If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in … Continue reading Are Bad Economic Indicators Actually a Sign of Hope?
Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don’t you think? L Frank Baum Last time, we looked at the dreaded C-word, capitalism. For this go-around, we’re going to pivot to en even more shadowy E-word, The Economy. Unlike capitalism, talk of the economy is everywhere, and it has largely been assumed that the primary role of national leadership in the US is … Continue reading It’s Not Always the Economy, Stupid
The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. John Maynard Keynes Sorry, faked you out with the C-word teaser. The word I have in mind is capitalism, that thing that we all swim in for our whole lives, but which … Continue reading Why We Can’t Say the C-Word
Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness. Karl Polanyi Could there be anything more demoralizing than having to wake up in the morning five out … Continue reading The Omnipotent Consumer & the Neutered Worker
The American Dream keeps you working for a future that never comes built on a past that never happened. It is not so much a dream as a value judgement. A pretense of patriotism at a price few can pay and at a cost few can bear. Sarah Kendzior In the United States, few ideas carry as much weight as the American Dream, that old … Continue reading The American Dream vs. The American Bargain
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. (Maybe) Mark Twain (but probably not) As regular readers know, I spend most of my time writing about Trumpism, politics in general, Bigger Home Bases, and Universal Basic Income. But just as important to my overall project proposal, if not more so, is Modern … Continue reading Why We Don’t Need to Tax the Rich
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. E.F. Schumacher As we have covered many times in this blog, American political and cultural polarization is almost completely a rural-vs-urban split. As the sophistication and cost of political operations have expanded over the … Continue reading A Rural Strategy for Libs
As long as the material basis of our well-being is understood to come from paid employment, we will continue to lean upon the moral coercion of the work ethic to justify the decision to not give people the material support they need, and we will do this whether there is a need for everyone to work or not. Tim Dunlop, “Why the Future is Workless“ … Continue reading What Are People For? AI, UBI & Human Work
Under the pavement the dirt is dreaming of grass. Wendell Berry Our current crisis of place is pervasive yet largely unacknowledged. We see it everywhere, but we only talk about it tangentially, through the language of real estate or commuting time or the soullessness of strip malls. We live, or strive to live, in increasingly unaffordable yet somehow fragile micro-households (the US average household size … Continue reading Our Crisis of Place
The point is, not every deficit serves the broader public good. Deficits can be used for good or evil. They can enrich a small segment of the population, lifting the yachts of the rich and powerful to new heights, while leaving millions behind. They can fund unjust wars that destabilize the world and cost millions their lives. Or they can be used to sustain life … Continue reading Making Sense of the Economy through the Lens of MMT
Entropolitan 