Paul Krugman: Death of a Fairy Tale

This was the month the confidence fairy died.

For the past two years most policy makers in Europe and many politicians and pundits in America have been in thrall to a destructive economic doctrine. According to this doctrine, governments should respond to a severely depressed economy not the way the textbooks say they should — by spending more to offset falling private demand — but with fiscal austerity, slashing spending in an effort to balance their budgets. 

European, US Austerity Drive is Suicidal: Nobel Economist Stiglitz

'The Occupy movement has been very successful in bringing those ideas to the forefront of political discussion.'

- Common Dreams staff 

 

Europe is headed down the same path that most Republicans -- and many Democrats -- are suggesting for the US: reductions in the public sector, cuts in benefits, slashing investments in infrastructure and education.

Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz speaking in Vienna, Austria Thursday night said that it's a suicidal path for Europe -- and that such a policy has never worked in any large country.

To Kick Climate Change, Replace Corn With Pastured Beef

—By Tom Philpott | Wed Apr. 25, 2012 10:51 AM PDT

Corn is by far the biggest US crop, and a network of corporations has sprouted up that profits handsomely from it. Companies like Monsanto and Syngenta sell the seeds and chemicals used to grow it, while Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland, Tyson, and their peers buy the finished crop and transform it into meat, ethanol, sweetener, and a range of food ingredients. Known in Washington as King Corn, the corn lobby wields formidable power in political circles. 

The Coming Right-Wing Clash over the "Half That Pay No Taxes"

by Avenging Angel

In recent years, few Republican talking points have been regurgitated as often as the myth that almost half of Americans pay no taxes. Just last week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor complained "we have to question whether that's fair," insisting "you've got to discuss that issue."

And that could be a real problem for some on the right. After all, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush respectively expanded the bipartisan Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit which has helped reduce or eliminate the income tax bill for many low income working families. (It was President Reagan who called the EITC "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.") And now, some leaders on the religious right are fretting that the GOP's draconian Romney-Ryan budget plan will do away with the vital protections for the "least of these."

Insanity: CISPA Just Got Way Worse, And Then Passed On Rushed Vote

from the this-is-crazy dept

Update: Several people have asserted that Quayle's amendment actually made CISPA better, not worse. I've now posted my thoughts on that.

Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today—and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part.

The vote followed the debate on amendments, several of which were passed. Among them was an absolutely terrible change (pdf and embedded below—scroll to amendment #6) to the definition of what the government can do with shared information, put forth by Rep. Quayle. Astonishingly, it was described as limiting the government's power, even though it in fact expands it by adding more items to the list of acceptable purposes for which shared information can be used. Even more astonishingly, it passed with a near-unanimous vote. The CISPA that was just approved by the House is much worse than the CISPA being discussed as recently as this morning.

The World's Insurers Brace For Climate Change -- Except In America

By Ben Schiller, Yale Environment 360
Posted on April 26, 2012, Printed on April 27, 2012

Given that insurers are likely to be among the first companies affected by climate change, you might expect the industry to be better prepared than most.

But that is not how it appears to many analysts, regulators, and industry representatives, who say insurers are showing a lack of urgency on the twin threats of massive future damage claims from weather-related events, and the prospect of growing climate change-related litigation.

Government-Run Healthcare is More Efficient Than Private Healthcare

—By Kevin Drum | Fri Apr. 27, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Can the government provide healthcare more efficiently than the private market? There's no simple answer to that, but a couple of recent data points suggest the answer is yes.

First there's Medicare. It's true that long-term Medicare costs remain our most critical budget problem, thanks to aging baby boomers and ever-expanding treatments for chronic illnesses and end-of-life care. But per-capita Medicare spending has been on a long downward trend, and that trend has been so steady and predictable that a recent study suggested that spending growth per beneficiary over the next decade would be close to zero.

Report: American Corporations Are Adding More Jobs Overseas Than They Are At Home

By Travis Waldron on Apr 27, 2012 at 9:45 am

With the nation’s unemployment rate still above eight percent, millions of Americans are looking for work, and the country’s biggest corporations are hiring. According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, however, many of those corporations are adding jobs overseas at a faster pace than they are at home.

The Self-Made Myth: Debunking Conservatives' Favorite -- And Most Dangerous -- Fiction

By Sara Robinson, AlterNet
Posted on April 25, 2012, Printed on April 27, 2012

The self-made myth is one of the most cherished foundation stones of the conservative theology. Nurtured by Horatio Alger and generations of beloved boys' stories, It sits at the deep black heart of the entire right-wing worldview, where it provides the essential justification for a great many other common right-wing beliefs. It feeds the accusation that government is evil because it only exists to redistribute wealth from society's producers (self-made, of course) and its parasites (who refuse to work). It justifies conservative rage against progressives, who are seen as wanting to use government to forcibly take away what belongs to the righteous wealthy. It's piously invoked by hedge fund managers and oil billionaires, who think that being required to reinvest any of their wealth back into the public society that made it possible is "punishing success." It's the foundational belief on which all of Ayn Rand's novels stand.

