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Made in the World
Sunday, February 5th, 2012
Jan. 28, 2012
‘Let’s send some software generation overseas.’ This is not the outsourcing we’re doing today… 96 percent of our potential new customers today live outside of America.” That’s the rest of the world. And if companies like Dell want to sell to them… it needs to design and manufacture some parts of its products in their countries… But America can thrive in this world… either imagining products, designing products, marketing products, orchestrating the supply chain for products, manufacturing high-end products and retailing products. If we get our share, we’ll do fine.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
A Poverty Solution That Starts With a Hug
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
Jan. 7, 2012
… a “policy statement” from the premier association of pediatricians… has revolutionary implications for medicine and for how we can more effectively chip away at poverty and crime. Toxic stress might arise from parental abuse of alcohol or drugs. It could occur in a home where children are threatened and beaten. It might derive from chronic neglect — a child cries without being cuddled. Affection seems to defuse toxic stress… suggesting that the stress emerges when a child senses persistent threats but no protector… The upshot is that children are sometimes permanently undermined.
Tags: crime prevention, ideology, poverty, standard of living
Posted in Child & Family Debates | No Comments »
Keynes Was Right
Sunday, January 8th, 2012
Dec. 29, 2011
… the real test of Keynesian economics hasn’t come from the half-hearted efforts of the U.S. federal government to boost the economy, which were largely offset by cuts at the state and local levels. It has, instead, come from European nations like Greece and Ireland that had to impose savage fiscal austerity as a condition for receiving emergency loans — and have suffered Depression-level economic slumps… 2011 was a year in which our political elite obsessed over short-term deficits that aren’t actually a problem and, in the process, made the real problem — a depressed economy and mass unemployment — worse.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
The 1 Percent Club’s Misguided Protectors
Sunday, December 18th, 2011
Dec. 10, 2011
Some inequality may be necessary to encourage investment for growth. But as recent research shows, intense inequality actually stunts growth, making it more difficult for countries to sustain the sort of long economic expansions that have characterized the more prosperous nations of the world… Extreme inequality blocks opportunity for the poor. It can breed resentment and political instability — discouraging investment — and lead to political polarization and gridlock, splitting the political system into haves and have-nots. And it can make it harder for governments to address economic imbalances and brewing crises.
Tags: budget, economy, featured, poverty, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Debates | No Comments »
Tiny Tax on Financial Trades Gains Advocates
Friday, December 9th, 2011
Dec. 6, 2011
Driven by populist anger at bankers as well as government needs for more revenue, the idea of a tax on trades of stocks, bonds and other financial instruments has attracted an array of influential champions… “We all agree that a financial transaction tax would be the right signal to show that we have understood that financial markets have to contribute their share to the recovery of economies,” the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, told her Parliament recently… The Robin Hood tax has also become a rallying point for labor unions, nongovernmental organizations and the Occupy Wall Street movement…
Tags: economy, globalization, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Debates | No Comments »
Legal Education Reform
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
November 25, 2011
Instead of a curriculum taught largely through professors’ grilling of students about appellate cases, some schools are offering more apprentice-style learning in legal clinics and more courses that train students for their multiple future roles as advocates and counselors, negotiators and deal-shapers, and problem-solvers… Some are exploring ways to reduce tuitions and make themselves more sustainable. Potential business models include legal degrees based on two years of classes, followed by third-year apprenticeship programs.
Tags: participation, rights, standard of living
Posted in Education Policy Context | No Comments »
The Wrong Inequality
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
October 31, 2011
… two forms of inequality exist in modern America. They are related but different… The zooming wealth of the top 1 percent is a problem, but it’s not nearly as big a problem as the tens of millions of Americans who have dropped out of high school or college. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock. It’s not nearly as big a problem as the nation’s stagnant human capital, its stagnant social mobility and the disorganized social fabric for the bottom 50 percent. If your ultimate goal is to reduce inequality, then you should be furious at the doctors, bankers and C.E.O.’s. If your goal is to expand opportunity, then you have a much bigger and different agenda.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
Oligarchy, American Style
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
November 3, 2011
… protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it’s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong… almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent… rising inequality has meant a nation in which most families don’t share fully in economic growth… extreme concentration of income is incompatible with real democracy… the truth is that the whole nature of our society is at stake.
Tags: economy, ideology, participation, standard of living, tax
Posted in Equality Policy Context | No Comments »
The Gridlock Where Debts Meet Politics
Sunday, November 13th, 2011
November 5, 2011
On the most basic level, affluent countries are facing sharply increasing claims on their resources even as those resources are growing less quickly than they once were… the debate is about much more than just partisan advantage or the next election. It is a philosophical debate… the “no-growth trap.” In the short term, this trap takes the form of resistance to emergency measures… Longer term, the trap is created by resistance to the higher taxes and reduced benefits necessary to return countries to financial stability.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living, tax
Posted in Governance Policy Context | No Comments »
The Path Not Taken
Sunday, November 6th, 2011
October 27, 2011
… a crisis brought on by deregulation becomes a reason to move even further to the right; a time of mass unemployment, instead of spurring public efforts to create jobs, becomes an era of austerity, in which government spending and social programs are slashed. This doctrine was sold both with claims that there was no alternative… [But] Iceland let the banks go bust and actually expanded its social safety net… it has managed to limit both the rise in unemployment and the suffering of the most vulnerable; the social safety net has survived intact, as has the basic decency of its society.
Tags: economy, globalization, ideology, standard of living
Posted in Policy Context | No Comments »
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