Alfred Marshall, the founder of the so-called neoclassical school, was also the first prominent economist to attempt a reconciliation of Ricardo with the marginalists. Following the Senior-Longfield school, as interpreted by Mill, Marshall treated the “abstinence” of capital (or “waiting”) as another form of disutility alongside labor. He thus fused them into a unified subjective…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “‘Redistribute Wealth By Heavy Taxes’? It’s Already Been Done” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. The main thing governments have existed for, since the beginning of history, is to levy taxes on workers and producers in order to provide rents for the economic ruling classes that…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Rio Tinto: A Real-Life “Billy Jack” Villain” read by Dylan Delikta and edited by Nick Ford. Rio Tinto is, without qualification, one of the most evil corporations in the world. It has colluded with repressive regimes going back to Franco’s use of troops to suppress strikes in Rio Tinto’s…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Debt: Can’t Live With It, Can’t Live Without It” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. The problem is that the tendency of state capitalism is to increasing levels of stagnation, with larger and larger deficits required to prevent depression. Even in the upswing phase of the business cycle,…

The Export-Import Bank’s charter finally expired on June 30th. Ever since it was created during the New Deal, the Ex-Im Bank has supported exports by American corporations, all at taxpayer expense. The top recipients of Ex-Im Bank subsidies were big corporations, with the war-profiteers at Boeing receiving more Ex-Im largess than any other company. The…

Un sondaggio recente della Gallup ha scoperto che gli americani, con un margine di 52 contro 45, pensano che lo stato “debba… ridistribuire la ricchezza aumentando le tasse sui ricchi” (Matt Yglesias, “Americans want the government to ‘redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich,’” Vox, 5 maggio). Tra il 1940, quando la domanda fu…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Jerry Brown’s Phony Conservation Plan is Real Corporate Welfare” read by Joey Clark and edited by Nick Ford. Notably missing from the order is any measure, whether usage caps or rate increases, materially affecting heavily subsidized irrigation water for California’s giant agribusiness operations. When you consider that agribusiness accounts for about…

Images circulated, in the aftermath of Dylann Roof’s racially motivated mass shooting at the historically black Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, included not only numerous pictures of Roof brandishing the Confederate battle flag but one of him squatting over a rumpled U.S. flag and trampling it underfoot. His disrespect to Old Glory suggests that he…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “I Don’t See Class” read by Tony Dreher and edited by Nick Ford. “See, welfare — like racism and sexism — is welfare, regardless of who receives it. Welfare for giant corporations is morally equivalent to welfare for poor people. Structural issues of class and economic privilege have absolutely nothing to…

Una caratteristica ricorrente del ciclo economico è il fatto che durante una dura recessione lo stato accumula grossi deficit annuali come conseguenza del calo dei proventi dalle tasse, dell’aumento della spesa per sussidi di disoccupazione e aiuti ai poveri, e degli stimoli vari. Questo manda il debito pubblico alle stelle. Nel caso della “Grande Recessione”…

A recurring feature of the business cycle is that in deep recession years governments run huge annual deficits as a result of declining tax revenue, increased spending on unemployment and poverty relief and assorted stimulus. This causes government debt levels to skyrocket. In the case of the American “Great Recession,” this manifested itself as a…

In Free Market Fairness [1] John Tomasi lays out a way in which the gap between broadly libertarian (or classical liberal) and high liberal (or liberal egalitarian) political philosophies can be bridged. Since F. A. Hayek’s methodologically individualist rejection of the concept of social justice, and Robert Nozick’s liberty-based rejection of egalitarian distributive justice, there…

One of the best things about The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy is that David Graeber finally tackles issues directly relevant to anarchists. While his prior work has had value, it’s also largely been about rather obvious topics and punctuated with a need to apologize for or defend…

“Behind every great fortune,” Balzac wrote, “there is a crime.” That’s certainly true of the largest concentrations of wealth in the world today. The fortune of every billionaire, it’s safe to say, was amassed through some sort of crime. You don’t make that kind of money on the free market. And the holdings of every…

C4SS Feed 44 presents “Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty as We Know It” from the book Markets Not Capitalism, written by Charles Johnson, read by Stephanie Murphy and edited by Nick Ford. The daily experience of the urban poor is shaped by geographical concentration in socially and culturally isolated ghetto neighborhoods within the larger city, which have their…

In a piece at Reason (“Bernie Sanders: Don’t Need 23 Choices of Deodorant, 18 Choices of Sneakers When Kids Are Going Hungry,” May 26), Ed Krayewski took Sen. Bernie Sanders to task for saying in a recent MSNBC interview: “You can’t just continue growth for the sake of growth in a world in which we…

McKay, Iain, 2008 An Anarchist FAQ, Section G: Is Individualist Anarchism Capitalistic? Anarchist Writers, accessed 25 May 2015, McKay, Iain (2012) An Anarchist FAQ: Volume 2 (AK Press) Section G: Is Individualist Anarchism Capitalistic?,   The Anarchist FAQ Collective’s “Anarchist FAQ“ is a massive work, which has been constantly maintained and updated since 1996. The FAQ gives very…

The impending expiration of the USA Patriot Act is a matter of intense focus among civil libertarians; Rand Paul’s filibuster has been in the news, along with petition drives pressuring Congress not to vote for renewal. But it doesn’t really matter: Even if the legislation expires, the NSA will carry right on with domestic surveillance…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Obama: The Bosses’ Friend” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. “Meanwhile, the dispute drags on because management is simply unwilling to meet workers’ demands: Higher pay for weekend work. To resolve the impasse, one side or the other will have to do something it not only currently finds…

Every time I read a column by John Stossel, I think my estimation of him has fallen to its theoretical limit. And then I read the next one. For years, Stossel has tipped his hat to the idea that “pro-market” and “pro-business” are not the same thing. He occasionally gives an example of welfare for…