Tag Archives: Politics & Society

Racial bias in police shooting Roland Fryer, an economics professor at Harvard University, recently published a working paper at NBER on the topic of racial bias in police use of force and police shootings. The paper gained substantial media attention – a write-up of it became the top viewed article on the New York Times website. The most notable part of the study was its finding that there was no evidence of racial bias in police shootings, which Fryer...

 [embedded content] Ja hur ska man reagera på dessa uttryck för oförblommerat svinaktig rasism? Kanske med att lyssna på Olof Palme [embedded content]

Inför brexit-omröstningen var det få kommentatorer som ondgjorde sig över att man i Storbritannien valt att låta medborgarna i en folkomröstning tala om huruvida man ville stanna kvar i EU eller ej. För de flesta framstod detta lika självklart som att Sverige för lite mer än tio år sedan folkomröstade om vi ville vara med i EMU eller ej. Men när väl det — för de flesta — överraskande resultatet av brexit-omröstningen stod klart blev det andra tongångar. När ‘folket’ inte valde...

By the time British citizens went to the polls on June 23 to decide on their country’s continued membership in the European Union, there had been no shortage of advice in favor of remaining. Foreign leaders and moral authorities had voiced unambiguous concern about the consequences of an exit, and economists had overwhelmingly warned that leaving the EU would entail significant economic costs. Yet the warnings were ignored. A pre-referendum YouGov opinion poll tells why:...

Brexit shows the need for a reformed economics Brexit is about much more than frustration about the E.U. and immigration. It is about a shortage of decent and secure jobs; an impossibly precarious labour market; inexplicable inequalities in incomes and wealth; closed access to affordable education, and a terrible deficiency of affordable housing; and it is about British Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne’s single-minded austerity economics and the...

What Brexit was all about      Societies where we allow the inequality of incomes and wealth to increase without bounds, sooner or later implode. In a market economy it is money that counts. In a democracy it is your vote that counts. If you’ve got money, you vote in. If you haven’t got money, you vote out.

Brexit — a rejection of mainstream economics If, as a result of Brexit, the economy crashes it will not vindicate the economists, it will simply illustrate once more their failure. We, at Policy Research in Macroeconomics (PRIME) call for an urgent, independent, public inquiry into the economics profession, and its role in precipitating both the financial crisis of 2007-9, the subsequent very slow ‘recovery’; and in the British European referendum...

There will be a lot of postmortems for the European Union (EU) after Brexit. Many will suggest that this was a victory against the neoliberal policies of the European Union … The problem is that while it is true that the EU leaders have been part of the problem and have pursued the neoliberal policies within the framework of the union, sometimes with treaties like the Fiscal Compact, it is far from clear that Brexit and the possible demise of the union, if the fever spreads to...

The EU establishment has been held to account for the euro mess, for austerity policies that turned recession into depression, for the galloping inequality, and for the millions and millions of unemployed. The austerity policies pursued in the UK and elsewhere, is deeply disturbing. When an economy is already hanging on the ropes, you can’t just cut government spendings. Cutting government expenditures reduces the aggregate demand. Lower aggregate demand means lower tax...

Whatever you do for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine This one is for you — all you brothers and sisters struggling to survive in civil wars or forced to flee your homes and risking your lives on your way to my country or other countries in Europe. [embedded content] Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?...