labor unparalleled in modern times.”"]
Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. (Melville House Publishing: Audio Version on Unwelcome Guests)
---. "Debt: The First Five Thousand Years." Mute (February 10, 2009)
---. "A Practical Utopian's Guide to the Coming Collapse." The Baffler #22 (2013)
Graeber, David, et al. "Let Your Life Be A Friction (To Stop The Machine)." Unwelcome Guests (March 3, 2012)
---, et al. "Occupy 2.0 (Peer Produced Politics)." Unwelcome Guests (March 10, 2012)
---, et al. "The Psychology of Transition: Undoing Millennia of Social Control." Unwelcome Guests #597 (March 31, 2012)
Graves, Lisa and John Nichols. "Billionaires for Austerity: With Cuts Looming, Wall Street Roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed." Democracy Now (February 26, 2013)
Graves, Lisa and Zaid Jilani. "The Restaurant Industry Ran a Private Poll on the Minimum Wage. It Did Not Go Well For Them." The Intercept (April 17, 2018)
The Great African Scandal (BBC: Robert Beckford, 2007: 48 mins) ["Robert Beckford visits Ghana to investigate the hidden costs of rice, chocolate and gold and why, 50 years after independence, a country so rich in ‘natural resources’ is one of the poorest in the world. He discovers child labourers farming cocoa instead of attending school and asks if the activities of multinationals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actually made the country’s problems worse."]
Greenhouse, Steven. "One Job Should be Enough: How workers’ voices were silenced in America—and how they’re fighting back." American Scholar (August 23, 2019) ["Steven Greenhouse was the labor and workplace reporter for The New York Times for 19 years. His last book, The Big Squeeze, is a detailed report on how American workers are being abused by corporations and bosses: freezing wages; replacing long-term employees with contractors, subcontractors, and freelancers; reducing hours. And where full-time employees are to be found, bosses are replacing pensions with 401Ks; trimming down paid holidays, vacations, and sick days; pressuring workers to do more per hour; forcing arbitration instead of lawsuits; mandating non-compete causes—not to mention off-shoring jobs to countries with fewer labor or environmental protections and cheaper wages. In the 10 years since Greenhouse’s book appeared, corporations haven’t exactly changed their tune—but the labor movement has. There’s been a surge in organizing from the service industry to Silicon Valley: the Fight for Fifteen, #REDforED teachers’ strikes, walkouts at Google and Wayfair, and, this month, 11,000 airline catering workers across 28 cities voting to authorize a strike for better conditions. Where did this momentum come from? In his new book, Beaten Down, Worked Up, Steven Greenhouse tries to answer that question, alongside its corollaries. Why did worker power decline so much over the past 50 years? And what can we do to rekindle that collective power?"]
Gross, Allie. "Charterize, Privatize, Christianize: The DeVos-Backed Policies That 'Gutted' Michigan Public Schools." Democracy Now (March 13, 2018) ["Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is facing new criticism after she struggled in a recent “60 Minutes” interview to explain why schools in her home state of Michigan are faring poorly under the policies she has championed. DeVos is a billionaire Republican activist and the sister of Blackwater founder Erik Prince. She once served as chair of the American Federation for Children in Michigan, where she promoted school choice and worked to expand the state’s use of private charter schools. Many educators say the results of DeVos’s policies in Michigan have been disastrous. For more, we speak with Allie Gross, a reporter with the Detroit Free Press. She covered education in Michigan as a freelance reporter and was a Teach for America teacher in a Detroit charter school."]
Gross, Ashley and Jon Marcus. "High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up For University." All Things Considered (April 25, 2018)
Guerguerian, Amba and Katie Puden. "Amazon Labor Union’s small army of volunteer law students." Monthly Review (November 26, 2022)
Guevara, Marina Walker. "Paradise Found." On the Media (November 10, 2017) ["A year and a half after the explosive leak of the Panama Papers revealed the shady, yet entirely legal, offshore banking practices of world's richest people and companies, a new trove of documents was announced: the Paradise Papers. This time, the leak discloses the financial dealings of some familiar names and faces, including members of the Trump Administration. The public officials acknowledge and defend the practice of skirting taxes through the use of havens, and deny any possible conflicts of interest. Bob speaks with Marina Walker Guevara, Deputy Director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which facilitated reporting on the documents along with hundreds of reporters around the globe. She shares how reporters from such a large network collaborate and explores what kinds of questions we should all be asking after learning that the rich and powerful play by a different set of rules than the rest of us."]
Hacker, Jacob S. and Paul Pierson. "The Powell Memo: A Call to Arms for Corporations." Moyers & Company (September 14, 2012) ["In this excerpt from Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explain the significance of the Powell Memorandum, a call-to-arms for American corporations written by Virginia lawyer (and future U.S. Supreme Court justice) Lewis Powell to a neighbor working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."]
Hall, Stuart, et al. "The Neoliberal Revolution." ed. Jonathan Rutherford and Sally Davidson. Lawrence & Wishart Books, 2012.
Hall, Suzanne, et al. "Is the Gentrification of Our Global Cities Inevitable?" LSE IQ #19 (October 2018) ["In 1964 the sociologist Ruth Glass coined the term ‘gentrification’ to describe the process of London’s working class neighbourhoods being taken over by the middle classes. Modest two-up two down terrace houses were bought cheap, done up and made into expensive residences. Once grand Victorian houses that had fallen on hard times and become lodging houses or homes to multiple families, were restored once again and sub-divided into luxury flats. Soon the working class residents had been squeezed out of the neighbourhood and its character changed completely. Fifty years on and this process continues apace in London and many other cities."]
Hanna, Thomas and Nomi Prins. "Revolution at the Federal Reserve and Public Banking." The Laura Flanders Show (January 23, 2019) ["As the World Economic Forum takes place in Davos, Switzerland, we talk about the way central banks steer world development and for whom. Former Goldman Sachs managing director Nomi Prins, author of "Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World," and public ownership researcher, Thomas Hanna, author of “Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States,” and Research Director at The Democracy Collaborative, believe that banking, and development, could be very different."]
Hart-Landsberg, Marty. "Class, Race and Wealth Inequality." Economic Front (January 3, 2018)
---. "Taxes, Inequality and Class Power." Economic Front (December 22, 2017)
---. "Too Many Whites Are In Denial About The Extent Of Race-Based Economic Inequality." Economic Front (January 19, 2018) ["A recently published paper by three Yale scholars reveals “that Americans, on average, systematically overestimate the extent to which society has progressed toward racial economic equality, driven largely by overestimates of current racial equality.”"]
Hashim, Shakeel, et al. "Effective Altruism and Its Critics." Hi-Phi Nation (May 9, 2023) ["Curtis is setting aside a large chunk of money to donate to charity, and it is up to us to persuade him where he should donate it. Luckily, philosophers, economists, and the nonprofit world have been thinking a lot about this issue in recent years. On this episode, effective altruism’s defenders and critics try to persuade Curtis of where he should donate. Who is the most effective in persuading an ordinary person as to the right way to donate to charity? And do the recent scandals involving effective altruism’s biggest donor implicate its philosophical foundations? We start with arguments that you should always try to save the most lives possible, no matter where they are on the planet. We then hear a critic of that view, who argues that local giving can also be a good. We then turn to the view that we should save humans from extinction from threats like pandemics, nuclear war, and AI takeover. And finally, we hear from a critic of that view, who says we should not blow future risks out of proportion."]
---. "Crises of Capitalism." RSA Animate (June 28, 2010: Video)
---. "Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason." Left Out (November 7, 2017)
Hattingh, Shawn. "Not a Matter of If, but When. Monthly Review (February 13, 2018)
---. "The Death of the Liberal Class." (Video of presentation at The Sanctuary for Independent Media: October 17, 2010)
---. Neoliberalism and Its Effects in the Modern USA." Unwelcome Guests (September 28, 2012)
---. "On 9/11 & Touring U.S. Economic Disaster Zones in "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt" Democracy Now (September 11, 2012)
Hedges, Chris, Jim Powell and Tim Maby. "Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco: drawing America's invisible poor - audio slideshow." The Guardian (July 12, 2012)
Hedges, Chris, Vandana Shiva and Robert Scheer. "Liberalism, Economy, and Corporate Domination." Uprising Radio (October 22, 2010)
Heenan, Natasha. "Sylvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch." Progress in Political Economy (November 6, 2017) [You can read the book online here]
Heller, Nathan. "The Philosopher Redefining Equality." The New Yorker (January 7, 2019) ["Elizabeth Anderson thinks we’ve misunderstood the basis of a free and fair society."]
Henry, Marsha. "Reimagining Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and Militarisation in the Global Order." The London School of Economics and Political Science (September 20, 2017) ["Marsha Henry argues for reimagining peacekeeping, which starts with a return to critical theories and concepts in order to acknowledge the production of gendered, racial and classed inequalities in peacekeeping spaces and relations. In particular, turning to critical concepts such as standpoint, power geometries and space-time continuum, the colour line, militarised femininities, and intersectionality, the lecture traces the practical and policy dead-ends that arise when peacekeeping studies relies on policy and practice driven objectives, alone. Marsha Henry is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security."]
Hertel-Fernandez, Alexander, Caroline Tervo and Theda Skocpol. "How the Koch brothers built the most powerful rightwing group you've never heard of." The Guardian (September 26, 2018) ["In America, wealthy people have always thrown their weight around to influence elections and policy. But what is newer and more portentous in the early 21st century, especially at the state level, is the rise of organized big donor collectives through which hundreds of billionaires and millionaires invest in organization-building to remake the very terrain on which US elections and government activities play out. Organized political mega-donors can get much more leverage through persistent organizations than from scattered, one-time contributions to particular politicians."]
Hirthler, Jason. "Colonizing the Western Mind." Counterpunch (March 2, 2018)
Hjersted, Tim. The Top 10 Films that Explain Why Occupy Wall St. Exists." Films For Action (December 13, 2011)
Hobbes, Michael and Peter Shamshiri. "Freakonomics." If Books Could Kill (November 1, 2022) [An episode on why this popular book is so problematic and misleading.]
Holland, Joshua. "Bumbling, Blame and Bankruptcy in Wake of West Virginia Chemical Spill." Moyers and Co. (January 24, 2014)
Homan, Robert. "Think Different." The Boston Review (August 21, 2018) ["Apple recently became the first publicly traded American company to be valued at $1 trillion. It is also the world’s single greatest direct cause of inequality. This claim is not polemical, but statistical: Apple redistributes more wealth upward than any corporation or country on the planet."]
Honey, Michael and James Lawson. "He Gave His Life in the Labor Struggle: MLK’s Forgotten Radical Message for Economic Justice." Democracy Now (April 3, 2018) ["Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 50 years ago this week while in Memphis, where he was supporting striking sanitation workers and building support for his Poor People’s Campaign. We look at King’s long history of fighting for economic justice, with the Rev. James Lawson and historian Michael Honey, author of the new book “To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice.”"]
Houlder, Vanessa, Megan Murphy and Jeff Gerth. "IRS, U.S. Banks at Odds Over $1 Billion in Tax Credits from Barclays Deals." Pro Publica (September 25, 2011)
Howard, Ted and Marjorie Kelly. "The Making of a Democratic Economy." Building Bridges (October 1, 2019) ["The Making of a Democratic Economy with Ted Howard, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and Marjorie Kelly, author of The Divine Right of Capital, and Owning our Future have teamed up to co-author The Making of a Democratic Economy, a clarion call for a movement ready to get serious about transforming our economic system. The authors illuminate the principles of a democratic economy through the stories of on-the-ground community wealth builders and their unlikely accomplices in the halls of institutional power. Their book is a must read for everyone concerned with how we win the fight for an economy that’s equitable, not extractive."]
"How U.S. Taxpayers Subsidize the Nation's Wealthiest Family." Jobs with Justice (April 14, 2014)
Hudson, Michael. "Wall Street vs. Greece: G20 Opens as Greek PM Pushes for Referendum on Bailout and Austerity Measures." Democracy Now (November 2, 2011)
Hudson, Michael and Jeffrey Sommers. "The Queen Mother of Global Austerity and Financialization: Thatcher's Mean Legacy." Democracy Now (April 8, 2013)
Hunt, Jennifer, et al. "Are They Really Taking Our Jobs (The Economics of Immigration)." The Best of the Left #1268 (April 30, 2019) ["Today we take a look at just the economic side of immigration including the effects from low-skilled immigrants and high-skilled immigrants and then look at an alternative vision for how we should debate the issue from the left."]
Hyman, Louis. "The Radical Catalog." On the Media (October 18, 2018) ["Another chapter in the history of American consumerism came to a close this week when the retail giant Sears announced it was filing for bankruptcy and closing 142 of its unprofitable stores. As experts sifted through the details about what doomed Sears, we found ourselves reading a Twitter thread about a little-known bit of shopping history. Louis Hymanis an economic historian and professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He tweeted: "In my history of consumption class, I teach about Sears, but what most people don't know is just how radical the catalogue was in the era of Jim Crow." In this week's podcast extra, Hyman talks to Brooke about what we can learn from the way Sears upended Jim Crow power dynamics, and what lessons it offers about capitalism more broadly. His latest book is Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary."]
Hypernormalisation (BBC: Adam Curtis, 2016: 166 mins) ["HyperNormalisation wades through the culmination of forces that have driven this culture into mass uncertainty, confusion, spectacle and simulation. Where events keep happening that seem crazy, inexplicable and out of control—from Donald Trump to Brexit, to the War in Syria, mass immigration, extreme disparity in wealth, and increasing bomb attacks in the West—this film shows a basis to not only why these chaotic events are happening, but also why we, as well as those in power, may not understand them. We have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. And because it is reflected all around us, ubiquitous, we accept it as normal. This epic narrative of how we got here spans over 40 years, with an extraordinary cast of characters—the Assad dynasty, Donald Trump, Henry Kissinger, Patti Smith, early performance artists in New York, President Putin, Japanese gangsters, suicide bombers, Colonel Gaddafi and the Internet. HyperNormalisation weaves these historical narratives back together to show how today’s fake and hollow world was created and is sustained. This shows that a new kind of resistance must be imagined and actioned, as well as an unprecedented reawakening in a time where it matters like never before."]
Holland, Joshua. "Bumbling, Blame and Bankruptcy in Wake of West Virginia Chemical Spill." Moyers and Co. (January 24, 2014)
Holt-Giménez, Eric. "A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism." The Distillery (Season 1 - ND) ["People are not going hungry because of food scarcity but because of inequality. Introducing global food systems and how they impact farmers and consumers, Eric Holt-Giménez unpacks the intersections of class, gender, and race from the unique vantage point of the food economy."]
Houlder, Vanessa, Megan Murphy and Jeff Gerth. "IRS, U.S. Banks at Odds Over $1 Billion in Tax Credits from Barclays Deals." Pro Publica (September 25, 2011)
Howard, Ted and Marjorie Kelly. "The Making of a Democratic Economy." Building Bridges (October 1, 2019) ["The Making of a Democratic Economy with Ted Howard, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, and Marjorie Kelly, author of The Divine Right of Capital, and Owning our Future have teamed up to co-author The Making of a Democratic Economy, a clarion call for a movement ready to get serious about transforming our economic system. The authors illuminate the principles of a democratic economy through the stories of on-the-ground community wealth builders and their unlikely accomplices in the halls of institutional power. Their book is a must read for everyone concerned with how we win the fight for an economy that’s equitable, not extractive."]
"How U.S. Taxpayers Subsidize the Nation's Wealthiest Family." Jobs with Justice (April 14, 2014)
Hudson, Michael. "Wall Street vs. Greece: G20 Opens as Greek PM Pushes for Referendum on Bailout and Austerity Measures." Democracy Now (November 2, 2011)
Hudson, Michael and Jeffrey Sommers. "The Queen Mother of Global Austerity and Financialization: Thatcher's Mean Legacy." Democracy Now (April 8, 2013)
Hunt, Jennifer, et al. "Are They Really Taking Our Jobs (The Economics of Immigration)." The Best of the Left #1268 (April 30, 2019) ["Today we take a look at just the economic side of immigration including the effects from low-skilled immigrants and high-skilled immigrants and then look at an alternative vision for how we should debate the issue from the left."]
Hyman, Louis. "The Radical Catalog." On the Media (October 18, 2018) ["Another chapter in the history of American consumerism came to a close this week when the retail giant Sears announced it was filing for bankruptcy and closing 142 of its unprofitable stores. As experts sifted through the details about what doomed Sears, we found ourselves reading a Twitter thread about a little-known bit of shopping history. Louis Hymanis an economic historian and professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He tweeted: "In my history of consumption class, I teach about Sears, but what most people don't know is just how radical the catalogue was in the era of Jim Crow." In this week's podcast extra, Hyman talks to Brooke about what we can learn from the way Sears upended Jim Crow power dynamics, and what lessons it offers about capitalism more broadly. His latest book is Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary."]
