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A lot of discussion around “living with Covid” starts from the premise that, as long as vaccination rates are high (say 80 per cent of the population), we don’t need to worry about high case numbers. That’s because vaccinated people are less likely to suffer bad outcomes (hospitalization and death). The problem with this claim is that, because the primary function of vaccines is to protect against infection, unvaccinated people will be over-represented among cases. Let’s try some...

from Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson   We are now ready to approach the question of how these national monetary orders of capitalism relate to one another internationally. One key contradiction has powered the history of world money under capitalism. On the one hand, money is created by states or those delegated and controlled by them. On the other, there can be no world state under capitalism, and thus no world money. When dominant states nevertheless seek to foist their currency on...

Suppose that you believe, as I do, that the threat to American democracy posed by Donald Trump and his Republican enablers and imitators is by far the most important issue confronting us today.  One implication of this view is that opinion leaders – politicians, pundits, academics, journalists – should make every effort to forestall disaster by educating people about the risk of democratic backsliding, and trying to bring people together to preserve...

from Dean Baker As a big fan of the original Star Trek, I have to confess that it was kind of neat to see Captain Kirk actually go into space. But there is a real issue here about the silly games of the super-rich that is worth some thought. There have been numerous stories and papers about the huge increase in the wealth of the super-rich since the pandemic began. Virtually all of this is due to the run-up in the stock market during this period. Part of that is bounce back, the S&P...

from Blair Fix Political economist Chris Mouré has a new paper out in the Review of Capital as Power. It’s called ‘Soft-wars’, and it is a fascinating case study of the behavior of big tech. The story starts in 2011, when Microsoft led a $4.5 billion consortium purchase of Nortel and Novel. Later than year, Google responded by buying Motorola for $12.9 billion. The funny thing is that Google then proceeded to sell off what it had just bought. By 2014, almost nothing was left of...

from Lars Syll Back in 1992, New Jersey raised the minimum wage by 18 per cent while its neighbour state, Pennsylvania, left its minimum wage unchanged. Unemployment in New Jersey should — according to mainstream economic theory’s competitive model — have increased relative to Pennsylvania. However, when ‘Nobel prize’ winning economist David Card and his colleague Alan Krueger gathered information on fast food restaurants in the two states to check what employment effects the minimum wage...

Prosecutors in Mexico seeking arrest warrants for more than 30 scientists “The World Economic Association –with its 15,000 members-is committed to the development, promotion and diffusion of economic research and knowledge; advocating plurality of thought, method and philosophy. We are convinced that these activities can only be carried out in a context of freedom, exempt of intimidation and harassment. In this spirit we voice our apprehension for  the 31 Mexican scientists and scientific...

from Dean Baker That’s the question millions are asking, even if economic reporters are not. The classic story of a wage price spiral is that workers demand higher pay, employers are then forced to pass on higher wages in higher prices, which then leads workers to demand higher pay, repeat. We are seeing many stories telling us that this is the world we now face. A big problem with that story is the profit share of GDP has actually risen sharply in the last two quarters from already high...