I have reluctantly placed Tom at 305 West End Assisted Living on the locked 6th floor. . . . → Read More: Tom Haines Jay Walks Again
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I picked up the new book of my college classmate, Wendy Sanford, and immediately found myself plunged into some of the contradictions of my own life. Like me, Wendy came from a wealthy family totally, obliviously, dependent on the “help.” Like me, she grew from taking that arrangement for granted, to a cringing awareness and a confused determination to break the pattern. . . . → Read More: Review of: These Walls Between Us: A Memoir of Friendship Across Race and Class, by Wendy Sanford Black men’s wages as a percent of White increased rapidly after World War II, only to level off at a bit over 55% after the 1970s. That’s a paradox: If racism causes the Black-White wage gap, how come the gap closed dramatically while Jim Crow laws remained in effect, and then stagnated even as Black education improved and overt racism declined? . . . → Read More: The Black-White Wage Gap: How Inequality and Monopoly Amplify Racial Discrimination Over the last five years, from my 5th floor apartment window, I’ve watched a blue spire rise in the distance. Fifteen blocks south of me, 225 West 57th Street has just joined Billionaires’ Row in Manhattan. At 1550 feet it’s now the tallest. Apartments in these buildings have been selling for over fifty million dollars per floor. The windows grant a falcon’s eye panorama of New York, but visitors on a windy day report feeling seasick from the swaying. No matter. These apartments aren’t for living;they’re for hoarding wealth. . . . → Read More: Fighting the Wealth Hoarders with Transparency and Taxes  Comments are closed  Book Review  Anti-trust, Chuck Collins, History, Inequality, land taxes, Richard Vague, Tax policy In the March 1 UK Prospect, economist James Galbraith offers the Brits, and us, two proposals to repair a broken economy. The first, unsurprisingly, is a heavy tax on estates, with a high exemption. The second is a land tax. Yes! This was the preferred tax of the classical economists, the one Adam Smith called “the most equitable of all taxes.” This tax—at the extraordinary rate of 4 shillings to the pound or 20%—launched the British Empire in 1692, by funding the British fleet. A land tax is already part of the ordinary property tax. It could be applied to other publicly-created property rights, such as mineral rights, electromagnetic spectrum, corporate charters, and patents. The One Percent own the bulk of such valuable rights, directly or through corporate shares. . . . → Read More: Taxing More from the Rich Is Difficult. This Is How to Do It. Comments are closed Essay History of economic thought, Inequality, James Galbraith, Mason Gaffney, Tax policy To reduce inequality, monopolies in finance and other economic sectors should be broken up or made public . . . → Read More: Interview About Monopoly with Paul Jay on The Analysis Fifty years ago, my husband and I volunteered to work for Ralph Nader. Unwittingly we helped enable the monopolists who rule America today. . . . → Read More: Review of “Liberty from All Masters,” by Barry C. Lynn Matthew Desmond, a sociologist, lived for two years among poor renters in Milwaukee, first in a south side trailer park occupied mainly by whites, and then in the north side black inner city. In both places, he interviewed and followed several tenants as they moved through the devastating process of eviction, in some cases multiple times. Evicted, Poverty and Profit in an American City (2016), bestseller and Pulitzer Prize winner, tells their personal stories. Desmond’s people, suffering from poverty, mental or physical illness, addiction, and harsh and arbitrary treatment by public authorities, will also be hardest hit by the coronavirus. . . . → Read More: Review of Matthew Desmond’s Evicted It’s tough being a chicken farmer. Three processors, Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Perdue, have divvied up the American chicken market between them. Chicken farmers must sell to the one who “owns” their geographical area. That processor dictates where they get their chicks, how they build their chicken houses, what feed and medications they give, when they deliver their fattened birds, and what prices they receive on delivery. They are banned, on pain of being cut off, from comparing prices and conditions with other chicken farmers. In short, they lead the lives of medieval serfs, but at least the serfs could complain to each other about the lord! As Zephyr Teachout reports in her chilling new book, Break ‘Em Up, chickenization isn’t just for agriculture; it’s also how giants like Walmart, McDonalds, Uber and Amazon exploit their suppliers and workers. Meanwhile, monopoly profits flow into their dark money political PACs. . . . → Read More: Review of Break ‘Em Up by Zephyr Teachout The pundits love to denounce populists. They are the ignorant people who rally to the standards of foreign far-right fascists. In the US, they are Donald Trump’s loyal “deplorables” or Bernie Sanders’s “Bernie Bros.” They’re a major threat to democracy. In The People, No, Thomas Frank proposes that anti-populists are the real threat. . . . → Read More: Review of Thomas Frank’s “The People, No” Comments are closed Book Review American history, Georgist economics, Henry George, History, Inequality |
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