Jackson, Matthew O. "The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors (Vintage 2019)." New Books in Economics (January 5, 2024) ["Social networks existed and shaped our lives long before Silicon Valley startups made them virtual. For over two decades economist Matthew O. Jackson, a professor at Stanford University, has studied how the shape of networks and our positions within them can affect us. In The Human Network: How Your Social Position Determines Your Power, Beliefs, and Behaviors (Vintage, 2019), he explains how network structures can create poverty traps, exacerbate financial crises, and contribute to political polarization. He also explains how a new awareness of the role of networks has been used to improve financial regulation, promote public health knowledge, and guide vaccination strategy. Jackson also discusses how he first began to study networks, previously neglected by economists, and how economists can both learn from and contribute to the exciting cross-disciplinary dialogue among researchers from sociology, math, physics, and other fields. Professor Jackson's website provides free access to the chapter on contagion, of particular interest in this time of pandemic. For those who want to learn even more than the book can cover, he offers a free online course on the topic."]
Jauch, Herbert. "How The IMF-World Bank and Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) Destroyed Africa." News Rescue (May 26, 2009) ["Below is a brief background of the events that led many countries to accept SAPs. It describes how SAPs are being implemented and what results they have produced over the past 20 years. This article also gives a short analysis of the roles of the World Bank, the IMF and the local political elites in this process."]
Jayapal, Pramila. "Medicare for All Will Lower Costs & Expand Healthcare Coverage to Everyone." Democracy Now (March 6, 2019) ["More than 100 Democratic lawmakers are co-sponsoring a new House bill to dramatically revamp healthcare in the United States by creating a Medicare-for-all system funded by the federal government. This comes at a time when as many as 30 million Americans have no health insurance and tens of millions more are either underinsured or struggling to pay their health insurance premiums."]
Jayaraman, Saru. "All Work and No Pay." Bill Moyers and Co. (April 4, 2014) ["Did you know the federal minimum wage for millions of restaurant workers is $2.13 an hour? Advocate Saru Jayaraman says that’s not only unfair but unsafe."]
Jayaraman, Saru and Damani Varnado."Facing Mass Layoffs, Restaurant Workers Living 'Tip to Mouth' Demand Living Wage & Paid Sick Leave." Democracy Now (March 18, 2020) ["Mass shutdowns and layoffs due to the spread of COVID-19 are affecting millions of restaurant workers across the U.S., with bars and restaurants closing for the foreseeable future. Servers, bartenders, kitchen staff and more have been left in the lurch, many without paid sick leave, paid time off or benefits. One study estimated 4 million restaurant workers in the U.S. are at risk of losing their jobs in a matter of weeks. For more on the impacts on service workers, we speak with Saru Jayaraman, the co-founder of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and president of One Fair Wage, which has launched an emergency fund to support workers during this time. We also speak with Damani Varnado, a restaurant worker who has worked in catering, fine dining and cocktailing for the past 20 years in New York City. He was working at the restaurant Tiny’s & The Bar Upstairs when the whole staff was let go during the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus outbreak is a “devastating” blow to an industry that had “severe structural inequality problems that existed long before this crisis,” Saru Jayaraman."]
Jayaraman, Saru, Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg. "Trumps's Sneaky Tips Theft." Building Bridges (February 13, 2018) ["The Trump Department of Labor, backed by the National Restaurant Association, is moving quickly to push a new rule that will make tips the property of restaurant owners rather than workers. It recently proposed rolling back a rule that protects workers in tipped industries, including restaurant servers and bartenders, from having their tips taken away by their employers. Under the proposal, federal law would allow restaurant owners who pay their wait staff and bartenders as little as $7.25/hour to confiscate and pocket all of the tips left by customers, without having to disclose to patrons what happens to the tips. Tips account for over half of these workers' income which even together still adds up to poverty wages. More than $5.8 billion dollars will be transferred from workers to bosses under this proposal. Nearly 80 percent of the tips that would be stolen by employers would come from female tipped workers. Many women who work for tips already face harassment and discrimination at work, and this rule adds insult to injury."]
Johnson, Walter, et al. "To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice." Boston Review (February 20, 2018)
Johnston, David Cay. "The corporations that occupy Congress." Reuters (December 20, 2011)
Jolie, Rachel Anne. "Marxist Feminism: The Struggle Against Capitalist Patriarchal Hegemony." Revolutionary Left Radio (August 28, 2017) ["Topics include: A brief summary of the history of feminism, the differences between Marxist Feminism and Liberal Feminism, Sex Work, Trans rights, connections between the LGBTQ struggle and the labor struggle, the importance of intersectional Solidarity, and much more!"]
Jones, Mark, et al. "Rosa Luxemburg." In These Times (April 13, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), 'Red Rosa', who was born in Poland under the Russian Empire and became one of the leading revolutionaries in an age of revolution. Shewas jailed for agitation and for her campaign against the Great War which, she argued, pitted workers against each other for the sake of capitalism. With Karl Liebknecht and other radicals, she founded the Spartacus League in the hope of ending the war through revolution. She founded the German Communist Party with Liebknecht; with the violence that followed the German Revolution of 1918, her opponents condemned her as Bloody Rosa. She and Liebknecht were seen as ringleaders in the Spartacus Revolt of 1919 and, on 15th January 1919, the Freikorps militia arrested and murdered them. While Luxemburg has faced opposition for her actions and ideas from many quarters, she went on to become an iconic figure in East Germany under the Cold War and a focal point for opposition to the Soviet-backed leadership."]
Jourdan, Brandon. "Egyptian Winter: A New Short Documentary." Global Uprising (March 4, 2013) ["Two years after the revolution in Egypt began, unrest continues across the country as the political and economic situation worsens. As the current government consolidates its power, the demands of the revolution may seem further away than ever. Still the revolution has opened up new spaces for political action, spurring public debate on issues that have gone unacknowledged and unresolved for too long. This short documentary looks at some of the reasons motivating revolutionaries to keep taking the streets, the obstacles that they are facing, and the tactics that they are using. It looks into the current economic and political problems facing Egyptians, the growing independent union movement, black bloc tactics, and the response of women to sexual assaults.]"
---. "New Documentary: Bosnia and Herzegovina in Spring." Global Uprisings (March 21, 2014) ["This short documentary tells the story of the uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina that started in early February 2014. Since February 5 2014, protests have swept across Bosnia and Herzegovina. The protests were started by workers from five factories in northern city of Tuzla: Dita, Polihem, Poliolhem, GUMARA and Konjuh. The factories had been privatized, bankrupted and stripped of assets, leaving the workers with large debts, no salaries, no health care and no benefits. The protests culminated on February 7, 2014 when several governmental buildings were set on fire in cities across the country, including the presidential building in Sarajevo. Under pressure of protests, four regional governments resigned. The protests were followed with mass popular assemblies, referred to as plenums, that quickly spread across the country."]
Kaba, Mariame. "We Need a People's Bailout to Combat Coronavirus." The Intercept (March 19, 2020)
Kafer, Gary. "Surveillance capitalism and its racial discontents." Jump Cut #59 (Fall 2019)
Kaye, Harvey, et al. "The Fight for the Four Freedoms (FDR vs Libertarianism)." Best of the Left #1247 (February 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the history of FDR's "Four Freedoms" and "Economic Bill of Rights" that laid the groundwork for the fight for economic freedom for all that continues to this day."]
Kelley, Robin D.G. "What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?" Boston Review (January 12, 2017) ["Cedric Robinson’s critique anticipated the political currents in contemporary movements such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter."]
Jauch, Herbert. "How The IMF-World Bank and Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) Destroyed Africa." News Rescue (May 26, 2009) ["Below is a brief background of the events that led many countries to accept SAPs. It describes how SAPs are being implemented and what results they have produced over the past 20 years. This article also gives a short analysis of the roles of the World Bank, the IMF and the local political elites in this process."]
Jayapal, Pramila. "Medicare for All Will Lower Costs & Expand Healthcare Coverage to Everyone." Democracy Now (March 6, 2019) ["More than 100 Democratic lawmakers are co-sponsoring a new House bill to dramatically revamp healthcare in the United States by creating a Medicare-for-all system funded by the federal government. This comes at a time when as many as 30 million Americans have no health insurance and tens of millions more are either underinsured or struggling to pay their health insurance premiums."]
Jayaraman, Saru and Damani Varnado."Facing Mass Layoffs, Restaurant Workers Living 'Tip to Mouth' Demand Living Wage & Paid Sick Leave." Democracy Now (March 18, 2020) ["Mass shutdowns and layoffs due to the spread of COVID-19 are affecting millions of restaurant workers across the U.S., with bars and restaurants closing for the foreseeable future. Servers, bartenders, kitchen staff and more have been left in the lurch, many without paid sick leave, paid time off or benefits. One study estimated 4 million restaurant workers in the U.S. are at risk of losing their jobs in a matter of weeks. For more on the impacts on service workers, we speak with Saru Jayaraman, the co-founder of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and president of One Fair Wage, which has launched an emergency fund to support workers during this time. We also speak with Damani Varnado, a restaurant worker who has worked in catering, fine dining and cocktailing for the past 20 years in New York City. He was working at the restaurant Tiny’s & The Bar Upstairs when the whole staff was let go during the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus outbreak is a “devastating” blow to an industry that had “severe structural inequality problems that existed long before this crisis,” Saru Jayaraman."]
Jayaraman, Saru, Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg. "Trumps's Sneaky Tips Theft." Building Bridges (February 13, 2018) ["The Trump Department of Labor, backed by the National Restaurant Association, is moving quickly to push a new rule that will make tips the property of restaurant owners rather than workers. It recently proposed rolling back a rule that protects workers in tipped industries, including restaurant servers and bartenders, from having their tips taken away by their employers. Under the proposal, federal law would allow restaurant owners who pay their wait staff and bartenders as little as $7.25/hour to confiscate and pocket all of the tips left by customers, without having to disclose to patrons what happens to the tips. Tips account for over half of these workers' income which even together still adds up to poverty wages. More than $5.8 billion dollars will be transferred from workers to bosses under this proposal. Nearly 80 percent of the tips that would be stolen by employers would come from female tipped workers. Many women who work for tips already face harassment and discrimination at work, and this rule adds insult to injury."]
Johnson, Walter, et al. "To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice." Boston Review (February 20, 2018)
Jolie, Rachel Anne. "Marxist Feminism: The Struggle Against Capitalist Patriarchal Hegemony." Revolutionary Left Radio (August 28, 2017) ["Topics include: A brief summary of the history of feminism, the differences between Marxist Feminism and Liberal Feminism, Sex Work, Trans rights, connections between the LGBTQ struggle and the labor struggle, the importance of intersectional Solidarity, and much more!"]
Jolna, Karon and Aviva Dove-Viebahn, eds. Gender, Race and Class: From the Pages of Ms. Magazine, 1972 - Present. (ND)
Jones, Mark, et al. "Rosa Luxemburg." In These Times (April 13, 2017) ["Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), 'Red Rosa', who was born in Poland under the Russian Empire and became one of the leading revolutionaries in an age of revolution. Shewas jailed for agitation and for her campaign against the Great War which, she argued, pitted workers against each other for the sake of capitalism. With Karl Liebknecht and other radicals, she founded the Spartacus League in the hope of ending the war through revolution. She founded the German Communist Party with Liebknecht; with the violence that followed the German Revolution of 1918, her opponents condemned her as Bloody Rosa. She and Liebknecht were seen as ringleaders in the Spartacus Revolt of 1919 and, on 15th January 1919, the Freikorps militia arrested and murdered them. While Luxemburg has faced opposition for her actions and ideas from many quarters, she went on to become an iconic figure in East Germany under the Cold War and a focal point for opposition to the Soviet-backed leadership."]
---. "New Documentary: Bosnia and Herzegovina in Spring." Global Uprisings (March 21, 2014) ["This short documentary tells the story of the uprising in Bosnia and Herzegovina that started in early February 2014. Since February 5 2014, protests have swept across Bosnia and Herzegovina. The protests were started by workers from five factories in northern city of Tuzla: Dita, Polihem, Poliolhem, GUMARA and Konjuh. The factories had been privatized, bankrupted and stripped of assets, leaving the workers with large debts, no salaries, no health care and no benefits. The protests culminated on February 7, 2014 when several governmental buildings were set on fire in cities across the country, including the presidential building in Sarajevo. Under pressure of protests, four regional governments resigned. The protests were followed with mass popular assemblies, referred to as plenums, that quickly spread across the country."]
Kaba, Mariame. "We Need a People's Bailout to Combat Coronavirus." The Intercept (March 19, 2020)
Kafer, Gary. "Surveillance capitalism and its racial discontents." Jump Cut #59 (Fall 2019)
Kaye, Harvey, et al. "The Fight for the Four Freedoms (FDR vs Libertarianism)." Best of the Left #1247 (February 5, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the history of FDR's "Four Freedoms" and "Economic Bill of Rights" that laid the groundwork for the fight for economic freedom for all that continues to this day."]
Kenworthy, Nora. "What Fixes Medical Debt." Today, Explained (May 14, 2024) ["It's gotten so bad in America, people are crowdfunding their doctor bills. Vox's Dylan Scott and associate professor Nora Kenworthy explain an imperfect solution and offer a better one."]
Khan, Mansoor. "The Face Behind the Case: Janus v. AFSCME, Dark Money, and the Future of Labor." Los Angeles Review of Books (June 3, 2018) ["In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Janus v. American Federation of State, Municipal, and County Employees, a case which will have far-reaching consequences for the labor movement. The case centers on the question of whether unions can compel non-members to pay a fee, usually referred to as an agency fee, which covers the expenses of representing the non-members. Under current law, states get to decide whether or not unions can compel non-members to pay these agency fees. Agency fees have been banned in 28 states, colloquially called “right-to-work” states — a branding coup for the right-wing in this country that any Madison Avenue agency would be proud of. If the court rules in favor of the petitioner, Mark Janus, as most people expect, then the public sector in every state will be “right-to-work” and public sector unions will not be able to charge agency fees."]
Khan, Mansoor. "The Face Behind the Case: Janus v. AFSCME, Dark Money, and the Future of Labor." Los Angeles Review of Books (June 3, 2018) ["In February, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Janus v. American Federation of State, Municipal, and County Employees, a case which will have far-reaching consequences for the labor movement. The case centers on the question of whether unions can compel non-members to pay a fee, usually referred to as an agency fee, which covers the expenses of representing the non-members. Under current law, states get to decide whether or not unions can compel non-members to pay these agency fees. Agency fees have been banned in 28 states, colloquially called “right-to-work” states — a branding coup for the right-wing in this country that any Madison Avenue agency would be proud of. If the court rules in favor of the petitioner, Mark Janus, as most people expect, then the public sector in every state will be “right-to-work” and public sector unions will not be able to charge agency fees."]
Kiel, Paul. "Private Planes and Luxury Yachts Aren’t Just Toys for the Ultrawealthy. They’re Also Huge Tax Breaks." Pro Publica (April 5, 2023) ["What’s the only thing better than having your own Gulfstream jet? Why, getting to claim millions in tax deductions for it. All you have to do is make a case you’re using it for business, which turns out to be surprisingly easy."]
Kim, Ron. "Amazon’s Defeat in NYC Galvanizes Movement to End Billion-Dollar Corporate Welfare." Democracy Now (February 19, 2019) ["New York City is still reeling since Amazon announced last week that it was scrapping plans to build a major office facility in Queens. The decision came under mounting pressure from grassroots activists and local politicians who opposed the deal. Amazon had announced the project in November after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio offered Amazon nearly $3 billion in tax subsidies to come to the city. But local politicians and community organizers rallied against the tech giant and won. The lawmakers who took down Amazon say their victory is just the beginning of a major fight against tax subsidies for huge companies—which they call “corporate welfare.” We speak with New York State Assemblymember Ron Kim, who helped fight Amazon and introduced the End of Corporate Welfare Act to the state Legislature earlier this month."]
Kim, Tae. "Goldman Sachs asks in biotech research report: 'Is curing patients a sustainable business model?'" CNBC (April 11, 2018)
Klein, Naomi. "Capitalism vs. the Climate: On Need for New Economic Model to Address Ecological Crisis." Democracy Now (September 18, 2014)
---. "'Coronavirus Capitalism': Naomi Klein’s Case for Transformative Change Amid Coronavirus Pandemic." Democracy Now (March 19, 2020) ["Author, activist and journalist Naomi Klein says the coronavirus crisis, like earlier ones, could be a catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to most workers and small businesses. In 2007, Klein wrote “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Now she argues President Trump’s plan is a pandemic shock doctrine. In a new video for The Intercept, where she is a senior correspondent, Klein argues it’s vital for people to fight for the kind of transformative change that can not only curb the worst effects of the current crisis but also set society on a more just path."]
---. "The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal." The Intercept (November 27, 2018) ["If you are part of the economy’s winning class and funded by even bigger winners, as so many politicians are, then your attempts to craft climate legislation will likely be guided by the idea that change should be as minimal and unchallenging to the status quo as possible. After all, the status quo is working just fine for you and your donors. Leaders who are rooted in communities that are being egregiously failed by the current system, on the other hand, are liberated to take a very different approach. Their climate policies can embrace deep and systemic change — including the need for massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and health care — because that kind of change is precisely what their bases need to thrive. As climate justice organizations have been arguing for many years now, when the people with the most to gain lead the movement, they fight to win."]
---. "“My Fear is that Climate Change is the Biggest Crisis of All”: Naomi Klein Warns Global Warming Could Be Exploited by Capitalism and Militarism." Democracy Now (March 9, 2011)
---. "On the Legacy of Milton Friedman and Neoliberalism." Democracy Now (October 6, 2008)
---. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. NY: Metropolitan Books, 2007.