If you've heard it once from your Fox-watching uncle, you've probably heard it a hundred times. "The government never did anything for me, dammit," he grouses. "Everything I have, I earned. Nobody ever handed me anything. I did it all on my own. I'm a self-made man."

Is Your Candidate For Higher Office "Politically Insane"? Five Telltale Signs

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

April 26, 2012 - 9:05am ET 

Genuine mental illness is a human tragedy that afflicts both the sufferer and those around him or her. Our healthcare system provides inadequate resources for its treatment,. It's no joking matter.

Political craziness, on the other hand, is just crazy. It's sheer lunacy of the Marx Brothers variety.

There's no need to pity anyone who suffers from political craziness. The delusional person does just fine, thank you very much. Everybody else suffers, but the politically crazy person usually has a pretty great life. They're often rewarded for being delusional by being elected to high office. There they can count on enjoying fat campaign contributions and glowing media coverage.

What The Fight Over Student Loans Is Really About

Brian Beutler April 26, 2012, 6:26 AM

 

In a reprise of the winter fight over the payroll tax cut, Republicans are now reluctantly agreeing to support something that just weeks ago they strongly opposed: preventing student loan interest rates from doubling later this year.

It’s an issue Republicans fear will fire up the youth vote — a key Democratic constituency — and in an effort to keep that bloc from flocking back to President Obama in November they’re attempting to bigfoot Democrats on their own issue.

World needs to stabilise population and cut consumption, says Royal Society

Economic and environmental catastrophes unavoidable unless rich countries cut consumption and global population stabilises

 

John Vidal, environment editor

The Guardian, Wednesday 25 April 2012

World population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid "a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills", warns a major report from the Royal Society.

Contraception must be offered to all women who want it and consumption cut to reduce inequality, says the study published on Thursday, which was chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston.
The assessment of humanity's prospects in the next 100 years, which has taken 21 months to complete, argues strongly that to achieve long and healthy lives for all 9 billion people expected to be living in 2050, the twin issues of population and consumption must be pushed to the top of political and economic agendas. Both issues have been largely ignored by politicians and played down by environment and development groups for 20 years, the report says.

Budget Control Act Military Cuts Will Cover the Social Security Shortfall

Thursday, 26 April 2012 11:09 
By Robert Naiman, Truthout | Report 

A key reason that it's relatively easy to scaremonger about predictions regarding Social Security's finances decades in the future is that the language often used to talk about Social Security's finances isn't immediately comparable to anything else that most people can relate to. A number that isn't comparable to other numbers you know is a meaningless number. How big a difference is seven trillion dollars? It sounds like a huge number. But in a context devoid of comparable numbers, it's a meaningless number.

A Fight Bigger Than ALEC

The Editors  April 25, 2012

The American Legislative Exchange Council operated for almost forty years with scant notice, quietly connecting corporate interests with conservative legislators to impose one-size-fits-all “model legislation” on the states. Since ALEC’s secrets began leaking last year, however, its corporate members have been subjected to the sort of scrutiny—and antipathy—that CEOs and investors find most unsettling.

Research shows how PCBs promote dendrite growth, may increase autism risk

April 24, 2012

 

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — New research from UC Davis and Washington State University shows that PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, launch a cellular chain of events that leads to an overabundance of dendrites -- the filament-like projections that conduct electrochemical signals between neurons -- and disrupts normal patterns of neuronal connections in the brain.

Tavis Smiley and Cornel West: The Rich and the Rest of Us -- a Poverty Manifesto

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on April 24, 2012, Printed on April 27, 2012


The following is a transcript of Democracy Now! interview with Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. 

The latest census data shows nearly one in two Americans, or 150 million people, have fallen into poverty — or could be classified as low income. We’re joined by Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, who continue their efforts to spark a national dialog on the poverty crisis with the new book, "The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto." Smiley, an award-winning TV and radio broadcaster, says President Obama has failed to properly tackle poverty. "There seems to be a bipartisan consensus in Washington that the poor just don’t matter. President Obama is a part of that," Smiley says. "I take nothing away from his push on healthcare, but jobs for every American should have been primary issue, number one." West, a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University, says that after the historic U.S. struggles against monarchy, slavery and institutionalized racism, "the issue today is oligarchy. Poverty is the new slavery. Oligarchs are the new kings. They’re the new heads of this structure of domination."

$1.6 Billion in Missing MF Global Funds Traced

By James O'Toole @CNNMoney April 24, 2012: 6:49 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Investigators probing the collapse of bankrupt brokerage MF Global said Tuesday that they have located the $1.6 billion in customer money that had gone missing from the firm.

