Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from Shimshon Bichler & Jonathan Nitzan Here is a silent killer. While the proportion of the world’s population subject to hunger keeps falling, that of the overfed, mostly with junk, is climbing. In 2005, the two trends crossed: for the first time in the history of humanity, the number of obese people surpassed that of the underweight, and the process continues unabated. The latest data, for 2016, show that almost 14% of the world’s population is now obese — nearly three times more...

from Prabhat Patnaik A crucial component of the imperialist system is the colonisation of third world minds that helps to sustain it. This colonisation is pervasive, but here we shall discuss only academic colonisation and that too relating to the social sciences. Social sciences are of critical importance because the problems of the third world are above all social problems, and since the colonisation of third world minds has the effect of inculcating in them the belief that imperialism...

The VoCs approach to capitalism has the potential to transform economics. It tacitly emphasizes the plasticity of economies, whereby their character and outcomes are significantly a matter of choice. This paper augments VoCs theory to include a distinction between varieties and varietals of capitalism. Drawing on biology, varieties correspond to species and varietals correspond to […]

Surgery Tomorrow  I shall be having a parathyroid removed tomorrow (Feb. 2) at University of Virginia hospital. Will be going over this evening to avoid freezing fog.  So, I shall be out of commission for a while. Barkley Rosser

from Dean Baker With inflation remaining stubbornly high for longer than I, and many others, expected, I want to take another stab at the argument of the inflation hawks. As a jumping off point, I will use the argument put forward by Larry Summers and Jason Furman, probably the two most prominent and coherent economists arguing that we have underestimated the risks of persistently high inflation.[1] There are three main components to the Summers-Furman (SF) argument. (Their arguments are...

I should know, I tried to imagine it. Every few days, there’s another article pointing out the likelihood that a Democratic win[1] in the 2024 US election will be overturned, and suggesting various ways it might be prevented, none of which seem very likely to work. The best hope would seem to be a crushing Democratic victory in the 2022 midterms, which doesn’t look likely right now[2] What I haven’t seen is anyone discussing what the US would be like after a successful Trumpist...