Korten, David. "Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth." Needs No Introduction (March 10, 2011)
Karma, Roge. "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Myth of American Innovation." The Prospect (March 6, 2019) ["The intrepid New Yorker pulls back the curtain on how private companies profit from taxpayer-funded research."]
Krugman, Paul and Richard D. Wolff. "Sanders & Socialism: Debate Between Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman & Socialist Economist Richard Wolff." Democracy Now (February 24, 2020) ["As Bernie Sanders’s runaway win in Nevada cements his position as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the Democratic Party establishment and much of the mainstream media are openly expressing concern about a self-described democratic socialist leading the presidential ticket. His opponents have also attacked his ambitious agenda. Last week during the primary debate in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders addressed misconceptions about socialism. Invoking the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sanders decried what he called “socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” For more, we host a debate on Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism, featuring two well-known economists. Paul Krugman is a New York Times op-ed columnist and author of many books, including his latest, “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” One of his recent columns is headlined “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist.” Richard Wolff is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and visiting professor at The New School. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and hosts the weekly national television and radio program “Economic Update.” He’s the author of several books, including “Understanding Socialism.”"]
Kwoba, Brian. "How Capitalism Underdeveloped Africa." We Are Many (June 2009)
Lapon, Gary. "College, Inc.: The abuses of the growing for-profit higher education industry." Socialist Worker (August 27, 2012) ["Imagine a business that rakes in billions of dollars in taxpayer funds, but provides its customers with a defective product that fails for more than half of them--though that track record hasn't stopped the business owners from enjoying ever-increasing profits."]
Kim, Ron. "Amazon’s Defeat in NYC Galvanizes Movement to End Billion-Dollar Corporate Welfare." Democracy Now (February 19, 2019) ["New York City is still reeling since Amazon announced last week that it was scrapping plans to build a major office facility in Queens. The decision came under mounting pressure from grassroots activists and local politicians who opposed the deal. Amazon had announced the project in November after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio offered Amazon nearly $3 billion in tax subsidies to come to the city. But local politicians and community organizers rallied against the tech giant and won. The lawmakers who took down Amazon say their victory is just the beginning of a major fight against tax subsidies for huge companies—which they call “corporate welfare.” We speak with New York State Assemblymember Ron Kim, who helped fight Amazon and introduced the End of Corporate Welfare Act to the state Legislature earlier this month."]
---. "'Coronavirus Capitalism': Naomi Klein’s Case for Transformative Change Amid Coronavirus Pandemic." Democracy Now (March 19, 2020) ["Author, activist and journalist Naomi Klein says the coronavirus crisis, like earlier ones, could be a catalyst to shower aid on the wealthiest interests in society, including those most responsible for our current vulnerabilities, while offering next to nothing to most workers and small businesses. In 2007, Klein wrote “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.” Now she argues President Trump’s plan is a pandemic shock doctrine. In a new video for The Intercept, where she is a senior correspondent, Klein argues it’s vital for people to fight for the kind of transformative change that can not only curb the worst effects of the current crisis but also set society on a more just path."]
---. "The Game-Changing Promise of a Green New Deal." The Intercept (November 27, 2018) ["If you are part of the economy’s winning class and funded by even bigger winners, as so many politicians are, then your attempts to craft climate legislation will likely be guided by the idea that change should be as minimal and unchallenging to the status quo as possible. After all, the status quo is working just fine for you and your donors. Leaders who are rooted in communities that are being egregiously failed by the current system, on the other hand, are liberated to take a very different approach. Their climate policies can embrace deep and systemic change — including the need for massive investments in public transit, affordable housing, and health care — because that kind of change is precisely what their bases need to thrive. As climate justice organizations have been arguing for many years now, when the people with the most to gain lead the movement, they fight to win."]
---. "On the Legacy of Milton Friedman and Neoliberalism." Democracy Now (October 6, 2008)
---. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. NY: Metropolitan Books, 2007.
Klein, Naomi, et al. "Hurricane Maria laid bare the colonialism and capitalism in Puerto Rico ." Best of the Left #1190 (June 15, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the high toll Puerto Rico is paying, in both money and lives, for the triple disasters of colonialism, Hurricane Maria and disaster capitalism."]
Karma, Roge. "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Myth of American Innovation." The Prospect (March 6, 2019) ["The intrepid New Yorker pulls back the curtain on how private companies profit from taxpayer-funded research."]
Krugman, Paul and Richard D. Wolff. "Sanders & Socialism: Debate Between Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman & Socialist Economist Richard Wolff." Democracy Now (February 24, 2020) ["As Bernie Sanders’s runaway win in Nevada cements his position as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the Democratic Party establishment and much of the mainstream media are openly expressing concern about a self-described democratic socialist leading the presidential ticket. His opponents have also attacked his ambitious agenda. Last week during the primary debate in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders addressed misconceptions about socialism. Invoking the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sanders decried what he called “socialism for the very rich, rugged individualism for the poor.” For more, we host a debate on Bernie Sanders and democratic socialism, featuring two well-known economists. Paul Krugman is a New York Times op-ed columnist and author of many books, including his latest, “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future.” One of his recent columns is headlined “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist.” Richard Wolff is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and visiting professor at The New School. He is the founder of Democracy at Work and hosts the weekly national television and radio program “Economic Update.” He’s the author of several books, including “Understanding Socialism.”"]
Kwoba, Brian. "How Capitalism Underdeveloped Africa." We Are Many (June 2009)
Lapon, Gary. "College, Inc.: The abuses of the growing for-profit higher education industry." Socialist Worker (August 27, 2012) ["Imagine a business that rakes in billions of dollars in taxpayer funds, but provides its customers with a defective product that fails for more than half of them--though that track record hasn't stopped the business owners from enjoying ever-increasing profits."]
Larson, Rob. "As Much Power As the President: How Billionaires Became More Influential than World Leaders." Literary Hub (August 29, 2024) ["This is why class is a useful concept; as researcher Katie Quan has said, “Not to think in terms of class is unfortunate, since no matter what our ideological persuasion may be, class analysis gives us a way of viewing the world that identifies power relationships. It clarifies who has power." This is an excerpt from Rob Larson's book Mastering the Universe: The Obscene Wealth of the Ruling Class, What They Do with Their Money, and Why You Should Hate Them Even More]
Lawson, James. "MLK’s Final Days: The Rev. James Lawson Remembers King’s Assassination & Support for Memphis Strike." Democracy Now (April 3, 2018) ["Fifty years ago today in Memphis, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final sermon, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” Less than 24 hours later, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. We speak to Rev. James Lawson, who invited King to come to Memphis to support the strike. At the time, Lawson was the pastor of Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis. King called Rev. Lawson “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”']
Lebowitz, Michael A. "The Unifying Element in All Struggles Against Capital Is the Right of Everyone to Full Human Development." Monthly Review (November 1, 2011)
Leary, John Patrick. "'Meritocracy' Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["This week, fifty people were charged by federal prosecutors in a college admissions scandal. As the public dug into the details of how wealthy parents made payments to help their students get into elite (and not so elite) universities around the country, some of the discussion centered around "the myth of meritocracy" in the United States. The trouble is, the myth of "meritocracy" goes much deeper than this story. The word was actually coined as satire in 1958 by the British sociologist Michael Young, who was criticizing the role that the UK's elite education system had in shaping the hierarchy of British society. This week, Bob speaks with John Patrick Leary about the satirical origins of the word and what it has come to mean in the US. He says there are actually two myths: "the myth that there is such a thing, and the myth that the United States is committed to that imaginary thing." Leary is a professor of English at Wayne State University and author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism."]
Leonard, Annie. "The Story of Cap and Trade." (Posted on Youtube: March 15, 2012)
Leonard, Sarah. "Occupy Wall St. and the Downfall of the Smartest Guys in the Room." Bookforum (November 8, 2011)
Lepore, Jill. "Tea Party Time ... and the Death of Compassion." Open Source (October 14, 2010)
Levinson, Ariana and Devon Oser. "Kentucky’s Right-To-Work Law: Unions Punch Back." LEO Weekly (August 29, 2018)
Lim, Dennis. "Time Has Been Kind to ‘Heaven’s Gate’." The New York Times (September 23, 2012)
Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker. The Many Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.
Lovera, Patty. "Cargill Meat Recall Heightens Fears Budgets Cuts Will Weaken Oversight, Threaten Public Health." Democracy Now (August 5, 2011)
MacArthur, Julie L. "From Fenians to financiers: James Connolly and the Irish meltdown." Rabble (December 16, 2010)
Maddow, Rachel. "Benton Harbor's Emergency Financial Manager." Rachel Maddow Show (April 19, 2011)
Magdoff, Fred. "Food as a Commodity." Monthly Review (January 1, 2012)
Maher, Stephen. "The Political Economy of the Egyptian Uprising." Monthly Review (November 1, 2011)
Manokha, Ivan. "New Means of Workplace Surveillance: From the Gaze of the Supervisor to the Digitalization of Employees." Monthly Review (February 1, 2019)
Marcetic, Branko. "How Washington Hacked Mongolia's Democracy." Jacobin (November 29, 2017)
Martin, Andrew and Andrew Lehren. "A Generation Hobbled by the Soaring Cost of College." The New York Times (May 13, 2012)
Matsumoto, Nancy. "How Foodies Can Understand Capitalism and Farm-to-Table Justice." Yes! (April 30, 2018) ["Our food system can be a place for systemic transformation through an alliance between the progressive and radical wings of the food movement."]
Maxwell, Richard. "Greening the Media." Team Human #2 (January 2016) ["Playing for Team Human today is Professor Richard Maxwell. Richard Maxwell is a political economist of media. His research begins at the intersection of politics and economics to analyze the global media, their social and cultural impact, and the policies that regulate their reach and operations. Richard has published on a wide array of media topics. Recent work includes The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media (Editor) Media and the Ecological Crisis (co-editor) and Greening the Media with Toby Miller. In this episode of Team Human, Professor Maxwell provides an eye opening account of the environmental damage caused by media technology, the myth of a “Post Industrial” society, and what we must do create a world sustainable for people."]
Mayer, Danny. "Let Them Eat Art!: The 21c public/private partnership." North of Center (December 5, 2012)
Mazhukhina, Karina. "Washington to implement best paid family & medical leave in America in 2019." KATU2 (November 30, 2018)
McChesney, Robert W. and John Bellamy Foster. "Capitalism, The Absurd System: A View From the United States." Monthly Review (June 2010)
McChesney, Robert W. and John Nichols. "The Bull Market: Political Advertising." Monthly Review (April 1, 2012)
McGreal, Chris (read by Lucy Scott). "The Making of an Opioid Epidemic." Audio Long Reads (December 3, 2018) ["When high doses of painkillers led to widespread addiction, it was called one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine. But this was no accident."]
Merchants of Doubt (USA: Kim Roberts and Robert Kenner, 2014: 93 mins) ["Merchants of Doubt looks at the well established Public Relations tactic of saturating the media with shills who present themselves as independent scientific authorities on issues in order to cast doubt in the public mind. The film looks at how this tactic, that was originally developed by the tobacco industry to obfuscate the health risks of smoking, has since come to cloud other issues such as the pervasiveness of toxic chemicals, flame retardants, asbestos, certain pharmaceutical drugs and now, climate change. Using the icon of a magician, Merchants of Doubt explores the analogy between these tactics and the methods used by magicians to distract their audiences from observing how illusions are performed. For example, with the tobacco industry, the shills successfully delayed government regulation until long after the health risks from smoking was unequivocally proven. Likewise with manufacturers of flame retardants, who worked to protect their sales after the toxic effects and pervasiveness of the chemicals were discovered. This is all made analogous to the ongoing use of these very same tactics to forestall governmental action in regards to global climate change today."]
Merler, Silvia. "The Economics of Healthcare." Bruegel (October 2, 2017) ["Healthcare reform has been a thorn in the side of the US administration for several months, prompting President Trump to declare that “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.” We review recent economists’ views on the issue."]
---. "On the Cost of Gun Ownership." Bruegel (October 11, 2017) ["On 1 October 2017, 59 people were killed and another 489 injured in what is currently the deadliest mass shooting in US modern history. The author reviews recent contributions on the economic cost of gun violence, as well as the impact of regulation."]
---. "The Republican Tax Plan." Bruegel (November 27, 2017) ["As the Trump administration’s tax plan continues its way through the legislature, we review economists’ and commentators’ recent opinions on the matter."]
Miller, Andrew. "'Our House Is On Fire': Brazil Faces Global Outrage as Massive Fires Spread in Amazon Rainforest." Democracy Now (August 23, 2019) ["The United Nations is calling for the protection of the Amazon amid fears that thousands of fires raging across Brazil and some parts of Bolivia are rapidly destroying the world’s largest rainforest and paving the way for a climate catastrophe. The fires have spread a vast plume of smoke across South America and the Atlantic Ocean that’s visible from space. They’re unprecedented in recorded history, and environmentalists say most of the fires were deliberately set by illegal miners and cattle ranchers. Indigenous people in Brazil have accused far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging the destruction. Bolsonaro has worked to deregulate and open up the Amazon for agribusiness, logging and mining since he came into office in January. We speak with Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch."]
Miron, Jeffrey and Annie Rouse. "Harry Anslinger - America's First Drug Czar." Anslinger: The Untold Cannabis Conspiracy 1.1 (February 5, 2018) ["On the first episode 1 of Anslinger: The untold cannabis conspiracy, we discuss narcotic policies and the life of Harry Anslinger, America’s first Drug Czar, prior to his appointment as Chief and First Commissioner to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. We also interview Harvard economist, Dr. Jeffrey Miron, about the global outlook on drugs, diseases and the economy during the early 1900s."]
Mishel, Lawrence. "As cities and states pass bold increases in the minimum wage, we need to update our thinking about its costs." Working Economics (May 14, 2018)
Misra, Tanvi. "Mapping the Hourly Wage Needed to Rent a 2-Bedroom Apartment in Every U.S. State: The figures highlight the mismatch between dipping job earnings and soaring housing costs." City Lab (May 27, 2015)
Morgenson, Gretchen and Joshua Rosner. “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.” Democracy Now (June 2, 2011)
Moser, Richard. "How Corporate Power Killed Democracy." Counterpunch (December 6, 2017)
Mueller, Gavin. "Liberalism and Gentrification." Jacobin (September 26, 2014) ["Gentrification isn’t a cultural phenomenon — it’s a class offensive by powerful capitalists."]
Mullainathan, Sendhil and Eldar Shafir. "The Scarcity Trap: Why We Keep Digging When We're Stuck In A Hole." Hidden Brain (April 2, 2018)
Nash, Ken and Mimi Rosenberg. "Striking Spectrum Cable Workers' Demonstrate for a Fair Contract & Against Union Busting." Building Bridges (October 15, 2017) ["Some 1,800 members of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 3 have been on strike at Spectrum/Time Warner Cable in New York and New Jersey since March 28, more than six months ago. Since then, only a fraction of the workforce has crossed picket lines, but the company is trying hard to keep up normal operations by using scabs and subcontractors to break the strike and the workers' union... Spectrum is part of Charter Communications, the second largest cable provider in the U.S. and a telecommunications giant, providing services to roughly 25 million customers in 41 states, two and a half million of which reside in New York. The CEO, Tom Rutledge, who made $98.5 million last year met with Donald Trump in the White House earlier this year, and the company is touted by Trump as a job creator investing in its U.S. workforce. "]
Nestle, Marion. "Food and Politics." Conversations with History (March 20, 2017) ["Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Marion Nestle Goddard Professor in the Department of Nutrition at New York University. Professor Nestle reflects on the evolution of her thinking on the interplay between nutrition studies and the politics of food. She discusses the environment of the food industry emphasizing its dilemma of producing too much food in an environment in which profits are paramount and the competition with other food producers is intense. She analyzes the arsenal of tools at its service—advertising and lobbying and talks about the role of food activism in creating a structure of choice in which health, the environment and social justice are determining factors in what is produced and what we eat. Finally, she identifies the role of government in entrenching the status quo and the possibilities of it assuming a different kind of role. Finally, she offers advice to students preparing for the future."]
Orleck, Annelise, et al. "Worker protections help (almost) everyone (Labor Rights)." Best of the Left #1263 (April 9, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the overwhelming benefits to society of labor, health and safety regulations and how the only people who don't come out ahead are those who have to pay for them."]
Paalberg, Michael. "US unions' continued decline masks new forms of worker activism." The Guardian (January 25, 2013)
Palast, Greg. "Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza: How He Made Millions from the Rescue of Detroit." Democracy Now ((October 18, 2012)
Pareene, Alex. "Consolation Prizes." The Baffler #43 (January/February, 2019)
["The right’s bid to short-circuit inequality with cheap gizmos."]
Parenti, Michael. "Globalization: The New Imperialism." Unwelcome Guests (March 22, 2000)
Parramore, Lynn. "The average American worker takes less vacation time than a medieval peasant." Business Insider (November 7, 2016)
Partanen, Anu and Jay Tomlinson. "The Nordic Theory of Love." The Best of the Left #142 (March 1, 2019) ["The Nordic theory of love and independence with the author of The Nordic Theory of Everything."]
