economics

by Rosalie Bull

“Planned obsolescence” has become a household term for 21st century Americans. No wonder, considering that most household appliances today have been designed in accordance with the practice. Now more than ever, things just aren’t made like they used to be. In fact, they’re made to fail—often within a fraction of their potential lifespans—in order to spur more consumption.

What have we here, Santa?

The post Ending Planned Obsolescence: a Nonpartisan Movement for Steady Staters to Support appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

I have a major reporting deadline today and also have to travel interstate, which means I have no spare time at all. So for today, I am promoting a Podcast I recorded a few weeks ago with Steve Grumbine at…

The payments system is merely a technical and bookkeeping question, mundane in the end. The idea of operating it with only reserves puts in stark relief a far more important question: What is the point of banks at all?

This sixteen-part series, The Souls of the People, will explore these issues and the ideas and economics behind them. The values, origins, economics and philosophy behind the call to "cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub" (Norquist). The creation of think tanks specifically to provide a pseudo-intellectual foundation for inequality, and that along with media convince the middle class to vote against their own interests. The rise, reasons for, and effect of beliefs that markets without law allow for full employment and that wage laws cause unemployment. That competition alone can bring about good working conditions. The rejection of progressive taxes, and of the right to avail ourselves of the power and resources of the country through organizing public goods. And most importantly, how all of these are maintained by laws that impoverish the powerless and enrich the powerful, and thus are self-perpetuating.

These issues are yet again the problem of our age. Their seeming trajectory towards resolution post WWII, with widespread prosperity and a rising middle class, has been undone. What undid them points to the underlying problem: Immediate causes include the spectacular increase in financialization and unearned rents, the lack of and lack of enforcement of progressive taxes, both in turn largely due to a shift in the public's understanding of these issues. What caused this shift in public understanding is the age old problem—power and the lack thereof.

The sentence in Ben Shapiro's book preceding the title quote is this: "Discussions of income inequality, after all, aren't about prosperity but about petty spite." I'm sorry Mr. Shapiro, but this is entirely about prosperity. And not at all petty.

An important area of concern among many cryptocurrency proponents revolves around the idea that the current banking and government finance systems are inherently unstable or inflationary. Ultimately all finance is about debits and credits, assets and liabilities. How would total adoption of crypto by a country change these?

The currency of international trade has been on a lot of peoples' minds in the last few years. The hierarchy of currencies literature, the related questions of reforming the international monetary and financial system (IMFS), the effects of US monetary policy on the rest of the world (ROW). Add to that the war in Ukraine and Chinese trade-related discussion on the role of the ruble, dollar, yuan, oil and natural gas, wheat etc.

Before continuing with posts on this topic I want to note: I started these posts with a twitter comment by Nathan Tankus on replacing the dollar in international trade. That thread continues – that he foresees “a world of swap lines as alliance politics… Swap lines may seem like technocratic high politics now but it’s … Continue reading The Two Families of Global Reserve Proposals & Swap Lines →

Imagine a new democracy imposes taxes on itself; the tax-credit is then spent, taxed back, thus provisioning public goods in the process. Not all spending is taxed back, thus the public has savings of tax-credits. Why would it make sense to pay more tax-credits to those holding tax-credits? If for any reason the public decided … Continue reading When are payments to holders of the tax-credit by the state ever a useful policy? →