Di Kevin Carson. Articolo originale: The Economist Isn’t Just Phoning It In…, del 20 maggio 2023. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. A quanto pare è come un disco rotto. In un articolo del 13 aprile dal titolo “The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record”, l’Economist riesce a fare un collage di tutti i luoghi comuni neoliberali…

…It’s apparently an automated message. In “The lessons from America’s astonishing economic record” (Apr 13th), The Economist manages to regurgitate virtually every lazy neoliberal talking point in existence. The (unsigned) article sets out to demonstrate, contra the near-universal American perception that “the economy is broken,” that the American economy is actually a “stunning success story”…

Di Kevin Carson. Originale pubblicato il 29 febbraio 2016 con il titolo Once Upon a Time in America. Traduzione di Enrico Sanna. C’è un mito che da secoli è al centro della cultura politica inglese. Dice: Prima che arrivassero i conquistatori normanni ad imporre il feudalesimo, l’Inghilterra anglosassone era un luogo idillico governato dalle “buone…

The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi (2014). One does not often find it a pleasant surprise to receive unpleasant information, but this is a reaction many readers will get from Matt Taibbi’s 2014 book The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. While the book…

For centuries there’s been a myth at the heart of English political culture: Before the Norman Conquest and the imposition of feudalism, Anglo-Saxon England was an idyllic land governed by “the good laws of King Edward the Confessor,” where free juries protected the ancient rights of Englishmen, and everyone was as good as anyone else…

Bernie Sanders wants to stay on message. So his presidential campaign has focused on economic issues. The American economy is rigged, Sanders says, in the interests of the wealthy and well connected. Banks and Wall Street brokerage houses get what they want at the expense of everyone else. The government should step in on the…

At the Washington Post, Max Ehrenfreund argues (“Hillary Clinton’s top goal as president could be effectively impossible to achieve,” July 20) that Hillary Clinton may be hampered in her stated goal of raising middle class incomes and reducing economic inequality by factors beyond her control. These factors include forces such as “technological automation and globalization,”…

C4SS Feed 44 presents Kevin Carson‘s “Toxic Waste and Inequality Are Good for You” read by Mike Godzina and edited by Nick Ford. After making the arguments above, Pagels slips and reveals the real source of his primary concern: “Most income inequality reports focus only on the most negative interpretation of the data, creating a narrative that the…

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, Reason is the only magazine with the guts to tell it like it is — that everything is just fine. This time Jim Pagels (“Misleading Inequality Report Is Nothing to Fear,” January 22) reassures us that inequality’s nothing to worry about, despite Oxfam’s “misleading” recent report that the 1% may soon have more…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Libertarian Road to Egalitarianism” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. But we needn’t regard inequality as a weak point in our arguments for economic freedom, or as an issue on which we simply cannot win. Existing economic relations are not the product of freedom of exchange or…

A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman finds that “the top 0.1% of [American] families now own roughly the same share of wealth as the bottom 90%.” Furthermore, the study shows that the “recovery” we keep hearing about hasn’t reached the middle class, with only those atop the economic pyramid seeing its benefits. With a…

Paul Krugman’s titling of his case against Amazon.com (“Amazon’s Monopsony Is Not OK,” New York Times, October 19) immediately rings alarm bells. The Nobel laureate economist surely understands that monopsony entails a sole buyer, not merely “a dominant buyer with the power to push prices down” in a particular market. Whatever its other faults, Amazon…

Pope Francis’s remarks on poverty, inequality and capitalism — most recently at his open air mass in Seoul — don’t sit well with many conservatives and right-leaning libertarians. The Pope’s remarks include criticism of growing economic inequality and a call to “hear the voice of the poor.” Among those who take issue with the Pope’s statement is…

Al Carroll recently penned a piece titled The Moral and Practical Failures of Libertarianism and Small Government Conservatism. This will be a point by point refutation. Let’s begin. Al writes: In economics, both orthodox Communism and Libertarianism are equally wrong, callous, and dangerous examples of ideological blindness, a set of principles taken to an extreme…

C4SS Feed 44 presents David S. D’Amato‘s “The Libertarian Road to Egalitarianism” read by James Tuttle and edited by Nick Ford. But we needn’t regard inequality as a weak point in our arguments for economic freedom, or as an issue on which we simply cannot win. Existing economic relations are not the product of freedom of exchange or…