Peet, Richard. "Finance Capital." Unwelcome Guests (September 28, 2012)
The Perkins Project on Workers' Rights and Wages Economic Policy Institute (Ongoing Archive) ["EPI’s Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages is a policy response team tracking the wage and employment policies coming out of the White House, Congress, and the courts. This watchdog unit of economists and lawyers keeps an especially close eye on the federal agencies that establish and defend workers’ rights, wages, and working conditions, including the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Perkins Project is headed by former Labor Department Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz and is named for Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary under FDR and principal architect of the New Deal labor reforms. Inspired by Perkins’s legacy, the Perkins Project monitors, analyzes, and publicizes any attempts to dismantle the laws and regulations that protect worker rights and wages. Perkins Project reporting on this site arms activists, journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers with the facts they need to fight for working people."]
Lawson, James. "MLK’s Final Days: The Rev. James Lawson Remembers King’s Assassination & Support for Memphis Strike." Democracy Now (April 3, 2018) ["Fifty years ago today in Memphis, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final sermon, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.” Less than 24 hours later, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was just 39 years old. King was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. We speak to Rev. James Lawson, who invited King to come to Memphis to support the strike. At the time, Lawson was the pastor of Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis. King called Rev. Lawson “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”']
Leary, John Patrick. "'Meritocracy' Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["This week, fifty people were charged by federal prosecutors in a college admissions scandal. As the public dug into the details of how wealthy parents made payments to help their students get into elite (and not so elite) universities around the country, some of the discussion centered around "the myth of meritocracy" in the United States. The trouble is, the myth of "meritocracy" goes much deeper than this story. The word was actually coined as satire in 1958 by the British sociologist Michael Young, who was criticizing the role that the UK's elite education system had in shaping the hierarchy of British society. This week, Bob speaks with John Patrick Leary about the satirical origins of the word and what it has come to mean in the US. He says there are actually two myths: "the myth that there is such a thing, and the myth that the United States is committed to that imaginary thing." Leary is a professor of English at Wayne State University and author of Keywords: The New Language of Capitalism."]
Leonard, Sarah. "Occupy Wall St. and the Downfall of the Smartest Guys in the Room." Bookforum (November 8, 2011)
Lepore, Jill. "Tea Party Time ... and the Death of Compassion." Open Source (October 14, 2010)
Levinson, Ariana and Devon Oser. "Kentucky’s Right-To-Work Law: Unions Punch Back." LEO Weekly (August 29, 2018)
Lim, Dennis. "Time Has Been Kind to ‘Heaven’s Gate’." The New York Times (September 23, 2012)
Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker. The Many Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.
Lovera, Patty. "Cargill Meat Recall Heightens Fears Budgets Cuts Will Weaken Oversight, Threaten Public Health." Democracy Now (August 5, 2011)
MacArthur, Julie L. "From Fenians to financiers: James Connolly and the Irish meltdown." Rabble (December 16, 2010)
Maddow, Rachel. "Benton Harbor's Emergency Financial Manager." Rachel Maddow Show (April 19, 2011)
Magdoff, Fred. "Food as a Commodity." Monthly Review (January 1, 2012)
Maher, Stephen. "The Political Economy of the Egyptian Uprising." Monthly Review (November 1, 2011)
Manokha, Ivan. "New Means of Workplace Surveillance: From the Gaze of the Supervisor to the Digitalization of Employees." Monthly Review (February 1, 2019)
Marcetic, Branko. "How Washington Hacked Mongolia's Democracy." Jacobin (November 29, 2017)
Matsumoto, Nancy. "How Foodies Can Understand Capitalism and Farm-to-Table Justice." Yes! (April 30, 2018) ["Our food system can be a place for systemic transformation through an alliance between the progressive and radical wings of the food movement."]
Maxwell, Richard. "Greening the Media." Team Human #2 (January 2016) ["Playing for Team Human today is Professor Richard Maxwell. Richard Maxwell is a political economist of media. His research begins at the intersection of politics and economics to analyze the global media, their social and cultural impact, and the policies that regulate their reach and operations. Richard has published on a wide array of media topics. Recent work includes The Routledge Companion to Labor and Media (Editor) Media and the Ecological Crisis (co-editor) and Greening the Media with Toby Miller. In this episode of Team Human, Professor Maxwell provides an eye opening account of the environmental damage caused by media technology, the myth of a “Post Industrial” society, and what we must do create a world sustainable for people."]
Mazhukhina, Karina. "Washington to implement best paid family & medical leave in America in 2019." KATU2 (November 30, 2018)
McChesney, Robert W. and John Nichols. "The Bull Market: Political Advertising." Monthly Review (April 1, 2012)
McGreal, Chris (read by Lucy Scott). "The Making of an Opioid Epidemic." Audio Long Reads (December 3, 2018) ["When high doses of painkillers led to widespread addiction, it was called one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine. But this was no accident."]
Merchants of Doubt (USA: Kim Roberts and Robert Kenner, 2014: 93 mins) ["Merchants of Doubt looks at the well established Public Relations tactic of saturating the media with shills who present themselves as independent scientific authorities on issues in order to cast doubt in the public mind. The film looks at how this tactic, that was originally developed by the tobacco industry to obfuscate the health risks of smoking, has since come to cloud other issues such as the pervasiveness of toxic chemicals, flame retardants, asbestos, certain pharmaceutical drugs and now, climate change. Using the icon of a magician, Merchants of Doubt explores the analogy between these tactics and the methods used by magicians to distract their audiences from observing how illusions are performed. For example, with the tobacco industry, the shills successfully delayed government regulation until long after the health risks from smoking was unequivocally proven. Likewise with manufacturers of flame retardants, who worked to protect their sales after the toxic effects and pervasiveness of the chemicals were discovered. This is all made analogous to the ongoing use of these very same tactics to forestall governmental action in regards to global climate change today."]
---. "On the Cost of Gun Ownership." Bruegel (October 11, 2017) ["On 1 October 2017, 59 people were killed and another 489 injured in what is currently the deadliest mass shooting in US modern history. The author reviews recent contributions on the economic cost of gun violence, as well as the impact of regulation."]
Miller, Andrew. "'Our House Is On Fire': Brazil Faces Global Outrage as Massive Fires Spread in Amazon Rainforest." Democracy Now (August 23, 2019) ["The United Nations is calling for the protection of the Amazon amid fears that thousands of fires raging across Brazil and some parts of Bolivia are rapidly destroying the world’s largest rainforest and paving the way for a climate catastrophe. The fires have spread a vast plume of smoke across South America and the Atlantic Ocean that’s visible from space. They’re unprecedented in recorded history, and environmentalists say most of the fires were deliberately set by illegal miners and cattle ranchers. Indigenous people in Brazil have accused far-right President Jair Bolsonaro of encouraging the destruction. Bolsonaro has worked to deregulate and open up the Amazon for agribusiness, logging and mining since he came into office in January. We speak with Andrew Miller, advocacy director at Amazon Watch."]
Miron, Jeffrey and Annie Rouse. "Harry Anslinger - America's First Drug Czar." Anslinger: The Untold Cannabis Conspiracy 1.1 (February 5, 2018) ["On the first episode 1 of Anslinger: The untold cannabis conspiracy, we discuss narcotic policies and the life of Harry Anslinger, America’s first Drug Czar, prior to his appointment as Chief and First Commissioner to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. We also interview Harvard economist, Dr. Jeffrey Miron, about the global outlook on drugs, diseases and the economy during the early 1900s."]
Morgenson, Gretchen and Joshua Rosner. “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.” Democracy Now (June 2, 2011)
Moser, Richard. "How Corporate Power Killed Democracy." Counterpunch (December 6, 2017)
Mueller, Gavin. "Liberalism and Gentrification." Jacobin (September 26, 2014) ["Gentrification isn’t a cultural phenomenon — it’s a class offensive by powerful capitalists."]
Mullainathan, Sendhil and Eldar Shafir. "The Scarcity Trap: Why We Keep Digging When We're Stuck In A Hole." Hidden Brain (April 2, 2018)
Mullins, Brody. "How Lobbying Led to Crony Capitalism." Capitalisn't (October 24, 2024) ["Mullins is the co-author (along with his brother Luke, also an investigative reporter) of The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government. Brody joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss how corporations ranging from Genentech to Google participate in the invisible but massively influential lobbying industry to bend government policy toward their favor. Together, the three trace the roots and evolution of political lobbying from the 1970s to now and explore how it penetrates and leverages other spheres of society to abet its operations. How are academia and the media complicit in this ecosystem of influence operations? How has lobbying adapted to the changing attitudes of Americans towards Big Business? How might it change under either a Harris or Trump administration and beyond?"]
Needham, Andrew. "On Electricity and the Southwest." Who Makes Cents? (November 3, 2014) ["
Andrew Needham discusses his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Power Lines shows that we can't think of the modern southwest without the energy that makes such places possible. Through this, he knits together a metropolitan geography that connects Phoenix with the places where it got its electricity--most prominently, coal from the Navajo Nation."]
Andrew Needham discusses his new book, Power Lines: Phoenix and the Making of the Modern Southwest. Power Lines shows that we can't think of the modern southwest without the energy that makes such places possible. Through this, he knits together a metropolitan geography that connects Phoenix with the places where it got its electricity--most prominently, coal from the Navajo Nation."]
Neumann, Ann. "Family Care for All." The Baffler #51 (April 2020) ["Supporting the work that makes all other work possible"]
Obermaier, Frederick. "Paradise Papers: Millions of Leaked Docs Reveal Shady Ties & Tax Evasion by Trump’s Inner Circle." Democracy Now (November 6, 2017) ["This weekend, a slew of 13.4 million leaked documents revealed how the world’s richest men stash away billions of dollars in wealth in offshore tax havens. The revelations, known as the Paradise Papers, implicate more than a dozen of President Trump’s Cabinet members, advisers and major donors. The 13.4 million leaked documents also reveal how millions of pounds of the British queen’s private estate were hidden in an offshore fund based in the Cayman Islands, and how the senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau helped funnel millions of dollars to offshore tax havens. For more, we speak with Frederik Obermaier, co-author of the Paradise Papers. He is an investigative reporter at Germany’s leading newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung. Obermaier also worked on a separate investigation, the Panama Papers, and is co-author of the book “Panama Papers: The Story of a Worldwide Revelation.”"]Orleck, Annelise, et al. "Worker protections help (almost) everyone (Labor Rights)." Best of the Left #1263 (April 9, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the overwhelming benefits to society of labor, health and safety regulations and how the only people who don't come out ahead are those who have to pay for them."]
Paalberg, Michael. "US unions' continued decline masks new forms of worker activism." The Guardian (January 25, 2013)
Palast, Greg. "Mitt Romney’s Bailout Bonanza: How He Made Millions from the Rescue of Detroit." Democracy Now ((October 18, 2012)
Pareene, Alex. "Consolation Prizes." The Baffler #43 (January/February, 2019)
["The right’s bid to short-circuit inequality with cheap gizmos."]
Parramore, Lynn. "The average American worker takes less vacation time than a medieval peasant." Business Insider (November 7, 2016)
Partanen, Anu and Jay Tomlinson. "The Nordic Theory of Love." The Best of the Left #142 (March 1, 2019) ["The Nordic theory of love and independence with the author of The Nordic Theory of Everything."]
The Perkins Project on Workers' Rights and Wages Economic Policy Institute (Ongoing Archive) ["EPI’s Perkins Project on Worker Rights and Wages is a policy response team tracking the wage and employment policies coming out of the White House, Congress, and the courts. This watchdog unit of economists and lawyers keeps an especially close eye on the federal agencies that establish and defend workers’ rights, wages, and working conditions, including the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The Perkins Project is headed by former Labor Department Chief Economist Heidi Shierholz and is named for Frances Perkins, Labor Secretary under FDR and principal architect of the New Deal labor reforms. Inspired by Perkins’s legacy, the Perkins Project monitors, analyzes, and publicizes any attempts to dismantle the laws and regulations that protect worker rights and wages. Perkins Project reporting on this site arms activists, journalists, lawmakers, and lawyers with the facts they need to fight for working people."]
Phillips-Fein, Kim. "On the Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal." Who Makes Cents? #10 (April 1, 2015) ["Kim Phillips-Fein discusses her book Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal. Today we’ll focus on the history of resistance to the New Deal. Kim Phillips-Fein details how many of the most prominent elites had their ideas and practices shaped by groups that were part of organized resistance to the New Deal. She argues that this history helps revise common understandings of the rise of conservatism in the 1970s and after."]
Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press, 2020. ["Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it." This is the Harvard University Press book page, it has links to app. 50 interviews and features on the author & the book.]
Pink, Dan. "Drive." RSAnimate (October 18, 2010)
Power, Nina. "There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored: Those condemning the events in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture." Guardian (August 8, 2011)
Presser, Lizzie. "When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested." Pro Publica (October 16, 2019) ["Welcome to Coffeyville, Kansas, where the judge has no law degree, debt collectors get a cut of the bail, and Americans are watching their lives — and liberty — disappear in the pursuit of medical debt collection."]
Publius, Gaius. "Big Oil Seeks Billions from U.S. Government to Protect It From…Climate Change." Down With Tyranny (September 10, 2018)
---. "Defining Neoliberalism." Down With Tyranny (October 26, 2017)
Purnell, Derecka. "Radical Political Action." Boston Review (March 7, 2016) ["In the Black Study, Black Struggle forum, Robin D. G. Kelley advocates for a rebirth of grassroots political education. A forum contributor, Derecka Purnell, informed us that some groups of student-activists are already doing exactly that. At Harvard Law School, a group called Reclaim Harvard Law has occupied one of the school's lounges and is holding weekly political education sessions there. Purnell shared with us her list of the texts that have been circulating in the group. It reveals an investment in liberation from not only racial oppression, but from all forms of oppression, including sexual and financial. This is informed by a commitment to "intersectionality," Kimberlé Crenshaw's insight that various forms of oppression are entangled and amplify one another, and thus must be fought in concert. We present this list, in the form it was presented to us, as the current pulse of the movement and a testament to its members' brilliance."]
Raising America's Pay Economic Policy Institute (Ongoing Archive) ["Right now there is much debate over what to do about rising income inequality in America. These discussions too often miss that the key to shared prosperity is to foster wage growth. Pay of the vast majority of Americans has been stuck for decades, even though productivity and earnings at the top are escalating. Americans are working harder, more productively, and with more education than ever, but are treading water, as an enormous and ever-increasing share of income growth goes to corporate profits and executive pay. This is a solvable problem. It can be traced in no small part to policies that have allowed labor standards, business practices, and ideas of fairness to increasingly favor employers at the expense of workers. That is why the Economic Policy Institute launched Raising America’s Pay, a multiyear research and public education initiative to make wage growth an urgent national policy priority. By explaining wage and benefit patterns—and the role of labor market policies and practices in suppressing pay—the initiative is identifying policies that will generate broad-based wage growth. This work is connecting with and supporting civic engagement and community organizing groups working on pay and job quality issues to support their campaigns."]
Piketty, Thomas. Capital and Ideology. trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Harvard University Press, 2020. ["Thomas Piketty’s bestselling Capital in the Twenty-First Century galvanized global debate about inequality. In this audacious follow-up, Piketty challenges us to revolutionize how we think about politics, ideology, and history. He exposes the ideas that have sustained inequality for the past millennium, reveals why the shallow politics of right and left are failing us today, and outlines the structure of a fairer economic system. Our economy, Piketty observes, is not a natural fact. Markets, profits, and capital are all historical constructs that depend on choices. Piketty explores the material and ideological interactions of conflicting social groups that have given us slavery, serfdom, colonialism, communism, and hypercapitalism, shaping the lives of billions. He concludes that the great driver of human progress over the centuries has been the struggle for equality and education and not, as often argued, the assertion of property rights or the pursuit of stability. The new era of extreme inequality that has derailed that progress since the 1980s, he shows, is partly a reaction against communism, but it is also the fruit of ignorance, intellectual specialization, and our drift toward the dead-end politics of identity. Once we understand this, we can begin to envision a more balanced approach to economics and politics. Piketty argues for a new “participatory” socialism, a system founded on an ideology of equality, social property, education, and the sharing of knowledge and power. Capital and Ideology is destined to be one of the indispensable books of our time, a work that will not only help us understand the world, but that will change it." This is the Harvard University Press book page, it has links to app. 50 interviews and features on the author & the book.]
Power, Nina. "There is a context to London's riots that can't be ignored: Those condemning the events in north London and elsewhere would do well to take a step back and consider the bigger picture." Guardian (August 8, 2011)
Presser, Lizzie. "When Medical Debt Collectors Decide Who Gets Arrested." Pro Publica (October 16, 2019) ["Welcome to Coffeyville, Kansas, where the judge has no law degree, debt collectors get a cut of the bail, and Americans are watching their lives — and liberty — disappear in the pursuit of medical debt collection."]
Publius, Gaius. "Big Oil Seeks Billions from U.S. Government to Protect It From…Climate Change." Down With Tyranny (September 10, 2018)
---. "Defining Neoliberalism." Down With Tyranny (October 26, 2017)
Purnell, Derecka. "Radical Political Action." Boston Review (March 7, 2016) ["In the Black Study, Black Struggle forum, Robin D. G. Kelley advocates for a rebirth of grassroots political education. A forum contributor, Derecka Purnell, informed us that some groups of student-activists are already doing exactly that. At Harvard Law School, a group called Reclaim Harvard Law has occupied one of the school's lounges and is holding weekly political education sessions there. Purnell shared with us her list of the texts that have been circulating in the group. It reveals an investment in liberation from not only racial oppression, but from all forms of oppression, including sexual and financial. This is informed by a commitment to "intersectionality," Kimberlé Crenshaw's insight that various forms of oppression are entangled and amplify one another, and thus must be fought in concert. We present this list, in the form it was presented to us, as the current pulse of the movement and a testament to its members' brilliance."]
