Economy/Economics

The explosion in ever-widening collaborative transactions hardly lacks for catchy names. Are these radical, co-operative platforms captured as the “Sharing Economy,” “Collaborative Consumption,” even collaborative capitalism? Or, recalling perennial venture-capital roots, perhaps “Network Orchestration”? Whatever the imprint, dramatic breakthroughs in peer-to-peer exchanges are booming, posing large-scale challenges to top-down, over-determined corporatism.

Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971).
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Senator Bernie Sanders’ candidacy for the presidency of the United States is in full blossom, on tour with rousing speeches to standing room only extraordinarily motivated crowds. Senator Sanders, the tough-minded Independent with socialist tendencies, is labeled a long shot to win the Democratic nomination, especially in the face of the odds-on-favorite Hillary Clinton, whose political machinery is so well oiled that it is dripping.

We will have a very strong (military) presence, very strong continued posture throughout the region to back our commitments to our allies, to protect and work with our partners and to continue ensuring peace and stability in the region, as well as back our diplomacy vis-à-vis China on the South China Sea.
— David Shear, US Department of Defense’s Assistant Secretary for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs

In our last publication, we addressed some of the problems of the TPP. It endangers the planet, threatens labor, violates human rights, and it globalizes free trade into another form of neo-imperialism. This is further proof that the 1 percent, both in the United States and around the world, undermine democratic self-determination in the economic and political realms. We argue that free markets, as they manifest themselves today, destabilize the world economy, while fair markets stabilize.

What if billionaires hold fast to bullion as ferociously as those of modest means cling to God and guns? Assuming history survives, what if it turns out America’s permanent legacy comes down to 1) adoration of money and 2) avarice for stuff?  No longer the progress that lifts humankind, not heroic confrontations with earth-shaking (climate) challenges, nary a Congressional vote for the greatest good for the greatest number.

The rapid growth of knowledge
Cultural evolution depends on the non-genetic storage, transmission, diffusion and utilization of information. The development of human speech, the invention of writing, the development of paper and printing, and finally, in modern times, mass media, computers and the Internet: all these have been crucial steps in society’s explosive accumulation of information and knowledge. Human cultural evolution proceeds at a constantly-accelerating speed, so great in fact that it threatens to shake society to pieces.

If humans are to achieve a stable society in the distant future, it will be necessary for them to become modest in their economic behavior and peaceful in their politics. For both modesty and peace, Gandhi is useful as a source of ideas.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 in Porbandar, India. His family belonged to the Hindu caste of shopkeepers. (In Gujarati “Gandhi” means “grocer”.) However, the family had risen in status, and Gandhi’s father, grandfather, and uncle had all served as prime ministers of small principalities in western India.

As always, writing about a middle-sized community in the Pacific Northwest is like peering into the looking glass. All references to the One Percent, de-emphasizing community rights, brain drain and monopolization of all business sectors and privatizing the profits and socializing all the heavy burden and costs to the local community/economy, all of that applies to You Name It, USA!

May 8. Today’s payroll jobs report is more of the same. The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that 223,000 new jobs were created in April. Let’s accept the claim and see where the jobs are.
Specialty trade contractors are credited with 41,000 jobs equally split between residential and nonresidential. I believe these are home and building repairs and remodeling.
The rest of the jobs, 182,000, are in domestic services.
Despite store closings and weak retail sales, 12,000 people were hired in retail trade.