The Great Austerity Shell Game
This article originally appeared at The Guardian.
Barack Obama speaking in March 2013 about the sequester, the automatic spending cuts mandated by Congress. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
(More...)US Political Dysfunction and Capitalism’s Withdrawal
After 200 years of concentrating its centers in western Europe, north America, and Japan, capitalism is moving most of its centers elsewhere and especially to China, India, Brazil and so on. This movement poses immense problems of transition at both poles. The classic problems of early, rapid capitalist industrialization are obvious daily in the new centers. What we learn about early capitalism when we read Charles Dickens, Emile Zola, Maxim Gorky and Jack London, we see now again in the new centers.
(More...)US Politics' True Bipartisan Consensus: Capitalism is Untouchable
The economic aim of both major US political parties is, in the end, the same: to protect and reinforce the capitalist system.
(More...)Capitalism Works (or Not) for Me
Curators of New York City’s annual arts festival called us a couple of months ago. Would we be interested in having a public discussion with the artist, Steve Lambert, whose work was a major part of this year’s festival? The festival’s title is “Crossing the Line 2013,” and Lambert’s large neon-lighted installation (9 feet by 20 feet by 7 feet) says “Capitalism Works for Me.” Observers can respond by pressing either a “True” or “False” button.
(More...)What GOP-Tea Party Risks With Block of New New Deal
Many Germans in the years before 1933 dismissed the little man with the mustache: He could never take power, let alone keep it. Tzarist Russia’s elites thought the small social democratic party posed little threat. Batista’s minions ridiculed the lawyer and his friends...
(More...)