Ramaswamy, Vivek. "The 'Woke' Capitalism Game." Capitalisn't (November 24, 2022) ["... there is no story bigger than the collapse of the crypto exchange, FTX. One aspect that attracted our attention was Sam Bankman-Fried, the young CEO of FTX, officially bought into a philosophy called Effective Altruism, where you make the most money to give it to the poor. However, in a text exchange with a Vox reporter SBF said "this dumb game we woke westerns play where we say all the right things and so everybody likes us". It reminded us of what Vivek Ramaswamy said about woke capitalism on the show last year. ... Vivek Ramaswamy, a scientist, lawyer, and former venture capitalist and entrepreneur, has a new book out: "Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam". In this book, he argues that "wokeism" has become a way for corporations to wrap themselves in a mantle, which then furthers the idea of crony capitalism and extends their power into spaces they were never meant to be in. Luigi Zingales and Bethany McLean sit down with Ramaswamy to discuss his perspectives on the role of virtue, ethics, and politics in business and society."]
Raworth, Kate. "Doughnut Economics." The Next System #2 (August 23, 2017) ["Adam talks with Kate Raworth about her Doughnut Economics model. The pair discuss economic justice, unpaid labor, the commons, and much more."]
---. "A Renegade Solution to Extractive Economics." Your Undivided Attention (February 11, 2021) ["When Kate Raworth began studying economics, she was disappointed that the mainstream version of the discipline didn’t fully address many of the world issues that she wanted to tackle, such as human rights and environmental destruction. She left the field, but was inspired to jump back in after the financial crisis of 2008, when she saw an opportunity to introduce some fresh perspectives. She sat down and drew a chart in the shape of a doughnut, which provided a way to think about our economic system while accounting for the impact to the world around us, as well as for humans’ baseline needs. Kate’s framing can teach us a lot about how to transform the economic model of the technology industry, and help us move from a system that values addicted, narcissistic, polarized humans to one that values healthy, loving and collaborative relationships. Her book, “Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist,” gives us a guide for going from a 20th-century paradigm to an evolved 21st-century one that will address our existential-scale problems."]
Requiem for the American Dream (USA: Peter Hutchison, Kelly Nyks and Jared Scott, 2015: 72 mins) ["In Requiem for the American Dream, renowned intellectual figure Noam Chomsky deliberates on the defining characteristics of our time—the colossal concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few and fewer, with the rise of a rapacious individualism and complete collapse of class consciousness. Chomsky does this by discussing some of the key principles that have brought this culture to the pinnacle of historically unprecedented inequality by tracing a half century of policies designed to favour the most wealthy at the expense of the majority, while also looking back on his own life of activism and political participation. The film serves to provide insights into how we got here, and culminates as a reminder that these problems are not inevitable. Once we remember those who came before and those who will come after, we see that we can, and should, fight back."]
Reskinoff, Ned. "Hollywood’s Nomads: On Pamela Robertson Wojcik’s Unhomed." Los Angeles Review of Books (April 10, 2024) ["In Unhomed, Wojcik demonstrates at length that Hollywood’s denialism is a break from precedent: earlier American films show a consistent preoccupation, even fascination, with homelessness and housing insecurity. A professor of film studies at the University of Notre Dame, Wojcik is the author of two other books about the role of home and place in American cinema—Fantasies of Neglect: Imagining the Urban Child in American Film and Fiction (2016) and The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945 to 1975 (2010). In her latest, she traces the evolution of film’s itinerant wanderers from the tramps and hobos of the silent era up to the titular drifters of Nomadland (2020). According to the book’s introduction, “Unhomed is about a curiously neglected dominant in American culture: mobility without Manifest Destiny, movement without terminus, geographic mobility that does not produce hope of social mobility.”"]
Resnick, Stephen. "Econ 305: Marxian Economics." (38 video lectures: 2011)
Resnick, Stephen. "Econ 305: Marxian Economics." (38 video lectures: 2011)
Richardson, Chris. "Reimagining Livelihoods." This is Not a Pipe (December 26, 2019) ["Ethan Miller discusses his book Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment with Chris Richardson. Miller is an activist-scholar committed to co-creating resilient and liberatory forms of collective livelihood. He is an interdisciplinary lecturer teaching in politics, anthropology, and environmental studies at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, a board member of the Community Economies Institute, and has worked for the past twenty years with an array of grassroots organizing and popular education projects. Ethan lives at the Wild Mountain Cooperative (formerly JED Collective), a collective subsistence homestead, and works as an organizer for Land in Common community land trust, focused on land justice and cooperative forms of land tenure. His research and teaching focuses on solidarity economics and postcapitalist livelihood, intersections of economy and ecology and, most recently, land justice. His first book, Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment was released in March 2019 by the University of Minnesota Press."]
Rivlin, Gary. "A Giant Pile of Money: How Wall Street Drove Public Pensions Into Crisis and Pocketed Billions in Fees." The Intercept (October 20, 2018)
---. "The Private Equity Governor: Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, Sworn Foe of Pensions, Made a Fortune Charging High Fees to Public Pensions." The Intercept (October 22, 2018) ["Gov. Bruce Rauner made a fortune charging high fees to public pensions. Once elected, he tried to slash pension benefits."]
---. "The Whistleblower: How a Gang of Hedge Funders Strip-Mined Kentucky’s Public Pensions." The Intercept (October 21, 2018) ["Kentucky’s willingness to gamble massively on high-risk alternative investments for its pensions has made the state an easy mark for Wall Street hucksters."]
Roehl, Emily. "Deep histories and fluid futures in Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock." Jump Cut #59 (Fall 2019) ["“I am not dreaming. I am awake. I have been woken by the spirit inside that demanded I open my eyes and see the world around me, see that my children’s future was imperiled. See that my life couldn’t wait in slumber anymore. See that I was honored to be among those who are awake, to be alive at this point in time, to see the rising of the Oceti Sakowin, to see the gathering of the nations and beyond that, the gathering of all races and all faiths. Will you wake up and dream with us? Will you join our dream? Will you join us?” - Floris White Bull" To watch the film]
Rosenthal, Caitlin C. "How Slavery Inspired Modern Business Management." Boston Review of Books (August 20, 2018)
Roth, Alvin. "For Sale, By Owner: The Psychology Of Repugnant Transactions." Hidden Brains (March 4, 2019)
Roy, Arundhati. "Capitalism: A Ghost Story" We Are Many (March 26, 2014 at The New School in NYC) ["From the poisoned rivers, barren wells, and clear-cut forests, to the hundreds of thousands of farmers who have committed suicide to escape punishing debt, to the hundreds of millions of people who live on less than two dollars a day, there are ghosts nearly everywhere you look in India. India is a nation of 1.2 billion, but the country’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to one-fourth of India’s gross domestic product. Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation."]
Rousseau, Erin. "The House Just Voted to Bankrupt Graduate Students." The New York Times (November 16, 2017)
Rushkoff, Douglas interviewed by Seth Godin. "Book Launch: A Live Human Team Conversation." Human Team #117 (January 23, 2019) ["Not the typical book reading, Douglas and Seth use this live event as an opportunity to engage with each other and audience in a spontaneous, free-form Team Human conversation. It’s a talk launched by a question that cuts to the heart of the book itself – How have technologies meant to connect us come to alienate and atomize us instead? Douglas and Seth share why we must reclaim connection and find the others. “It’s not too late! We can retrieve what it means to be human in a digital age.” Join Douglas, Seth and the live Betaworks Studios audience for this invocation of the spirit of community and solidarity so desperately needed in this pivotal moment in the human story."]
Sanders, Bernie. "Talk About Inequality." Deconstructed (March 23, 2018) ["The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan sits down with former presidential candidate and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to talk poverty, inequality, media bias, and the 2020 presidential election."]
Sanders, Bernie, et al. "The Rebirth of the Antitrust Movement (Monopolies)." Best of the Left #1259 (March 26, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the story of Amazon's enormous growth, the history of how our anti-trust laws were neutered and how the former is making us rethink the latter."]
Sawari, Amani. "Update on Prison Strike Demanding End of 'Slave Labor': After 10 Days, Protests Spread to 11 States." Democracy Now (August 30, 2018) ["Prisoners across the country join work stoppages, hunger strikes and commissary boycotts in at least 11 states to protest prison conditions and demand the end of what they call “prison slavery.” Organizers report prisoners in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Indiana are demonstrating. Individuals in Texas, California and Ohio have gone on hunger strike, including some in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, at least six people have been hunger-striking inside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, for more than a week. We speak with Amani Sawari, prison strike organizer working on behalf of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a network of prisoners who are helping organize the nationwide strike."]
"The Scarlet E: Unmasking America's Eviction Crisis." On the Media (June 6, 2019) ["We have an eviction epidemic in this country. We’ve had one for a long time. And in this new four-part series from On the Media, host Brooke Gladstone will seek out the why and the wherefore — in search, ultimately, of a cure. Evictions are filed over 3.7 million times a year in America — or at a rate of one every seven seconds. The eviction epidemic has bedeviled more lives than the opioid crisis and still its causes — and consequences — remain largely ignored or misunderstood. With the help of Matt Desmond and the Eviction Lab, which has compiled the largest-ever database of eviction records, our series charts a course through a thicket of contradictions and assumptions to reveal the heart of the crisis."]
Schneider, Nathan."Ten Years Since Economic Collapse Sparked Occupy Wall Street, the Cooperative Movement Is Surging." Democracy Now (September 18, 2018) ["This week marks the seventh anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement and 10 years since the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, which triggered the onset of the global financial crisis. The crisis also sparked massive global anti-capitalist movements, including Occupy Wall Street, the M-15 movement in Spain and the anti-austerity movements in Greece. “It’s striking how little we are marking these anniversaries,” says author and activist Nathan Schneider. “I think … we recognize we really haven’t done anything serious to deal with the causes of this crash.” Schneider’s new book outlines an alternative economic model based on cooperative ownership that saw a resurgence since the 2008 financial crisis. It’s titled “Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy.”"]
Schor, Juliet B. "Born To Buy: The Commercialized Child And The New Consumer Culture." NPR (ND) ["The award-winning author of The Overworked American and The Overspent American examines advertising strategies that promote consumerism from the earliest ages, offering advice to parents and teachers on how to reverse the damaging effects of commercialism on developing children. 35,000 first printing."]
Schuman, Michael. "Marx’s Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World." Time (March 25, 2013)
Schure, Natalia, et al. "Gearing Up for the Fight for Medicare for All." Best of the Left #1260 (March 29, 2019)
Schwarz, Jon. "Happy Labor Day! There Has Never Been a Middle Class Without Strong Unions." The Intercept (September 5, 2016)
---. "New Dark Money Documentary Shines Light Into the Shadows Cast by the Super-Rich." The Intercept (October 1, 2018)
Scialabba, George. "Back to the Land: Wendell Berry in the Path of Modernity." The Baffler (January 2020)
Scott, Debra Leigh. "Here's How Higher Education Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps." Alternet (June 2, 2018)
Scott, James C. "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States." New Books in Political Science (June 3, 2020) ["We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press, 2017), James C. Scott asks us to question this belief. The evidence, he says, is simply not on the side of states. Stratified, taxing, walled towns did not inevitably appear in the wake of crop domestication and sedentary settlement. Only around 3100 BCE, some four millennia after the earliest farming and settling down, did they begin making their presence felt. What happened in these four millennia is the subject of this book: a deep history by “a card-carrying political scientist and an anthropologist and environmentalist by courtesy”, which aims to put the earliest states in their place. James Scott joins us ... to talk about state fragility and state persistence from Mesopotamia to Southeast Asia, the politics of cereal crops, domestication and reproduction, why it was once good to be a barbarian, the art of provocation, the views of critics, and, human and animal species relations and zoonoses in our epidemiological past and pandemic present."]
Scott, Peter Dale. "The Processes and Logic of The Deep State (The American Deep State by Peter Dale Scott)." Unwelcome Guests #719 (August 8, 2015) ["Unusually, just a single speaker this week: one two hour interview with the doyen of deep political research, Canadian Professor Peter Dale Scott. He provides not only a lot of details of the evolution of the post WW2 deep state in the USA, but also sketches out its guiding principles, some of the deeper patterns which allow one to understand the superficially confusing and contradictory actions of the US deep state."]
Serpe, Nick. "Bisbee's Ghosts." Dissent (Winter 2019) ["A forced exodus haunts a border town’s past. Can a new documentary force a reckoning?"]
Shah, Anup. "The Arms Trade is Big Business." Global Issues (January 5, 2013)
---. "Corporate Power Facts and Stats." Global Issues (November 12, 2011)
---. "Global Financial Crisis." Global Issues (March 24, 2013)
Rivlin, Gary. "A Giant Pile of Money: How Wall Street Drove Public Pensions Into Crisis and Pocketed Billions in Fees." The Intercept (October 20, 2018)
---. "The Private Equity Governor: Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, Sworn Foe of Pensions, Made a Fortune Charging High Fees to Public Pensions." The Intercept (October 22, 2018) ["Gov. Bruce Rauner made a fortune charging high fees to public pensions. Once elected, he tried to slash pension benefits."]
Roberto, Michael Joseph. "In The Coming Of The American Behemoth Fascism Hits Close To Home." The State of Things (January 29, 2019) ["Many Americans know fascism as an authoritarian ideology which blossomed in early 20th century Europe — first with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and later with Adolf Hitler and the rise of Nazi Germany. But historian Michael Joseph Roberto argues that while Mussolini and Hitler were capturing the world’s attention, a type of fascist ideology was also taking hold in the United States, although the system looked different. Roberto says monopoly-finance capitalism and the dominance of big business over personal liberties is America’s own mutation of fascism. He articulates this argument in the book “The Coming of the American Behemoth: The Origins of Fascism in the United States, 1920–1940” (NYU Press/2018)."]
Rodrik, Dani. "The New Economics of Industrial Policy." Capitalisn't (August 1, 2024) ["Harvard professor of international political economy Dani Rodrik has long been skeptical of what he calls "hyperglobalization," or an advanced level of interconnectedness between countries and their economies. He first introduced his theory of the "globalization trilemma" in the late 1990s, which states that no country can simultaneously support democracy, national sovereignty, and global economic integration. At the time when he proposed his trilemma, Rodrik was considered an outcast. However, economists and policymakers have come to accept his theory as governments seek to address populism, trade imbalances, and uneven growth through renewed interest in industrial policy, or government efforts to improve the performance of key business sectors. Rodrik joins co-hosts Bethany and Luigi to discuss changing attitudes towards globalization: its distributional effects, how it affects politics, and how it is still searching for a narrative consistent between academic circles and the media. Together, the three of them discuss what role corporate America should play in our world restructured by economic and political populism and if economics is getting too far away from the rest of the social sciences when it comes to shaping industrial policy and creating the jobs of tomorrow."]
Roehl, Emily. "Deep histories and fluid futures in Awake: A Dream from Standing Rock." Jump Cut #59 (Fall 2019) ["“I am not dreaming. I am awake. I have been woken by the spirit inside that demanded I open my eyes and see the world around me, see that my children’s future was imperiled. See that my life couldn’t wait in slumber anymore. See that I was honored to be among those who are awake, to be alive at this point in time, to see the rising of the Oceti Sakowin, to see the gathering of the nations and beyond that, the gathering of all races and all faiths. Will you wake up and dream with us? Will you join our dream? Will you join us?” - Floris White Bull" To watch the film]
Rousseau, Erin. "The House Just Voted to Bankrupt Graduate Students." The New York Times (November 16, 2017)
Rushkoff, Douglas interviewed by Seth Godin. "Book Launch: A Live Human Team Conversation." Human Team #117 (January 23, 2019) ["Not the typical book reading, Douglas and Seth use this live event as an opportunity to engage with each other and audience in a spontaneous, free-form Team Human conversation. It’s a talk launched by a question that cuts to the heart of the book itself – How have technologies meant to connect us come to alienate and atomize us instead? Douglas and Seth share why we must reclaim connection and find the others. “It’s not too late! We can retrieve what it means to be human in a digital age.” Join Douglas, Seth and the live Betaworks Studios audience for this invocation of the spirit of community and solidarity so desperately needed in this pivotal moment in the human story."]
---. "Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires." Author Events (August 26, 2022) ["Acclaimed for their intersectional explorations of cyberculture, religion, currency, and politics, Douglas Rushkoff’s 20 bestselling books include Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, Program or Be Programmed, Present Shock, and Media Virus. He also is the host of the Team Human podcast, writes a column for Medium, and created the PBS Frontline documentaries Generation Like, The Persuaders, and Merchants of Cool. A professor of media theory and digital economics at City University of New York, Queens College, he was selected as one of the world’s 10 most influential intellectuals by MIT, was the first winner of the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, is a recipient of the Marshall McLuhan Award, and has received many other accolades. In Survival of the Richest, Rushkoff reveals the flawed mindset that has led out-of-touch tech titans to prepare for a societal catastrophe they could simply avert through practical measures."]
Sainato, Michael. "'Coal is over': The miners rooting for the Green New Deal." The Guardian (August 12, 2019) ["Appalachia’s main industry is dying and some workers are looking to a new economic promise after Trump’s proves empty."]
