capitalism

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/5/2021
  

  Forget "Ghost Guns" and other Media Panics. Gun Capitalism is the Underlying Problem of a Violent Society

  by Andrew C. McKevitt

  A long series of moral panics over the dangers of specific guns (and their imagined users) has hidden the real danger to Americans: the profitability (and legality) of selling deadly weapons.

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  12/2/2021
  

  After 20 Years, Enron Still Haunts Us

  by Gavin Benke

  Despite Enron's bankruptcy and the resulting economic fallout, American business media is still dangerously credulous toward promises of "innovation" and "disruption" without asking whether the latest hot entrepreneur is using smoke and mirrors. 

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• SOURCE: NPR
  11/29/2021
  

  Lizabeth Cohen: Why Americans Buy So Much Stuff

  As holiday shopping overlaps with historic supply chain disruptions, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Lizabeth Cohen on the economy's reliance on spending and the culture of consumerism in the U.S.

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/15/2021
  

  The Not-So-Hidden Purpose of the University of Austin

  by Daniel Drezner

  Anyone attracted to the promises of academic freedom and untrammeled inquiry at the University of Austin should be scared of the power it proposes to concentrate in its corporate governing board. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  11/1/2021
  

  How Historians Helped Convince Big Business Trump Was Dangerous

  Historian Timothy Snyder recounts his role in a November 2020 presentation to business leaders about the authoritarian danger reflected in Trump's lies about the "stolen" election. Did a potential coup fail because CEOs thought it was bad for business? Or is there a change afoot in corporate citizenship?

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  8/3/2021
  

  The Customer is Always... Insufferable? The History of Today's Beleaguered Service Worker

  Writer Amanda Mull checks with historians Susan Strasser and William Leach to explain why American diners, shoppers and passengers seem to be driven to torment servers, clerks and flight attendants. 

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• 7/11/2021
  

  Why Does Speculation Persist in the Age of Predictive Data?

  by Gayle Rogers

  "During this pandemic, all of us have studied many data points to assess our risks and predict how safe our futures will be under X or Y scenarios. Even when there has been no shortage of data, even when the data have overwhelmed us, the future has never been made certain and clear for us by them. Instead, we have had to become speculators to some degree."

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• SOURCE: Christian Science Monitor
  

  Capitalism American-Style: A Financial History of the United States

  “Ages of American Capitalism" by Jonathan Levy sheds light on U.S. history as seen through a financial lens. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  6/14/2021
  

  Our Insurance Dystopia

  by Caley Horan

  America's health insurance morass is a result of the replacement of the ideal of mutual, universal risk sharing with the privatization of risk in pursuit of profit. 

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• SOURCE: Public Seminar
  4/2/2021
  

  The World the Suez Canal Made

  by Aaron Jakes

  "The purpose of the Suez Canal, from the perspective of both the Egyptian state and its European investors, was not simply to render the world more interconnected and international transport more efficient, but to extract transit fees from the ships passing through it."

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• SOURCE: Financial Times
  2/7/2021
  

  The Biggest Lesson of GameStop

  The GameStop episode highlights a dangerous development in the last 40 years of capitalism's history: the linking of broad-based purchasing power to the fluctuating prices of financial assets held in retirement accounts. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  12/9/2020
  

  The End of the Businessman President

  by Kyle Edward Williams

  Will Donald Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic mark the end of the pernicious myths that the popular good is served by running government like a business, or that business executives have a talent for governing? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  11/10/2020
  

  The Prosperity Hoax

  A 2020 report on global poverty suggests that the problem is getting worse, directly attacking the methodologies the World Bank has used for decades to justify global capitalism as an anti-poverty program. 

• 
• SOURCE: Mother Jones
  10/13/2020
  

  A Scholar of American Doom Doesn’t See How Capitalism Can Fix This Crisis

  "There are probably a billion and a half people, maybe more, maybe 2 billion, in the informal working class who have simply been triaged already in advance. So the fate of a very large minority of humanity has been determined now."

• 
• SOURCE: Aeon
  10/2/2020
  

  This Vanishing Moment and Our Vanishing Future: John Hersey, Hiroshima, and the End of World

  Postwar prosperity depended on a truce between capitalist growth and democratic fairness. Is it possible to get it back?

• 
• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  9/21/2020
  

  Eric Williams’ Foundational Work on Slavery, Industry, and Wealth

  by Katie Donington

  Debates over Eric Williams’s work have ebbed and flowed ever since he first published Capitalism and Slavery in 1944. His book inspired a body of historiography to which many historians of slavery and abolition have added their voices over the decades.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  9/23/2020
  

  Cost Of Racism: U.S. Economy Lost $16 Trillion Because Of Discrimination, Bank Says

  Citigroup's recommendations aren't new: various studies have shown similar findings and experts have called for similar action for years, though so far progress has been slow.

• 
• SOURCE: CNN
  9/20/2020
  

  Capitalism Isn't Working Anymore. Here's How The Pandemic Could Change It Forever

  Historian Larry Glickman suggests that the pandemic has opened up discussion of a broader role for government in meeting people's needs during a crisis. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  9/9/2020
  

  Neoliberal Hong Kong Is Our Future, Too

  by Macabe Keliher

  While orthodox economists like to point to Hong Kong as an ideal free market, the social consequences have been disastrous. Inequality is rising, wages are declining and working hours increasing, overall economic opportunity is dwindling, and housing is so unaffordable that office workers sleep in McDonalds. Is it any wonder that the streets are now burning?

• 
• SOURCE: WBUR
  9/8/2020
  

  'Our Malady': Historian Timothy Snyder On America's Health Care Problem (Audio)

  The historian took an unexpected turn into researching the health system when he got suddenly, seriously ill in December 2019. He argues that the for-profit healthcare system exposes a dire conflict between capitalism and liberty.