economics

• 
• SOURCE: The Baffler
  5/4/2023
  

  Can Capitalism Exist Without Excess?

  by Trevor Jackson

  The pandemic supply chain disruptions have focused attention on shortages, but the problem of gluts—of food being destroyed when it can't be profitably sold–reflects a deeper problem with global capitalism. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  2/27/2023
  

  Review: The Right-Wing Abuse of Adam Smith

  by Kim Phillips-Fein

  Glory M. Liu's account of Adam Smith's reception in America explains how American politicians read selectively in Smith's capacious writings on political economy and public morality to construct a self-interested view of the market as a natural phenomenon, writes historian Kim Phillips-Fein. 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  1/20/2023
  

  The History of Consumption Taxes Shows GOP Won't Eliminate IRS

  Consumption taxes are successful when they target luxury purchases and the rich. A broad-based consumption tax like the one proposed by House Republicans to replace the income tax would be suicidal to even bring to a vote. 

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• SOURCE: Slate
  12/5/2022
  

  Libertarianism's Philosophers Come Out Worse For Wear

  by Rebecca Brenner Graham

  A fellowship at a leading libertarian institute convinced the author that the movement sees its luminaries as icons, not as historical figures. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  11/29/2022
  

  Adam Smith Resolved the Identity-Distribution Debate—Why Is it Forgotten?

  by Corey Robin

  The political scientist Corey Robin considers a new book on Adam Smith's thought, and the role it played in posing questions about the purpose of the economy, and its relationship to individuals a selves embedded in society. 

• 
• SOURCE: Public Books
  11/17/2022
  

  Work More, Consume Less: The Coercive Nature of Austerity Politics

  by Clara E. Mattei

  Austerity politics isn't simply about balancing government's books; it is a political means of declaring the primacy of capital. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  11/7/2022
  

  Why Didn't Joe Biden Go to War with Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve?

  The policies the Federal Reserve has pursued in response to inflation threaten to treat the problem with a recession that will harm working families and potentially doom the Biden administration. Why hasn't the President pushed back against the bankers? 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  10/25/2022
  

  God Save Us From the Economists

  by Timothy Noah

  Actress Jayne Mansfield was killed in a 1967 traffic accident; a truck trailer safety regulation review prompted in part by her highly public demise was finally implemented in 1996, after nearly 9,000 people were killed in similar crashes. Why? Blame a bipartisan faith in economists as policymakers. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  10/27/2022
  

  Urban Unrest, Stagflation, and Labor Strife: Why is 1970s Economic Policy Coming Back, Too?

  Is panicky use of weak historical analogies driving economic policy back to the 1970s when the country is still suffering from the fallout of the first round of austerity politics? 

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• SOURCE: Law and Political Economy Project
  9/13/2022
  

  Economism as a Red Scare Legacy

  by Landon Storrs

  An economic historian traces the rise of neoliberal political economy to the post-WWII Red Scare, when Keynesians were driven out of government service under suspicion of disloyalty. 

• 
• SOURCE: Jacobin
  9/2/2022
  

  Bosses Know Why Workers are "Quiet Quitting"

  Workers are doing more for less, and have been for decades. Industry knows this; they're worried that workers are beginning to understand it, too. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  9/3/2022
  

  Virtue and Vice: Looking for the Real Adam Smith

  by Glory Liu

  Smith's work on political economy has long been seen in tension with his investigation of empathy and other moral sentiments. Paul Sagar's new book argues that scholars have mistaken Smith's intentions in order to falsely reconcile the market and morality. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  9/3/2022
  

  Brad DeLong's "Slouching Toward Utopia" Calls a Close to the Prosperity of the Long 20th Century

  Particularly for Americans, the period between 1870 and 2010 was a miracle of sustained and growing prosperity. But Brad DeLong also says that it's over. 

• 
• SOURCE: A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry
  8/29/2022
  

  What Happens When People Who Don't Know Historical Methods Spout Off About Historical Methods

  by Bret Devereaux

  "It is going to end up being rather involved because to explain why a shallow critique of a discipline’s methods is shallow, you have to explain how that discipline functions and why it does so."

• 
• 4/3/2022
  

  The Lost Opportunity to Set Post-Soviet Russia on a Stable Course

  by Robert Brent Toplin

  The transition from communism was always going to be difficult for Russia and other post-Soviet states. But American politicians and advisors must share blame for the rise of oligarchy and Putinism as responses to economic instability.

• 
• SOURCE: Foreign Policy
  3/11/2022
  

  We're Talking about Climate Change with Outdated Colonial Language

  by Priya Satia

  The dominant climate activist theme of sacrificing in the present to protect the future is rooted in the intellectual history of economics which has driven the profligate consumption and gross inequality that threatens the planet. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  3/9/2022
  

  Bad Economics

  by Simon Torracinta

  A historian of science reviews three books on the history of economic thought, which support the conclusion that the ideas animating the mainstream of the discipline and enabling it to dominate discussions of policy are badly in need of reexamination. 

• 
• SOURCE: Platform
  11/1/2021
  

  How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining

  by Todd Michney and LaDale Winling

  Richard T. Ely and his student Ernest McKinley Fisher pushed the National Association of Real Estate Boards to adopt "the unsupported hypothesis that Black people's very presence inexorably lowered property values," tying the private real estate industry to racial segregation. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/22/2021
  

  Why Are Moderate Dems Trying to Blow Up Biden's Economic Plan?

  by Zachary D. Carter

  Centrists' efforts to chisel away at the Build Back Better bill threaten its passage, its effectiveness, and the prospects of Democrats to hold power in the future. A biographer of John Maynard Keynes wonders why they're doing it. 

• 
• SOURCE: Aeon
  8/3/2021
  

  In Praise of Possibility

  by Michele Alacevich

  Albert O. Hirschman's approach to development economics stressed the need to understand "hidden rationalities" of developing societies and use them to create change.