Sandel, Michael. "Against Market Society." This Partially Examined Life (July 26, 2014)Sainato, Michael. "'Coal is over': The miners rooting for the Green New Deal." The Guardian (August 12, 2019) ["Appalachia’s main industry is dying and some workers are looking to a new economic promise after Trump’s proves empty."]
Sanders, Bernie. "Talk About Inequality." Deconstructed (March 23, 2018) ["The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan sits down with former presidential candidate and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders to talk poverty, inequality, media bias, and the 2020 presidential election."]
Sanders, Bernie, et al. "The Rebirth of the Antitrust Movement (Monopolies)." Best of the Left #1259 (March 26, 2019) ["Today we take a look at the story of Amazon's enormous growth, the history of how our anti-trust laws were neutered and how the former is making us rethink the latter."]
Sawari, Amani. "Update on Prison Strike Demanding End of 'Slave Labor': After 10 Days, Protests Spread to 11 States." Democracy Now (August 30, 2018) ["Prisoners across the country join work stoppages, hunger strikes and commissary boycotts in at least 11 states to protest prison conditions and demand the end of what they call “prison slavery.” Organizers report prisoners in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Indiana are demonstrating. Individuals in Texas, California and Ohio have gone on hunger strike, including some in solitary confinement. Meanwhile, at least six people have been hunger-striking inside the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, for more than a week. We speak with Amani Sawari, prison strike organizer working on behalf of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a network of prisoners who are helping organize the nationwide strike."]
"The Scarlet E: Unmasking America's Eviction Crisis." On the Media (June 6, 2019) ["We have an eviction epidemic in this country. We’ve had one for a long time. And in this new four-part series from On the Media, host Brooke Gladstone will seek out the why and the wherefore — in search, ultimately, of a cure. Evictions are filed over 3.7 million times a year in America — or at a rate of one every seven seconds. The eviction epidemic has bedeviled more lives than the opioid crisis and still its causes — and consequences — remain largely ignored or misunderstood. With the help of Matt Desmond and the Eviction Lab, which has compiled the largest-ever database of eviction records, our series charts a course through a thicket of contradictions and assumptions to reveal the heart of the crisis."]
Schneider, Nathan."Ten Years Since Economic Collapse Sparked Occupy Wall Street, the Cooperative Movement Is Surging." Democracy Now (September 18, 2018) ["This week marks the seventh anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement and 10 years since the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers, which triggered the onset of the global financial crisis. The crisis also sparked massive global anti-capitalist movements, including Occupy Wall Street, the M-15 movement in Spain and the anti-austerity movements in Greece. “It’s striking how little we are marking these anniversaries,” says author and activist Nathan Schneider. “I think … we recognize we really haven’t done anything serious to deal with the causes of this crash.” Schneider’s new book outlines an alternative economic model based on cooperative ownership that saw a resurgence since the 2008 financial crisis. It’s titled “Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy.”"]
Schor, Juliet B. "Born To Buy: The Commercialized Child And The New Consumer Culture." NPR (ND) ["The award-winning author of The Overworked American and The Overspent American examines advertising strategies that promote consumerism from the earliest ages, offering advice to parents and teachers on how to reverse the damaging effects of commercialism on developing children. 35,000 first printing."]
Schure, Natalia, et al. "Gearing Up for the Fight for Medicare for All." Best of the Left #1260 (March 29, 2019)
Schwarz, Jon. "Happy Labor Day! There Has Never Been a Middle Class Without Strong Unions." The Intercept (September 5, 2016)
---. "New Dark Money Documentary Shines Light Into the Shadows Cast by the Super-Rich." The Intercept (October 1, 2018)
Scialabba, George. "Back to the Land: Wendell Berry in the Path of Modernity." The Baffler (January 2020)
Scott, Debra Leigh. "Here's How Higher Education Was Destroyed in 5 Basic Steps." Alternet (June 2, 2018)
Scott, James C. "Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States." New Books in Political Science (June 3, 2020) ["We are schooled to believe that states formed more or less synchronously with settlement and agriculture. In Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States (Yale University Press, 2017), James C. Scott asks us to question this belief. The evidence, he says, is simply not on the side of states. Stratified, taxing, walled towns did not inevitably appear in the wake of crop domestication and sedentary settlement. Only around 3100 BCE, some four millennia after the earliest farming and settling down, did they begin making their presence felt. What happened in these four millennia is the subject of this book: a deep history by “a card-carrying political scientist and an anthropologist and environmentalist by courtesy”, which aims to put the earliest states in their place. James Scott joins us ... to talk about state fragility and state persistence from Mesopotamia to Southeast Asia, the politics of cereal crops, domestication and reproduction, why it was once good to be a barbarian, the art of provocation, the views of critics, and, human and animal species relations and zoonoses in our epidemiological past and pandemic present."]
Scott, Peter Dale. "The Processes and Logic of The Deep State (The American Deep State by Peter Dale Scott)." Unwelcome Guests #719 (August 8, 2015) ["Unusually, just a single speaker this week: one two hour interview with the doyen of deep political research, Canadian Professor Peter Dale Scott. He provides not only a lot of details of the evolution of the post WW2 deep state in the USA, but also sketches out its guiding principles, some of the deeper patterns which allow one to understand the superficially confusing and contradictory actions of the US deep state."]
Serpe, Nick. "Bisbee's Ghosts." Dissent (Winter 2019) ["A forced exodus haunts a border town’s past. Can a new documentary force a reckoning?"]
---. "Corporate Power Facts and Stats." Global Issues (November 12, 2011)
Shermer, Ellie. "On Local Elites Creating a 'Good Business Climate.'" Who Makes Cents? (December 5, 2014) ["Ellie Shermer discusses her book Sunbelt Capitalism: Phoenix and the Transformation of American Politics. On this episode, we speak to Ellie Shermer about how local elites in Phoenix crafted a “business climate” that made Pheonix hospitable to industry and shaped both the modern sunbelt and contemporary politics."]
Shure, Natalie. "Sex Workers' Rights are Workers' Rights." Jacobin (May 1, 2019) ["Sex workers don’t need saving. They need what every other worker needs: the power to dictate the terms of their labor."]Sirota, David. "Milk Money." Master Plan (August 27, 2024) ["Ever wonder how America became so corrupt? It didn’t have to be this way. Our series begins in 1971, a time when hot pants were hot, bell bottoms were swinging, and campaign cash flowed like… milk. "]
Smith, Yves. "Ending the Secrecy of the Student Debt Crisis." Naked Capitalism (September 16, 2018)
---. "Republicans Plan to Cut Food Stamps as Homelessness Rises in the US." Naked Capitalism (December 7, 2017)
---. "Whole Foods Becomes Amazon Hell Foods as Employees, Managers Quit, Cry on the Job….and These People Want to Run Your Healthcare?" Naked Capitalism (February 2, 2018)
---. "Wisconsin Union Battle: A Convenient Distraction From the Real Culprit in State Budget Woes." Naked Capitalism (February 20, 2011)
Snow, Izzy. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #19 People Bussed across US to Cut Cities’ Homeless Populations." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Stahl, Lesley. "How the NYU School of Medicine is going tuition-free." 60 Minutes (December 29, 2019)
Steal This Film (UK/Germany/Sweden: The League of Noble Peers, 2006: 32 minutes) ["Presenting accounts from prominent players such as The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party in the Swedish piracy culture, Steal This Film documents the movement against intellectual property. In particular, the film provides critical analysis of the alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO…"]
Steger, Manfred B. and Roy K. Ravi. A Very Short Introduction to Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Stein, Julia. "Gentrification Kills: Race, Inequality and the Death of American Cities." Counterpunch (January 10, 2018)
Stern, Andrew. "Real Estate Wars: Inside the class and culture battle that's tearing San Francisco apart." Business Insider (Posted on Youtube: February 19, 2016) ["America's biggest cities are experiencing a land rush, with the wealthiest residents buying up property and squeezing out the middle and lower classes. In San Francisco, the battle has reached crisis levels, in part due to factors unique to the area. The booming tech industry, with its high-paid workers, casts a singular power over this city. There's the geography: a peninsula of just 46 square miles surrounded by beautiful waterfront. Then there are the city's artistic heritage and progressive values, which affect politics and policies and inform the worldview of nearly every resident. In this special report, Business Insider's Andrew Stern talks to evictees, homeowners, activists, renters, and policymakers at the center of this fight over the future of this city."]
Stiglitz, Joseph. "How Intellectual Property Reinforces Inequality." Opinionator (July 14, 2013)
---. "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%." Vanity Fair (May 2011)
Stoller, Matt. "Corporate America PRICE GOUGING For Access To National Parks." Breaking Points (December 9, 2022) ["Matt Stoller analyzes how our national parks have been co-opted by large corporations leading to Americans being price gouged."]
Slavery By Another Name (PBS Documentary by Samuel Pollard, 2012: 84 minutes) ["Slavery by Another Name “resets” our national clock with a singular astonishing fact: Slavery in America didn’t end 150 years ago, with Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. Based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the film illuminates how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, persisting until the onset of World War II."]
Smith, Paul, et al. Amazon: At the Intersection of Culture and Capital. Rowman and Littlefield, 2022. ["Amazon is everywhere. In our mailboxes, in delivery vans clogging our streets, in an increasing portion of our air traffic, in our grocery stores, on our televisions, in our smart home devices, and in the infrastructure powering many of the websites we visit. Amazon’s tendrils touch the majority of online retail transactions in the United States and in many other countries. As Amazon changes the face of capitalist business, it is also changing global culture in multiple ways. This book brings together some of the most important analyses of Amazon’s pioneering business practices and how they intersect with and affect the components of everyday culture. Its contributors examine the political economy of Amazon’s platform, making the argument that it operates as an unregulated monopoly that is disruptive to the global economy and that its infrastructure and logistical operations increasingly alienate its workers and wreak many other social harms. Our contributors outline the practices of resistance that have been employed by organizers ranging from Amazon employees to artists to digital piecemeal laborers working on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform. They examine the broader cultural impact that Amazon has had, looking at things like Amazon Prime and the creation of unending consumption, the absorption of Whole Foods and its brand of ‘conscious capitalism,’ and the impact of Amazon Studios and Prime Video on everyday film and television viewing practices. This book examines the broader environmental impacts that Amazon is having on the world, looking at the slow violence it incurs, its underwhelming Climate Pledge, and the regional impacts that its business practices have. Lastly, this book gathers together some important artistic responses to Amazon for the first time in an appendix that offers readers insight into other ways in which critics of the company are making their voices heard and attempting to move broader audiences into solidarity against Amazon."]
Smith, Yves. "Ending the Secrecy of the Student Debt Crisis." Naked Capitalism (September 16, 2018)
---. "Republicans Plan to Cut Food Stamps as Homelessness Rises in the US." Naked Capitalism (December 7, 2017)
---. "Whole Foods Becomes Amazon Hell Foods as Employees, Managers Quit, Cry on the Job….and These People Want to Run Your Healthcare?" Naked Capitalism (February 2, 2018)
---. "Wisconsin Union Battle: A Convenient Distraction From the Real Culprit in State Budget Woes." Naked Capitalism (February 20, 2011)
Snow, Izzy. "The Top 25 Censored News Stories of 2017 - 2018: #19 People Bussed across US to Cut Cities’ Homeless Populations." Project Censored (October 2, 2018)
Stahl, Lesley. "How the NYU School of Medicine is going tuition-free." 60 Minutes (December 29, 2019)
Steal This Film (UK/Germany/Sweden: The League of Noble Peers, 2006: 32 minutes) ["Presenting accounts from prominent players such as The Pirate Bay, Piratbyrån, and the Pirate Party in the Swedish piracy culture, Steal This Film documents the movement against intellectual property. In particular, the film provides critical analysis of the alleged regulatory capture attempt performed by the Hollywood film lobby to leverage economic sanctions by the United States government on Sweden through the WTO…"]
Stein, Julia. "Gentrification Kills: Race, Inequality and the Death of American Cities." Counterpunch (January 10, 2018)
Stern, Andrew. "Real Estate Wars: Inside the class and culture battle that's tearing San Francisco apart." Business Insider (Posted on Youtube: February 19, 2016) ["America's biggest cities are experiencing a land rush, with the wealthiest residents buying up property and squeezing out the middle and lower classes. In San Francisco, the battle has reached crisis levels, in part due to factors unique to the area. The booming tech industry, with its high-paid workers, casts a singular power over this city. There's the geography: a peninsula of just 46 square miles surrounded by beautiful waterfront. Then there are the city's artistic heritage and progressive values, which affect politics and policies and inform the worldview of nearly every resident. In this special report, Business Insider's Andrew Stern talks to evictees, homeowners, activists, renters, and policymakers at the center of this fight over the future of this city."]
Stiglitz, Joseph. "How Intellectual Property Reinforces Inequality." Opinionator (July 14, 2013)
---. "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%." Vanity Fair (May 2011)
Stoller, Matt. "Corporate America PRICE GOUGING For Access To National Parks." Breaking Points (December 9, 2022) ["Matt Stoller analyzes how our national parks have been co-opted by large corporations leading to Americans being price gouged."]
---. "Monopoly vs. Democracy." Open Source (October 24, 2019) ["It’s new for most Americans that we’re embarrassed by our democracy. We don’t know where it went wrong, or whether it’ll survive. Matt Stoller explains it this way: we’ve come to do politics the way we do commerce, online and at the mall. Sellers are remote; critical choices are made for us. Our stuff comes from Walmart; our books, groceries, and now everything else from Amazon. Our lines on politics, news, opinion, and gossip come through Facebook. Our lives are designed and run to concentrate power and profit in the hands of a few faraway monopolists. No wonder we’re in a panic! Matt Stoller is here to tell you the fault, dear people, is not in our stars or even our selves but in these overnight monopolies that might just as well own us."]
Stout, Robert Joe. "Do the United States and Mexico Really Want the Drug War to Succeed." Monthly Review (January 1, 2012)
Strether, Lambert. "Class and Beyond: Case-Deaton’s 'Deaths of Despair,' Embodiment, and Neoliberal Epidemics." Naked Capitalism (December 11, 2017)
Stryker, Deena. "Iceland's On-going Revolution." Daily Kos (August 1, 2011)
Sutherland, Rory. "Alchemy." EconTalk (November 11, 2019) ["Author and Advertising Executive Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy talks about his book Alchemy with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Sutherland makes the case for the magic (yes, magic!) of advertising and branding in helping markets work well. This is a wide-ranging conversation on consumer choice, public policy, travel, real estate, and corporate decision-making using insights from behavioral economics and decades of experience in the world of advertising."]
Swenson, Haley. "Barbara Ehrenreich: Worker Abuse Is Rampant, and Sexual Harassment Is Just the Start." Slate (November 13, 2017)
Tabb, William K. "The Crisis: A View From Occupied America." The Monthly Review 64.4 (September 2012)
Taibbi, Matt. "How Wall Street Hedge Funds Are Looting the Pension Funds of Public Workers." Democracy Now (September 26, 2013)
---. Looting the Pension Funds: All across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers." Rolling Stone (September 26, 2013)
---. "The Real Housewives of Wall Street." Rolling Stone (April 11, 2011)
---. " The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia: How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy - until they were caught on tape." Rolling Stone (June 20, 2012)
---. "Who Goes to Jail? Matt Taibbi on American Injustice Gap from Wall Street to Main Street." Democracy Now (April 15, 2014)
---. "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them." Rolling Stone (February 16, 2011)
"Taxday 2011: Where did your 2010 Federal Income Taxes Go? National Priorities Project (March 22, 2011)
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. "Martin Luther King's Radical Anticapitalism." The Paris Review (January 15, 2018)
"Teaching the Hard History of Slavery." Southern Poverty Law Center (2018)
Thomas, Dana. "Fashion Kills." The American Scholar (September 6, 2019) ["How our hunger for more clothes is killing the environment and exploiting workers."]
Thompson, Derek. "The Post-Pandemic American Marketplace." On the Media (May 1, 2020) ["Coronavirus has prompted the shutdown of the American marketplace as we know it. Shops are boarded up, restaurants have shifted to a take-out only model, and tens of millions have been laid off. Eventually, some semblance of our economy will return — but what kind of economy will it be? Derek Thompson, staff writer at The Atlantic, expects that the pandemic will radically reshape American consumption — from the components of our diets to the composition of our cities."]
Tolentino, Jia. "The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death." The New Yorker (March 22, 2017)
Tompkins, Joseph. "Woke Hollywood? The Marketing of Black Panther." Counterpunch (March 30, 2018)
"Top 5% holds more than half of the country’s wealth." Economic Policy Institute (March 24, 2011)
"Understanding the Yellow Vests Protests." Best of the Left #1237 (December 21, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the Yellow Vests protest in France to understand what they are, how they started and what implications they have for the struggle between neoliberal, fascist and progressive politics worldwide."]
