From Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? Robert Kuttner. 2018. Kindle online sample. Section 3. During the period between the two world wars, free-market liberals governing Britain, France, and the US tried to restore the pre–World War I laissez-faire system. They put debt collection ahead of economic recovery. It WAS AN ERA OF RAMPANT SPECULATION AND NO CONTROLS ON PRIVATE CAPITAL. All this was supposed to promote prosperity and peace. Instead, it produced a decade of economic insecurity combined with heights of inequality, a discrediting of democracy, fascist backlash, and deeper depression. … The great prophet of how market forces taken to an extreme destroy both democracy and a functioning economy was less Karl Marx than Karl Polanyi. As Polanyi demonstrated in his 1944 masterwork, The Great Transformation, the DISEMBEDDING OF MARKETS FROM THEIR SOCIETIES AND RESULTING INATTENTION TO SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES INEVITABLY TRIGGERS A REACTION. The reaction is more often chaotic and fas
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Mostly summarized from Gregory Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, 5th Ed. PART 6 The Economics of Labor Markets Chapter 18 of 36 The Markets for the Factors of Production Section 17 of 21 … Labor income is an easily understandable concept. It is the paycheck workers get from their employers. Capital income is less straightforward. In the simple model of the overall economy we assume · households (private individuals) own the economy's stock of capital such as ladders, drill presses, and warehouses · rent this capital to the firms that use it … Capital income from this viewpoint is the rent households receive for firms’ use of capital owned by households. Capital is bought by the money households invest in or lend to firms. Firms directly receive the earnings from this capital from consumers of firms’ products. These earnings from capital are eventually paid back to households. … Some of the firm’s earnings are paid in the form of interest to firms and individuals who have lent money
From Alan Greenspan's book Capitalism In America: “U.S. companies conquered global markets in an astonishing range of areas (though luxury goods remained a European stronghold). By the mid-1960s, Ford and GM were the second- and third-biggest “European” car manufacturers after Fiat. U.S. companies made over 80 percent of Europe’s computers. In Britain, Keynes’s darkest fears of an American takeover had been realized: U.S. firms accounted for over half of the British market for cars, vacuum cleaners, electric shavers, razor blades, breakfast cereals, potato chips, sewing machines, custard powder, and typewriters. Kodak produced 90 percent of the film sold in Britain; Heinz accounted for 87 percent of baby food and 62 percent of baked beans; Kraft and Swift accounted for 75 percent of the processed cheese. Many Europeans looked on in despair. In The American Challenge (1967), Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber argued America’s superior ability to manage big companies across huge geograp
From article The Past Two Years Have Been a Nightmare for Green True Believers. John Hayward. April 29, 2022. The past two years have been a comprehensive disaster for the environmental movement: -from the pandemic shattering Green New Deal illusions of what a “sustainable lifestyle” might look like -to POLLUTING POWERHOUSES LIKE CHINA AND INDIA BURNING LITERAL MOUNTAINS OF COAL without the slightest concern for the climate change movement The economy-killing lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 dramatically reduced carbon emissions, but it still was not nearly enough to meet the demands of climate hysterics. … NASA, which is all-in on climate change theology, determined ATMOSPHERIC CO2 ACTUALLY INCREASED WHILE CARBON DIOXIDE EMISSIONS PLUMMETED under the lockdowns. Also, the reduction in human emissions did some strange things to the atmosphere that apparently prevented it from purging some greenhouse gasses. … In other words, the Wuhan coronavirus delivered a beyond-best-case scenario for re
From Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism? Robert Kuttner. 2018. Kindle online sample. Section 2. Our deeper story is about the fraught relationship between socially bearable capitalism and robust democracy. WHEN THE SYSTEM IS IN BALANCE, STRONG DEMOCRACY TEMPERS MARKET FORCES for the general good, in turn reinforcing democratic legitimacy. … Democracy must be national because the polity is national. As a citizen of the United States, I can vote for my leaders. My government has certain rules and procedures that are relatively transparent and can be contested. But there is no global government and no global citizenship. TO THE EXTENT DEMOCRACY REQUIRES TAMING OF THE MARKET, GLOBALIZATION WEAKENS THAT ENDEAVOR. … Today’s globalization undermines national regulatory authority. There is no global lender of last resort, no global financial supervisor, no global antitrust authority, no global tax collector, no global labor relations board, no global entity to enforce democratic rights
From article Elizabeth Warren Forgets Demand Affects Prices Too. Ryan Bourne, Cato. May 16, 2022. It seems as though failed economic policies are doomed to repeat themselves. Fresh off the back of a House proposal for a new federal anti‐price gouging law targeting gas and energy, SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN HAS INTRODUCED A MORE COMPREHENSIVE BILL TO BAN PRICE GOUGING DURING EMERGENCIES. It is, to put it mildly, a mess. … The Price Gouging Prevention Act would make it unlawful “to sell or offer for sale a good or service at an unconscionably excessive price during an exceptional market shock.” Exceptional market shocks are defined to include natural disasters, power outages, strikes, civil disorder, war, or public health emergencies. In other words, extraordinary situations must be met with ordinary product prices. That is a RECIPE FOR A WHOLE HOST OF SHORTAGES OR MISALLOCATIONS OF GOODS when demand for products surge, or when production and distribution get severely disrupted. … Warren’s