Econamici blog

Debt Relief for Whom? Part II

Christopher Leonard explains how Federal Reserve bailouts “went to large corporations that used borrowed money to buy out their competitors; it went to the very richest of Americans who owned the majority of assets; it went to the riskiest of financial speculators on Wall Street, who use borrowed money to

Survival of the Richest Turfholders, Not the Fittest Individuals

In any species, occupants of superior habitats enjoy extra food, or better shelter, or better mating opportunities. This reduces survival pressure,allowing many varieties to thrive despite apparently "unfit" features. Only recently have ecologists recognized the impact of inherited wealth in animal societies.

Henry George: Prophet of the Gilded Age

In 1873, Mark Twain published his satirical novel, The Gilded Age, an era magnificently recreated in all its greed, ruthlessness and ostentation in the new HBO series of the same name. Railroads were the hot investment of the day, fueling a frenzy of land speculation. In September of that year,

Interview About Monopoly with Paul Jay on The Analysis

To reduce inequality, monopolies in finance and other economic sectors should be broken up or made public

Review of Thomas Frank’s “The People, No”

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

Webinar with Richard Vague, author of A Brief History of Doom, May 17, 2020

In A Brief History of Doom, Two Hundred Years of Financial Crises, Richard Vague simultaneously fills in a gap in Henry George's economic model, and torpedoes the conventional Keynesian model of the business cycle.

Putting Land and Power Back into Economics

Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, by three British economists, puts land and power back into economics, by recognizing--as did the classical economists--that ownership natural resources conveys wealth and political power. It also provides an enlightening history of British postwar housing policy, which has gone from building inexpensive rental

The Dissing of Henry George

Henry George (1839–1897) was a journalist, self-educated economist and philosopher, and eventually prominent politician. In 1879 he published Progress and Poverty, which soon became a worldwide bestseller. His followers played a major role in the early 20th Century Progressive movement. How could it happen that if he is remembered at

James Galbraith Tells Us What Everyone Needs to Know About Inequality

Inequality has surged in the U.S. over the last forty years; many observers now blame the deregulation and tax cuts for the rich starting with the presidency of Ronald Reagan in 1980. In his new short book, Inequality: What Everyone Needs to Know, James Galbraith explains how this happened through

Dead Empires: How China May Overtake the U.S.

“The earth is the tomb of dead empires, no less than of dead men.” Thus wrote the American economist and journalist Henry George in his 1879 worldwide bestseller, Progress and Poverty. Adam Smith had identified cooperation and specialization—“the division of labor”—as the forces that generated economic growth and prosperity. George
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