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. "A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism." Democracy Now (August 1, 2018) [I was meditating today on a river bank thinking about the impact of technology (especially SM) on my psyche. I was wondering what it is doing to us as humans and what are the questions we should be asking about that influence/time/impact. Then, later, while I was cleaning my house I listened to this interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan and my thoughts were pushed further and more questions arose. I was first concerned about my own psyche even as I thought about it on a larger social level. Then, because I am preparing for classes, I began to think of a pedagogical exercise. Introduce my classes to Vaidhyanathan's ideas in this interview and initiate a conversation about the impact of social media on how we operate in and understand our world. I'm thinking that I would ask my students to attempt to have a social media fast for an entire week (I would, of course, participate). To keep a record of our successes and failures, to think about how being disconnected in this way affects us, to keep a record of questions and conclusions. With all of that in mind, I would like to hear any responses to this interview and/or this conception of a pedagogical exercise. Also, would others be interested in doing this exercise at the same time - individually or collectively? I know this can come off as hypocritical as I am on SM. I have to honestly admit that when I was engaged in my higher education as the Internet (and later SM when I was a professor) appeared, and later dominated, I was excited (and bought into the rhetoric about its revolutionary possibilities) by the radical possibilities of being able to communicate with people from all corners of the earth (how many of you remember long distance charges on landlines) and to freely access information (including that which is purposely being censored or disappeared). Even as this fantasy dissipated in the wake of corporate colonization of the Internet, I still clung to a belief that if we just used it intelligently, modeled higher thinking, used it to connect to our loved ones, that it could be changed for a better purpose. More and more I am becoming cynical about that possibility..... I think we have to ask some hard questions. I will accept all positions with no judgement and in open discussion (as long as when you make conclusive/factual claims you back them up). Peace.]
Wade, Lisa. "U.S. Rare in the Spending of More Money on the Education of Rich Children." Sociological Images (December 8, 2013)
Waldman, Paul. "The Bias Against Change and Medicare for All." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["A year out from the 2020 Democratic primary, "Medicare for All" has emerged as a potent rallying cry and vision for a new American healthcare system. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Beto O'Rourke have all expressed support for some form of universal healthcare. Yet, Republicans and right-wing media have already begun discrediting the idea, similar to how they went after Obamacare beginning a decade ago. It is not surprising that the hefty price tag associated with some of the proposals has been wagged at by Fox News hosts and the like. After all, socialized medicine has been a conservative bugaboo for a century. But according to Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, the allegation of basic unaffordability has seeped, mainly unchallenged, into media coverage. In this segment, he and Bob parse through the messaging for and against Medicare-for-All, and discuss the biases that stymie the discussion."]
"Walmart on Tax Day: How Taxpayers Subsidize America’s Biggest Employer and Richest Family." Americans for Tax Fairness (April 2014)
Wang, Marian. "Dodd-Frank Delays Bring ‘Temporary Relief’ for Banks." Pro Publica (June 14, 2011)
Warfield, Zenobia Jeffries. "Black Lives Matter Is Making Single Moms Homeowners." Truthout (February 11, 2019)
Waring, Marilyn and Elaine Bernard. "Delusions of Modern Economics & The Free Market (Women's Day Edition)." Unwelcome Guests (March 10, 2000)
"The Warning." Frontline (October 20, 2009)
"The War on/in Higher Education." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)
Webber, David. "The Real Reason the Investor Class Hates Pensions." The New York Times (March 5, 2018)
"Welfare Reform Syllabus." Black Perspectives (August 24, 2016)
Weinberg, Meyer. A Short History of American Capitalism. New History Press, 2003.
Weisbrot, Mark, Jake Johnston and Stephan Lefebvre. "Ecuador’s New Deal: Reforming and Regulating the Financial Sector." Center for Economic and Policy Research (February 2013)
"Wells Fargo Profits from Private Prisons." Media Roots (November 22, 2011) ["As big banks inject record amounts of cash into lobbying this year, largely aimed at access to financial regulators, Wells Fargo, in particular, stands out because of its added rapacious dimension of investments in for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centres."]
West, Stephen. "Adam Smith Part 1 - Specialization." Philosophize This! #48 (January 17, 2015) ["... we begin our discussion of Adam Smith and how specialization has enabled each of us to live like a king, whether we realize it or not. First, we find out why Stephen is that weird guy who sits alone in the bar smiling to himself. Next, we take a look at what an hour of work buys today versus 200 years ago, and consider how this changes our ideas about wealth. Finally, we find out how pursuing our own self-interests ultimately benefits society and allows us to accomplish more together."]
Stout, Robert Joe. "Do the United States and Mexico Really Want the Drug War to Succeed." Monthly Review (January 1, 2012)
Strether, Lambert. "Class and Beyond: Case-Deaton’s 'Deaths of Despair,' Embodiment, and Neoliberal Epidemics." Naked Capitalism (December 11, 2017)
Sutherland, Rory. "Alchemy." EconTalk (November 11, 2019) ["Author and Advertising Executive Rory Sutherland of Ogilvy talks about his book Alchemy with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Sutherland makes the case for the magic (yes, magic!) of advertising and branding in helping markets work well. This is a wide-ranging conversation on consumer choice, public policy, travel, real estate, and corporate decision-making using insights from behavioral economics and decades of experience in the world of advertising."]
Swenson, Haley. "Barbara Ehrenreich: Worker Abuse Is Rampant, and Sexual Harassment Is Just the Start." Slate (November 13, 2017)
Taibbi, Matt. "How Wall Street Hedge Funds Are Looting the Pension Funds of Public Workers." Democracy Now (September 26, 2013)
---. Looting the Pension Funds: All across America, Wall Street is grabbing money meant for public workers." Rolling Stone (September 26, 2013)
---. "The Real Housewives of Wall Street." Rolling Stone (April 11, 2011)
---. " The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia: How America's biggest banks took part in a nationwide bid-rigging conspiracy - until they were caught on tape." Rolling Stone (June 20, 2012)
---. "Who Goes to Jail? Matt Taibbi on American Injustice Gap from Wall Street to Main Street." Democracy Now (April 15, 2014)
---. "Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them." Rolling Stone (February 16, 2011)
"Taxday 2011: Where did your 2010 Federal Income Taxes Go? National Priorities Project (March 22, 2011)
Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. "Martin Luther King's Radical Anticapitalism." The Paris Review (January 15, 2018)
"Teaching the Hard History of Slavery." Southern Poverty Law Center (2018)
Thomas, Dana. "Fashion Kills." The American Scholar (September 6, 2019) ["How our hunger for more clothes is killing the environment and exploiting workers."]
Thompson, Derek. "The Post-Pandemic American Marketplace." On the Media (May 1, 2020) ["Coronavirus has prompted the shutdown of the American marketplace as we know it. Shops are boarded up, restaurants have shifted to a take-out only model, and tens of millions have been laid off. Eventually, some semblance of our economy will return — but what kind of economy will it be? Derek Thompson, staff writer at The Atlantic, expects that the pandemic will radically reshape American consumption — from the components of our diets to the composition of our cities."]
Tolentino, Jia. "The Gig Economy Celebrates Working Yourself to Death." The New Yorker (March 22, 2017)
Tompkins, Joseph. "Woke Hollywood? The Marketing of Black Panther." Counterpunch (March 30, 2018)
"Understanding the Yellow Vests Protests." Best of the Left #1237 (December 21, 2018) ["Today we take a look at the Yellow Vests protest in France to understand what they are, how they started and what implications they have for the struggle between neoliberal, fascist and progressive politics worldwide."]
Vaidhyanathan, Siva. "A Threat to Global Democracy: How Facebook & Surveillance Capitalism Empower Authoritarianism." Democracy Now (August 1, 2018) [I was meditating today on a river bank thinking about the impact of technology (especially SM) on my psyche. I was wondering what it is doing to us as humans and what are the questions we should be asking about that influence/time/impact. Then, later, while I was cleaning my house I listened to this interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan and my thoughts were pushed further and more questions arose. I was first concerned about my own psyche even as I thought about it on a larger social level. Then, because I am preparing for classes, I began to think of a pedagogical exercise. Introduce my classes to Vaidhyanathan's ideas in this interview and initiate a conversation about the impact of social media on how we operate in and understand our world. I'm thinking that I would ask my students to attempt to have a social media fast for an entire week (I would, of course, participate). To keep a record of our successes and failures, to think about how being disconnected in this way affects us, to keep a record of questions and conclusions. With all of that in mind, I would like to hear any responses to this interview and/or this conception of a pedagogical exercise. Also, would others be interested in doing this exercise at the same time - individually or collectively? I know this can come off as hypocritical as I am on SM. I have to honestly admit that when I was engaged in my higher education as the Internet (and later SM when I was a professor) appeared, and later dominated, I was excited (and bought into the rhetoric about its revolutionary possibilities) by the radical possibilities of being able to communicate with people from all corners of the earth (how many of you remember long distance charges on landlines) and to freely access information (including that which is purposely being censored or disappeared). Even as this fantasy dissipated in the wake of corporate colonization of the Internet, I still clung to a belief that if we just used it intelligently, modeled higher thinking, used it to connect to our loved ones, that it could be changed for a better purpose. More and more I am becoming cynical about that possibility..... I think we have to ask some hard questions. I will accept all positions with no judgement and in open discussion (as long as when you make conclusive/factual claims you back them up). Peace.]
Waldman, Paul. "The Bias Against Change and Medicare for All." On the Media (March 15, 2019) ["A year out from the 2020 Democratic primary, "Medicare for All" has emerged as a potent rallying cry and vision for a new American healthcare system. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Beto O'Rourke have all expressed support for some form of universal healthcare. Yet, Republicans and right-wing media have already begun discrediting the idea, similar to how they went after Obamacare beginning a decade ago. It is not surprising that the hefty price tag associated with some of the proposals has been wagged at by Fox News hosts and the like. After all, socialized medicine has been a conservative bugaboo for a century. But according to Washington Post columnist Paul Waldman, the allegation of basic unaffordability has seeped, mainly unchallenged, into media coverage. In this segment, he and Bob parse through the messaging for and against Medicare-for-All, and discuss the biases that stymie the discussion."]
"Walmart on Tax Day: How Taxpayers Subsidize America’s Biggest Employer and Richest Family." Americans for Tax Fairness (April 2014)
Wang, Marian. "Dodd-Frank Delays Bring ‘Temporary Relief’ for Banks." Pro Publica (June 14, 2011)
Warfield, Zenobia Jeffries. "Black Lives Matter Is Making Single Moms Homeowners." Truthout (February 11, 2019)
Waring, Marilyn. "Who's Counting: Sex, Lies, and Global Economics, Part 1." TUC Radio (March 9, 2021) ["Marilyn Waring’s work and intriguing life is described in a documentary film by Terre Nash. I’m bringing back the soundtrack of this film to support a debate on the unquestioned need for economic growth at all cost and on what course to take after the end of the Covid Epidemic. At age 22 (in 1974) Marilyn Waring became the youngest member of the New Zealand Parliament. She chaired the prestigious Public Expenditures Committee and became familiar with the Gross Domestic Product system and decided to disclose its pathologies in a film, her teachings at AUT University in Auckland and really her life as a feminist economist. The film, “Who’s Counting” traces her quest to explore how the fate of women and of the earth are irrevocably tied up with the deadly pursuit of economic growth. Marilyn Waring was shocked and dismayed when she learned that all countries that are members of the UN are forced to keep their books and design their budgets under the system of National Income Accounting. This GDP system counts only cash transactions in the market and recognizes no value other than money. This means there is no value to peace and to the preservation of the environment."]
---. "Who's Counting: Sex, Lies and Global Economics, Part 2." TUC Radio (March 16, 2021) ["This segment opens with war. Under the GDP accounting system war is the biggest growth industry of all. A segment recorded in the Philippines shows that the labor of women feeding their children with subsistence agriculture is of no value, while sexual slavery that brings tourists to the country is counted as valuable in the GDP. Waring ends by proposing a time based accounting system and recommends that women take over the political process by demanding gender parity."]
Waring, Marilyn. "Who's Counting: Sex, Lies and Global Economics." NFB (1995) [documentary available online]Waring, Marilyn and Elaine Bernard. "Delusions of Modern Economics & The Free Market (Women's Day Edition)." Unwelcome Guests (March 10, 2000)
"The Warning." Frontline (October 20, 2009)
"The War on/in Higher Education." Jump Cut #55 (Fall 2013)
Webber, David. "The Real Reason the Investor Class Hates Pensions." The New York Times (March 5, 2018)
"Welfare Reform Syllabus." Black Perspectives (August 24, 2016)
Weisbrot, Mark, Jake Johnston and Stephan Lefebvre. "Ecuador’s New Deal: Reforming and Regulating the Financial Sector." Center for Economic and Policy Research (February 2013)
"Wells Fargo Profits from Private Prisons." Media Roots (November 22, 2011) ["As big banks inject record amounts of cash into lobbying this year, largely aimed at access to financial regulators, Wells Fargo, in particular, stands out because of its added rapacious dimension of investments in for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centres."]
West, Stephen. "Adam Smith Part 1 - Specialization." Philosophize This! #48 (January 17, 2015) ["... we begin our discussion of Adam Smith and how specialization has enabled each of us to live like a king, whether we realize it or not. First, we find out why Stephen is that weird guy who sits alone in the bar smiling to himself. Next, we take a look at what an hour of work buys today versus 200 years ago, and consider how this changes our ideas about wealth. Finally, we find out how pursuing our own self-interests ultimately benefits society and allows us to accomplish more together."]
---. "Capitalism is dead. This is Technofeudalism. (Yanis Varoufakis)." Philosophize This! #206 (July 21, 2024) ["Today we talk about the concept of Technofeudalism as described by Yanis Varoufakis. We talk about the comparisons of our world to the feudal system, the origins in the economic policy of 2008, and a few potential paths forward centered around important questions to be revisiting."]
---. "Capitalism vs Communism." Philosophize This #81 (May 10, 2016) ["Karl Marx and his famous critiques of capitalism. "]
---. "Frederick Hayek - The Road to Serfdom." Philosophy This! #139 (February 11, 2020)
Westneat, Danny. "This City Hall Brought To You By Amazon." Seattle Times (November 24, 2017) ["A review of some of the bids to woo Amazon’s HQ2 to other cities and states shows it’s not all about the money. In some cases democracy itself is a bargaining chip."]
Wheeler, Tom. Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age? Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. ["Hailed by Ken Burns as one of the foremost “explainers” of technology and its effect throughout history, Tom Wheeler now turns his gaze to the public impact of entrepreneurial innovation. In Techlash, he connects the experiences of the late 19th century’s industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st century digital Gilded Age. In both cases, technology innovation and the great wealth that it created ran up against the public interest and the rights of others. As with the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age that it created, new digital technology has changed commerce and culture, creating great wealth in the process, all while being essentially unsupervised. Warning that today is not the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” some envision, Wheeler calls for a new era of public interest oversight that leaves behind industrial era regulatory ideas to embrace a new process of agile, supervised and enforced code setting that protects consumers and competition while encouraging continued innovation. Wheeler combines insights from his experience at the highest echelons of business and government to create a compelling portrait of the need to balance entrepreneurial innovation with the public good."]
Wick, Julia. "When a Billionaire Buys Your Publication." On the Media (November 10, 2017) ["For the last 20 years, the news industry has been crumbling. In an effort to stay solvent, both legacy media and digital newbies have increasingly looked toward deep-pocketed ownership to stay alive – with mixed results. One such example came last week with the sudden closure of DNAinfo and the Gothamist blog network, hyperlocal digital news outlets that provided vital reporting for the cities in which they operated. For employees, it smacked of retaliation: the closure came just one week after the NYC editorial staff had voted to unionize. When the sites came down, so did their archives, replaced with a note from billionaire owner Joe Rickettsstating that "businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure." Bob speaks with Julia Wick who, up until that moment, served as editor-in-chief of LAist, the Los Angeles outlet in the Gothamist network."]
Wilkerson, Isabel. "It's More Than Racism: Isabel Wilkerson Explains America's 'Caste' System." Fresh Air (August 4, 2020) ["Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson says racism is an insufficient term for the systemic oppression of Black people in America. Instead, she prefers to refer to America as having a "caste" system."]
Westneat, Danny. "This City Hall Brought To You By Amazon." Seattle Times (November 24, 2017) ["A review of some of the bids to woo Amazon’s HQ2 to other cities and states shows it’s not all about the money. In some cases democracy itself is a bargaining chip."]
Wheeler, Tom. Techlash: Who Makes the Rules in the Digital Gilded Age? Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. ["Hailed by Ken Burns as one of the foremost “explainers” of technology and its effect throughout history, Tom Wheeler now turns his gaze to the public impact of entrepreneurial innovation. In Techlash, he connects the experiences of the late 19th century’s industrial Gilded Age with its echoes in the 21st century digital Gilded Age. In both cases, technology innovation and the great wealth that it created ran up against the public interest and the rights of others. As with the industrial revolution and the Gilded Age that it created, new digital technology has changed commerce and culture, creating great wealth in the process, all while being essentially unsupervised. Warning that today is not the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” some envision, Wheeler calls for a new era of public interest oversight that leaves behind industrial era regulatory ideas to embrace a new process of agile, supervised and enforced code setting that protects consumers and competition while encouraging continued innovation. Wheeler combines insights from his experience at the highest echelons of business and government to create a compelling portrait of the need to balance entrepreneurial innovation with the public good."]
