Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): January 3, 2019 Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough, on the paradox of human rights discourse arising alongside great inequality, and on the difference between poverty reduction and income compression
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): May 10, 2018 Christy Thornton on AMLO and Mexico’s July elections • Richard Florida on the spatial dimensions of inequality
Fresh audio product, in quantity
Catching up on a major backlog of fresh audio product, just posted to my radio archives: September 18, 2014 Gilbert Achcar on the Middle Eastern landscape September 25, 2014 Mark Blyth on the Scottish independence referendum • Laleh Khalili on the theory and practice of counterinsurgency. October 23, 2014 [back after fundraising hiatus] Ryan Grim (author of this article) on Gary Webb, crack, and the CIA • Jake Blumgart (author of this article) on a mini-Detroit on the outskirts of Philadelphia October 30, 2014 Kevin Alexander Gray, co-editor of Killing Trayvons, on racist police and vigilante violence • Trudy Lieberman on the snares of Obamacare November… Read More
Consumption: a response to Michael Roberts
Michael Roberts writes in response to my piece on Marx: However, Henwood reckons the current crisis is the result of inequality and low wages reducing consumption and thus the answer is to raise wages and public spending. The problem with this view of Marx is that it does not match the facts: consumption did not slump at all prior to the Great Recession: it was the collapse of the housing market, profits and then investment, not consumption. Raising wages and reducing inequality will help the majority but lower profitability further and thus reignite the… Read More
Fresh audio product
Sorry for the delay, but three shows freshly posted to my radio archives: January 30, 2014 Laura Newland, author of Chasing Zeroes, on how Wall Street is messing up college life • excerpts from Kshama Sawant’s response to the State of the Union • Tom Philpott on GMOs and ag tech January 23, 2014 Christian Parenti on nature, capital, and the state • Anne Elizabeth Moore on political unrest in Cambodia January 16, 2014 Stephanie Coontz on why men need feminism • Branko Milanovic on the world income distribution (paper here)
Fresh audio product
Just added to my radio archives: July 11, 2013 Gilbert Achcar of SOAS on the uprising and coup in Egypt • Adolph Reed on the new generation of (neoliberal) black politicians (with a coda on how poverty came dominate American discourse on inequality)
Is NYC really the city of the 1%?
A column in the weekend Financial Times by Simon Kuper (“Priced out of Paris”) has gotten lots of attention for its claim that the world’s great cities have been grabbed by the 1% to the exclusion of everyone else. For support, Kuper turned to Saskia Sassen, a distinguished Professor of Breathless Generalizations at Columbia, who concludes: “The capture by a very small number of cities of a lot of the excitement and wealth produced by the system – this is a problem.” Well yeah, but…. I can’t speak about the other cities, but this rather… Read More
Lots of fresh audio product
Way behind on posting this stuff to the web. The podcasts get posted soon after—and sometimes even before—broadcast, but not always the web page. Freshly posted (clicking on the date links will take you right there): January 7, 2012 Michael Taft on the Irish depression • Jodi Dean, co-author of this, on the vexing question of OWS & “demands” December 31, 2011 Christopher Jencks on inequality December 24, 2011 Christine Ahn & Tim Shorrock on North Korea • Aaron “Zunguzungu” Bady on Occupy Oakland December 17, 2011 Christopher Hitchens (from 2002) on Orwell • Andrew Ross on student debt repudiation (sign up… Read More
NYC: more unequal than Brazil
The New York City Independent Budget Office is just out with an analysis (pdf )of income distribution in the city. It’s no surprise that it’s very unequal. The surprise is that it’s far more unequal than Brazil’s. Full details are available in the letter—which was in response to a request from City Council member James Oddo—but here are some highlights: The poorest tenth (decile) of the city’s population has an average income of $988, and claim 0.1% of the city’s total income. Since the source of this data is tax returns, the very… Read More
It really is about that 1%
Wow, that top 1% is doing really, really well, you’ll not be surprised to hear. Everyone else, not so well. The Congressional Budget Office is out with some new stats on Trends in the Distribution of Income over the last three decades. Between 1979 and 2007, here’s how various slices of the population did in real (inflation-adjusted) income growth after federal taxes: top 1%: +275% next 19%: +65% middle 60%: +40% bottom 20%: +18% Or, in graphic form: The stairstep pattern—the higher you go up the income ladder, the stronger the growth—is remarkable…. Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 