America: the rot goes on
It’s been a while since I looked at one of the major reasons for the pervasive sense of rot about the US: the low level of investment—investment in real things, that is, not crypto. It’s barely keeping up with the forces of decay. If you’re wondering why nothing works and everything seems to be falling apart, here are some explanations. First a definition: investment is spending by businesses, governments, and individuals on long-lived physical assets like buildings and machinery. Gross investment is the dollar value of such spending; net is what remains… Read More
Fresh audio product: Colombia, elite capture
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): June 2, 2022 Forrest Hylton on the first round of the Colombian presidential election, which was bad news for the leftist Petro • Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, author of Elite Capture, on how the ruling class has debased identity politics, and how we could reconstitute it
Quit rates, unions, politics
I’m not sure what this means, but quit rates are higher in states that voted for Trump, and are higher in states with low unionization rates. We’ve been hearing for some time now that quit rates are the highest on record. That’s true if you look only at the Job Openings and Labor Market Turnover Series (JOLTS) numbers, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started reporting in December 2000. It had an ancestor, which the BLS reported for manufacturing only, covering 1919 to 1981 (left portion of the graph below). Current… Read More
Anatol Lieven on the roots of disaster
[Here’s an transcript of my interview with Anatol Lieven, broadcast on March 3, 2022, edited to make it read more like prose than spoken word. My comments are in square brackets. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lieven covered the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and the southern Caucasus, for the Financial Times and the Times of London. In the 2000s, he worked at several think tanks in Washington and is now a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s also got seven… Read More
How recovered is the job market?
Between February and April 2020, the US economy lost over 22 million jobs, almost 15% of total employment. That was by far the largest job loss since the early years of the Great Depression. Between 1929 and 1932 or 1933 (depending on whose numbers you use, since there are no solid, official stats), 20–25% of jobs disappeared (again, depending on whose numbers you use). Since World War II, however, the worst contraction, the Great Recession of 2008–2009, killed just over 6% of all jobs—a big number, but well short of 15%. Since… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): July 29, 2021 Rupa Marya and Raj Patel, authors of Inflamed, on the social and ecological causes of disease • Robert Pollin, co-author of this article, on the role of giant bailouts in neoliberalism and the greatness of Hyman Minsky
Strikes plumb the depths
Although there have been plenty of reports of rising labor militancy in the US—teachers’ strikes, tech and delivery app organizing—it’s sadly not showing up in the strike data. In its annual release, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that there were just 7 major “work stoppages” (which include lockouts as well as strikes) in 2020, tied with 2017 for the second-lowest number since 1947, and beaten only by 2009’s 5. What strike action there was, says the BLS, was mainly against state and local government employers (5 of them), not private… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): February 18, 2021 Forrest Hylton on Bolsonaro’s Brazil: disease, chaos, and creeping military dictatorship • Luis Feliz Leon on organizing Amazon workers in Alabama (Gainesville article here; Bessemer, here)
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 7, 2021 Vijoo Krishnan on the Indian farmer strikes • Yannet Lathrop, author of this report, on state and local minimum wage increases • Alex Peterson on the Alphabet Workers Union
In memory of Leo Panitch
[Here’s what I had to say on this week’s radio show about the marvelous Leo Panitch, who died on December 19. The show consists of two interviews, one from 2012 with Leo and Sam Gindin talking about their book, The Making of Global Capitalism, and the other from 2018, Leo solo talking about Trump specifically and the US empire generally.] I was planning to do a rerun for this week’s show, to give myself a little holiday break, but I wasn’t planning this one: a memorial to Leo Panitch, the Canadian political… Read More
fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): December 24, 2020 a memorial to a great thinker, comrade, friend: Leo Panitch (1945–2020): two interviews, one with him and Sam Gindin from 2012, and on with him alone in 2018
Employment report
As the job market loses steam, and Congress dithers over a new bailout package, Americans are having a harder time paying their bills. First the job market. Employers added 245,000 jobs in November, the least since the recovery from the March–April crash. As the graph below shows, that recovery has been losing momentum since June, when employment rose by 4.8 million. What looks to be happening is that the easy recalls after the initial shutdown have happened, and with the giant stimulus of the CARES Act receding, there’s not much fuel for… Read More
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): November 19, 2020 Jennifer Berkshire, co-author of A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, on ed reform, mostly from the right • Kate Sykes of People First Portland on some major left ballot victories in Maine’s largest city
Blank email?
For some reason, the email WordPress sent out about my latest radio show posting was blank. Let’s see if this one is too. You can see the post at https://lbo-news.com/2020/08/13/fresh-audio-product-230/.
Miserable numbers
Even non-connoisseurs are reeling from the miserable second quarter GDP numbers released this morning. Between the first and second quarters of this year, GDP was off 33% after adjustment for inflation. That’s by far the biggest decline since quarterly numbers begin in 1947. That 33% figure is at an annualized rate, meaning GDP would be off by a third if it declined at the second-quarter rate for a full year. The US is unusual in annualizing the data; most other countries report the quarter-to-quarter change without annualizing it. If we did that,… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 