But just how much of those funds can be returned to the firm's clients, and who will be held responsible for their misappropriation, remains to be seen.

Planned Parenthood Worried It's The Target Of New Undercover Sting

A string of suspicious incidents at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country has given the organization reason to believe that anti-abortion activists are targeting it in a new organized sting operation.

According to Planned Parenthood spokesperson Chloe Cooney, clinics in at least 11 states have reported two dozen or more "hoax visits" over the past several weeks, in which a woman walks into a clinic, claims to be pregnant and asks a particular pattern of provocative questions about sex-selective abortions, such as how soon she can find out the gender of the fetus, by what means and whether she can schedule an abortion if she's having a girl.

Social Security and Medicare: Behind the Numbers and the Spin

By Richard RJ Eskow

Here are some headlines you won't see after the government releases new figures on Social Security and Medicare later today:

"Social Security Trust Fund Even Larger Than It Was Last Year"
"Growing Wealth Inequity Will Lead to Social Security Imbalance Later This Century"
"For-Profit Healthcare Poses Threat to Medicare, Federal Deficit, and Overall Economy in Coming Decades"
"Public Consensus Grows For Taxing Wealthy to Restore Long-Term Entitlement Imbalance"

Instead here's what we've already seen:

"Aging workforce strains Social Security, Medicare"

What If Pensions Funds Grabbed the Reins?

Sunday, 22 April 2012 13:37 By Mike Alberti, Remapping Debate

Public and private pension funds in the United States collectively have trillions of dollars in combined assets. They own more than a third of all domestic equity, with stakes in most public U.S. companies, and large holdings of corporate and government bonds, real estate, and infrastructure. They are unique in that they are both very large and have a much longer investment horizon than most other types of investors.

But, with few exceptions, American pension funds do not self-manage the majority of those assets, and they ignore the flexibility that their long-term horizon can bring, experts said. They employ private firms to invest their assets for them, often with a short-term focus and at a high cost. Many of their trustees are political appointees without any experience in finance. And so, instead of being viewed as powerful financial players, with the capacity to initiate deals and lead markets, pension funds act — and are treated by the financial advisors they employ — more like large customers.

Social Model Is Europe’s Solution, Not Its Problem

By Paul Fourier Apr 22, 2012 6:00 PM ET

In the wake of the financial crisis, Europe’s leaders are calling the continent’s social model into question -- it is “done,” according to European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. That’s a travesty.

The crisis is, above all, financial. Yet governments aren’t addressing the malfunctions that caused this problem. Instead, they are forcing ordinary people to pay and attacking the social systems that support them.

Michael Hudson: Productivity, The Miracle of Compound Interest, and Poverty

By Michael Hudson
From Hudson’s presentation at the Italian MMT Summit, which was also recorded by Bonnie Faulkner of Pacifica Radio’s Guns and Butter show

Suppose you were alive back in 1945 and were told about all the new technology that would be invented between then and now: the computers and internet, mobile phones and other consumer electronics, faster and cheaper air travel, super trains and even outer space exploration, higher gas mileage on the ground, plastics, medical breakthroughs and science in general. You would have imagined what nearly all futurists expected: that we would be living in a life of leisure society by this time. Rising productivity would raise wages and living standards, enabling people to work shorter hours under more relaxed and less pressured workplace conditions.

Why hasn’t this occurred in recent years? In light of the enormous productivity gains since the end of World War II – and especially since 1980 – why isn’t everyone rich and enjoying the leisure economy that was promised? If the 99% is not getting the fruits of higher productivity, who is? Where has it gone?

States In Northeast Cap And Trade Program Reduce CO2 20% Faster And Grow GDP At Twice The Rate of Other States

By Stephen Lacey on Apr 20, 2012 at 3:40 pm

Northeastern states participating in America’s first carbon cap and trade program have outperformed the rest of the country in GDP growth and reduction in global warming pollution.

That’s according to a new report from Environment New Jersey, which examined emissions data and economic growth indicators from 2000 to 2009.

Katha Pollitt: Ann Romney, Working Woman?

Has Ann Romney ever worked a day in her life? CNN pundit Hilary Rosen, not a Democratic strategist, said no way, prompting torrents of outrage from Fox, Republicans and New York Times columnist Frank Bruni, who loves his mother very much. Bertrand Russell, in his witty essay “In Praise of Idleness,” wrote, “What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so.” Clearly, between the houses and grounds, the five kids, the Cadillacs, the husband, the business socializing, the campaigning and, let’s not forget, that dog, Ann Romney has altered the position of much matter. Since it is not possible to run smoothly a multimillion-dollar multi-mansioned domestic establishment for seven people without at least some paid help, I’m guessing she probably instructed others in the proper positioning of matter as well. By Russell’s definition, Ann Romney has probably done a lot more work than I have. I sit at my desk and hours go by in which I seem to have hardly altered the position of anything, including myself.