Wick, Julia. "When a Billionaire Buys Your Publication." On the Media (November 10, 2017) ["For the last 20 years, the news industry has been crumbling. In an effort to stay solvent, both legacy media and digital newbies have increasingly looked toward deep-pocketed ownership to stay alive – with mixed results. One such example came last week with the sudden closure of DNAinfo and the Gothamist blog network, hyperlocal digital news outlets that provided vital reporting for the cities in which they operated. For employees, it smacked of retaliation: the closure came just one week after the NYC editorial staff had voted to unionize. When the sites came down, so did their archives, replaced with a note from billionaire owner Joe Rickettsstating that "businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure." Bob speaks with Julia Wick who, up until that moment, served as editor-in-chief of LAist, the Los Angeles outlet in the Gothamist network."]
Wilkerson, Isabel. "It's More Than Racism: Isabel Wilkerson Explains America's 'Caste' System." Fresh Air (August 4, 2020) ["Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson says racism is an insufficient term for the systemic oppression of Black people in America. Instead, she prefers to refer to America as having a "caste" system."]
Williams, Adrienne, Milagros Miceli, and Timnit Gebru. "The Exploited Labor Behind Artificial Intelligence." NOEMA (October 13, 2024) ["Tech companies that have branded themselves “AI first” depend on heavily surveilled gig workers like data labelers, delivery drivers and content moderators. Startups are even hiring people to impersonate AI systems like chatbots, due to the pressure by venture capitalists to incorporate so-called AI into their products. In fact, London-based venture capital firm MMC Ventures surveyed 2,830 AI startups in the EU and found that 40% of them didn’t use AI in a meaningful way. Far from the sophisticated, sentient machines portrayed in media and pop culture, so-called AI systems are fueled by millions of underpaid workers around the world, performing repetitive tasks under precarious labor conditions. And unlike the “AI researchers” paid six-figure salaries in Silicon Valley corporations, these exploited workers are often recruited out of impoverished populations and paid as little as $1.46/hour after tax. Yet despite this, labor exploitation is not central to the discourse surrounding the ethical development and deployment of AI systems. In this article, we give examples of the labor exploitation driving so-called AI systems and argue that supporting transnational worker organizing efforts should be a priority in discussions pertaining to AI ethics."]
Winant, Gabriel. "Coronavirus and Chronopolitics: The Young are Trying to Save the Old." N+1 #37 (Spring 2020) ["Yet one of the most obvious public health failures underlying the pandemic is rarely mentioned: it would be easier to manage if there were simply more hospital staff and they were better paid and more respected. But workers are expensive, and hospitals have spent the last generation trying to hold down costs. Once again, this is not just a problem in the US. At Lewisham Hospital in London, the first institution in England to treat a Covid-19 case, cleaning workers — who are essential to preventing the spread of the disease — walked out for a day in March over late pay and wages stuck at £8.21 an hour. “There’s a recruitment crisis in the NHS,” a union officer named Helen O’Connor said in an interview with Jacobin, referring to the strike at Lewisham. “That’s not going to be resolved unless it’s made a more attractive place to work.” Stories of overwork and exhaustion have poured out of China, Italy, Washington state, and seemingly every other place where the virus has taken hold. Child care for health-care workers’ children is an urgent need — sufficiently pressing in many cases for school districts to have remained open longer than they should have done otherwise. Like a radioactive element injected into the veins for an x-ray of blood flow, coronavirus is making plain the crisis of care in our society."]
Wisner, Brent. "Historic Ruling Against Monsanto Finds Company Acted with 'Malice' Against Groundskeeper with Cancer." Democracy Now (August 14, 2018) ["California jurors have awarded $289 million in a historic verdict against Monsanto in the case of a school groundskeeper who developed cancer after using its weed killer, Roundup. We speak with Brent Wisner, the lead trial counsel for Dewayne Lee Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Doctors say he is unlikely to live past 2020. Johnson’s was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging glyphosate causes cancer. Filed in 2016, it was fast-tracked for trial due to the severity of his illness."]
Wolff, Richard. "As Paul Ryan Touts a Secretary’s $1.50 Weekly Pay Hike, Koch Bros. Reap $1.4B from GOP Tax Plan." Democracy Now (February 5, 2018) ["This weekend, House Speaker Paul Ryan touted a story of a woman whose paycheck increased by $1.50 cents a week as a major benefit to middle-class workers. On Saturday, Ryan tweeted a link to an Associated Press report, writing, “A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.” After a deluge of ridicule and outrage, Ryan deleted the tweet hours later. For more, we speak with Richard Wolff, emeritus professor of economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and visiting professor at The New School. He’s the author of several books, including, most recently, Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown."]
---. "Austerity Programs." (Video on YouTube: February 25, 2011)
---. "Class Warfare and Economic Analysis." Law and Disorder Radio (April 2011)
---. "Eurozone Woes Result from Mating of Our "Dysfunctional" Political, Economic Systems." Democracy Now (December 12, 2011)
---. Global Capitalism (Presentation posted on Youtube: February 15, 2013)
---. "Ideological State Apparatuses, Consumerism, and U.S. Capitalism: Lessons for the Left." (University of Massachusetts Working Paper: July 2004)
---. "Is There an Alternative for Capitalist Economics and Politics?" TruthOut (January 8, 2013)
---. "Jettisoning Accustomed Categories of Thought (Marxian Class Analysis 2) Unwelcome Guests #625 (October 13, 2012)
---. "Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, Pt 2." Law and Disorder Radio (July 30, 2012)
---. "A Tale of Two Lootings." Truthout (August 3, 2011)
---. "The Vast Machine to Perpetuate Hopelessness (Marxian Class Analysis 1)." Unwelcome Guests #624 (October 6, 2012)
Wolff, Richard and Deepa Varna. "How To Occupy the Economy." Making Contact (February 7, 2012)
Wong, Felicia. "California Today, America Tomorrow." Boston Review (May 30, 2018) ["Political lessons from the state of resistance."]
Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Yates, Michael D. "The Great Inequality." Monthly Review (March 1, 2012)
---. "It's Still Slavery by Another Name." Monthly Review (May 1, 2020) ["All of these things would lead us to reject the hypothesis that white and black racism offset one another. What is more, we would get the same results even if we conducted more sophisticated tests of this hypothesis. For example, black wages are lower than those for whites if we factor out schooling, age, occupation, industry, experience, region, and whatever else we think influences wages. That is, if we look at two groups of workers equal in all respects (same schooling, experience, and so on), the black group will have a lower average wage than the white group. The same result would hold for whatever variable we considered—prison sentences, unemployment, life expectancies, and all the others mentioned above. We are left with an inescapable conclusion. Being black, in and of itself, is a grave economic and social disadvantage, while being white confers considerable advantage. That this is true today, 155 years after the end of the Civil War, after three constitutional amendments, the great civil rights movement, a large number of civil rights laws, and lord knows how many college courses and sensitivity training sessions is testament to the power and tenacity of racist social structures."]
Yes Men Fix the World (USA: Andy Bichbaum and Mike Bonanno, 2010: 87 mins)
"Yes, women still earn 75% as much as men." Feministing (March 2, 2011)
Younge, Gary. "The American Dream Has Become a Burden for Most." Comment is Free (September 22, 2013)
Zeiser, John W. W. "Requiem for a Media: On the Execution of LA Weekly." The Los Angeles Review of Books (December 5, 2017)
Zirin, Dave. "The UConn Huskies Win ‘NCAA Hunger Games Bingo’." The Nation (April 8, 2014)
Zoller, Matt. "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy." World in Time (November 22, 2019) ["'There are many arguments for what is at the root cause of our current social dysfunction,' journalist Matt Stoller writes at the beginning of his book Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. 'Various explanations include the prevalence of racism, automation, the rise of China, inadequate education or training, the spread of the internet, Donald Trump, the collapse of political norms, or globalization. Many of these explanations have merit. But there’s another much simpler explanation of what is going on. Our systems are operating the way that they were designed to. In the 1970s, we decided as a society that it would be a good idea to allow private financiers and monopolists to organize our world. As a result, what is around us is a matrix of monopolies, controlling our lives and manipulating our communities and our politics. This is not just happenstance. It was created. The constructs shaping our world were formed as ideas, put into law, and now they are our economic and social reality. Our reality is formed not just of monopolized supply chains and brands, but an entire language that precludes us from even noticing, from discussing the concentrated power all around us.'"]
Zornick, George. "Is It Time to Downgrade the Rating Agencies?" The Nation (August 3, 2011)
Zornick, George and Robert Pollin. "Why Do Ratings Agencies Matter?" Nation Conversations (August 12, 2011)
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"Access to healthcare is a spiritual issue, deeply rooted in a compassionate world view. Currently, in America, more than 40 million people are uninsured and millions more have insurance with such a high deductible that they cannot afford to use it. It is estimated that 22,000 Americans die prematurely every year because of a lack of access to healthcare. Why can't we cover everyone? Why do we spend twice as much as every other western democracy while getting less than France, Belgium, England, etc.? Why are politicians on both sides of the political spectrum seemingly in the pocket of healthcare insurance and pharmaceutical companies . . . and why are most churches silent about this travesty?"
Winant, Gabriel. "Coronavirus and Chronopolitics: The Young are Trying to Save the Old." N+1 #37 (Spring 2020) ["Yet one of the most obvious public health failures underlying the pandemic is rarely mentioned: it would be easier to manage if there were simply more hospital staff and they were better paid and more respected. But workers are expensive, and hospitals have spent the last generation trying to hold down costs. Once again, this is not just a problem in the US. At Lewisham Hospital in London, the first institution in England to treat a Covid-19 case, cleaning workers — who are essential to preventing the spread of the disease — walked out for a day in March over late pay and wages stuck at £8.21 an hour. “There’s a recruitment crisis in the NHS,” a union officer named Helen O’Connor said in an interview with Jacobin, referring to the strike at Lewisham. “That’s not going to be resolved unless it’s made a more attractive place to work.” Stories of overwork and exhaustion have poured out of China, Italy, Washington state, and seemingly every other place where the virus has taken hold. Child care for health-care workers’ children is an urgent need — sufficiently pressing in many cases for school districts to have remained open longer than they should have done otherwise. Like a radioactive element injected into the veins for an x-ray of blood flow, coronavirus is making plain the crisis of care in our society."]
Wisner, Brent. "Historic Ruling Against Monsanto Finds Company Acted with 'Malice' Against Groundskeeper with Cancer." Democracy Now (August 14, 2018) ["California jurors have awarded $289 million in a historic verdict against Monsanto in the case of a school groundskeeper who developed cancer after using its weed killer, Roundup. We speak with Brent Wisner, the lead trial counsel for Dewayne Lee Johnson, who has non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Doctors say he is unlikely to live past 2020. Johnson’s was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging glyphosate causes cancer. Filed in 2016, it was fast-tracked for trial due to the severity of his illness."]
Wolff, Richard. "As Paul Ryan Touts a Secretary’s $1.50 Weekly Pay Hike, Koch Bros. Reap $1.4B from GOP Tax Plan." Democracy Now (February 5, 2018) ["This weekend, House Speaker Paul Ryan touted a story of a woman whose paycheck increased by $1.50 cents a week as a major benefit to middle-class workers. On Saturday, Ryan tweeted a link to an Associated Press report, writing, “A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.” After a deluge of ridicule and outrage, Ryan deleted the tweet hours later. For more, we speak with Richard Wolff, emeritus professor of economics at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and visiting professor at The New School. He’s the author of several books, including, most recently, Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens: Essays on the Global Economic Meltdown."]
---. "Austerity Programs." (Video on YouTube: February 25, 2011)
---. "Class Warfare and Economic Analysis." Law and Disorder Radio (April 2011)
---. "Eurozone Woes Result from Mating of Our "Dysfunctional" Political, Economic Systems." Democracy Now (December 12, 2011)
---. Global Capitalism (Presentation posted on Youtube: February 15, 2013)
---. "Ideological State Apparatuses, Consumerism, and U.S. Capitalism: Lessons for the Left." (University of Massachusetts Working Paper: July 2004)
---. "Is There an Alternative for Capitalist Economics and Politics?" TruthOut (January 8, 2013)
---. "Jettisoning Accustomed Categories of Thought (Marxian Class Analysis 2) Unwelcome Guests #625 (October 13, 2012)
---. "Occupy the Economy: Challenging Capitalism, Pt 2." Law and Disorder Radio (July 30, 2012)
---. "A Tale of Two Lootings." Truthout (August 3, 2011)
---. "The Vast Machine to Perpetuate Hopelessness (Marxian Class Analysis 1)." Unwelcome Guests #624 (October 6, 2012)
Wolff, Richard and Deepa Varna. "How To Occupy the Economy." Making Contact (February 7, 2012)
Wolin, Sheldon S. "Myth in the Making." Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton University Press, 2008: 4-14. ["Democracy is struggling in America--by now this statement is almost cliché. But what if the country is no longer a democracy at all? In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin considers the unthinkable: has America unwittingly morphed into a new and strange kind of political hybrid, one where economic and state powers are conjoined and virtually unbridled? Can the nation check its descent into what the author terms "inverted totalitarianism"? Wolin portrays a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive--and where elites are eager to keep them that way. At best the nation has become a "managed democracy" where the public is shepherded, not sovereign. At worst it is a place where corporate power no longer answers to state controls. Wolin makes clear that today's America is in no way morally or politically comparable to totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, yet he warns that unchecked economic power risks verging on total power and has its own unnerving pathologies. Wolin examines the myths and mythmaking that justify today's politics, the quest for an ever-expanding economy, and the perverse attractions of an endless war on terror. He argues passionately that democracy's best hope lies in citizens themselves learning anew to exercise power at the local level."]
Yaruss, Howard. "Understandable Economics: Because Understanding Our Economy Is Easier Than You Think and More Important Than You Know (Prometheus Books, 2022)." New Books in Economics (August 31, 2022) ["Incomes are stagnating, middle-class jobs are disappearing, economic growth is slowing, and the meager gains are mostly going to those who are already wealthy. More Americans than ever are frustrated by the direction in which we are headed. Understandable Economics: Because Understanding Our Economy Is Easier Than You Think and More Important Than You Know (Prometheus, 2022) aims to replace this frustration with a practical understanding of our economy and empower readers to identify and advocate for a better approach to the problems we face. In this entertaining and informative guide, author Howard Yaruss breaks down our economic system in a straightforward way, avoiding jargon, formulas, graphs, and other technical material so common in books on this subject. Instead, he creates a compelling and comprehensive picture of our economy using accessible analogies, real-world observations, and entertaining anecdotes."]
Yates, Michael D. "The Great Inequality." Monthly Review (March 1, 2012)
---. "It's Still Slavery by Another Name." Monthly Review (May 1, 2020) ["All of these things would lead us to reject the hypothesis that white and black racism offset one another. What is more, we would get the same results even if we conducted more sophisticated tests of this hypothesis. For example, black wages are lower than those for whites if we factor out schooling, age, occupation, industry, experience, region, and whatever else we think influences wages. That is, if we look at two groups of workers equal in all respects (same schooling, experience, and so on), the black group will have a lower average wage than the white group. The same result would hold for whatever variable we considered—prison sentences, unemployment, life expectancies, and all the others mentioned above. We are left with an inescapable conclusion. Being black, in and of itself, is a grave economic and social disadvantage, while being white confers considerable advantage. That this is true today, 155 years after the end of the Civil War, after three constitutional amendments, the great civil rights movement, a large number of civil rights laws, and lord knows how many college courses and sensitivity training sessions is testament to the power and tenacity of racist social structures."]
Yes Men Fix the World (USA: Andy Bichbaum and Mike Bonanno, 2010: 87 mins)
"Yes, women still earn 75% as much as men." Feministing (March 2, 2011)
Younge, Gary. "The American Dream Has Become a Burden for Most." Comment is Free (September 22, 2013)
Zeiser, John W. W. "Requiem for a Media: On the Execution of LA Weekly." The Los Angeles Review of Books (December 5, 2017)
Zoller, Matt. "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy." World in Time (November 22, 2019) ["'There are many arguments for what is at the root cause of our current social dysfunction,' journalist Matt Stoller writes at the beginning of his book Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. 'Various explanations include the prevalence of racism, automation, the rise of China, inadequate education or training, the spread of the internet, Donald Trump, the collapse of political norms, or globalization. Many of these explanations have merit. But there’s another much simpler explanation of what is going on. Our systems are operating the way that they were designed to. In the 1970s, we decided as a society that it would be a good idea to allow private financiers and monopolists to organize our world. As a result, what is around us is a matrix of monopolies, controlling our lives and manipulating our communities and our politics. This is not just happenstance. It was created. The constructs shaping our world were formed as ideas, put into law, and now they are our economic and social reality. Our reality is formed not just of monopolized supply chains and brands, but an entire language that precludes us from even noticing, from discussing the concentrated power all around us.'"]
Zornick, George. "Is It Time to Downgrade the Rating Agencies?" The Nation (August 3, 2011)
Zornick, George and Robert Pollin. "Why Do Ratings Agencies Matter?" Nation Conversations (August 12, 2011)
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"Access to healthcare is a spiritual issue, deeply rooted in a compassionate world view. Currently, in America, more than 40 million people are uninsured and millions more have insurance with such a high deductible that they cannot afford to use it. It is estimated that 22,000 Americans die prematurely every year because of a lack of access to healthcare. Why can't we cover everyone? Why do we spend twice as much as every other western democracy while getting less than France, Belgium, England, etc.? Why are politicians on both sides of the political spectrum seemingly in the pocket of healthcare insurance and pharmaceutical companies . . . and why are most churches silent about this travesty?"
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