Glum job prospects, say officials
On December 8, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its employment projections for the next decade (or 2014–2024 to be precise). They don’t make for happy reading. The Bureau projects GDP growth of 2.2% a year over the decade, well under the 3.6% average that prevailed from 1950–2000, and lower even than the 2.4% average from 2000–2007, a period that contained a recession and the weakest expansion in U.S. history. And they also project that labor force participation (the sum of the employed and those actively looking for work, aka the officially… Read More
Making collective guilt palatable to liberals
Michael Tomasky, whom I’ve known over 20 years—sparring with him much of that time but liking him anyway—just wrote an awful piece which apparently aims to legitimate for liberals assertions of collective Muslim responsibility. Following the lead of the president, himself no stranger to rampant paranoia about Muslims, Tomasky basically tells Muslims to shape up or face Donald Trump. To counter accusations of tendentious paraphrase, let me quote a few choice bits: [Obama] used the usual liberal language about how most Muslims are great, but he also said that religious fundamentalism is “a real… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive: December 3, 2015 Benjamin Page, co-author of this paper, on the politics of the top 1% • Alfredo Saad Filho on the political and economic crisis in Brazil
My anti-Hillary book is shipping!
Have I mentioned yet that my critique of the presumed frontrunner, My Turn: Hillary Clinton Targets the Presidency, is shipping? Order it now on the OR Books website and it will be in your mailbox in about a week. My main thought after reading @DougHenwood’s My Turn is that this is the book that all Hillary supporters need to own, because it compiles all the credible criticisms of Hillary in one place, without mixing in a load of right wing dreck. So if something isn’t in Doug’s book, it can probably be safely ignored…. Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive: November 26, 2015 Jason Moore, author of Capitalism in the Web of Life, criticizes the idea that humans and nature are separate entities • Jennifer Doyle, author of Campus Sex/Campus Security, talks about security, paranoia, sex, and the large public university
LBO News from Doug Henwood 
Posted on December 7, 2015 by Doug Henwood
Comment on foundations
There were a couple of calls on Twitter for a transcript of what I said on last week’s radio show, following my interview with Benjamin Page. Page had said in the interview that he couldn’t find any foundations interested in funding research by him and his collaborators into the opinions of the top 1%. I’ve added a link to the Leah Gordon interview, which has a link to her book. I’ve expanded a bit on the original in this version. It’s interesting that the foundations don’t want to support research into the… Read More