Economics

One of the difficulties faced by small and independent businesses around the country lies in paying employees competitively with larger corporate firms. We see this especially in the retail sector, but it is a difficulty faced across the board. We can't be too naive about this- the problem often enough is a corrupt boss with no accountability to shareholders and little vulnerability to major lawsuits. But often enough small businesses simply can't afford to give employees the wages and benefits they deserve.

The wage rates in Austin are fairly low, outside of the state, university and tech sectors. A $10 an hour job is a lucky break for many. This despite the fact that a living wage for Austin lies closer to $14 an hour.

Great policy note from the Levy Economics Institute, critiquing Paulson's bailout strategy. Pass it along.

Everyone's talking about the bailout, how it didn't pass, and how we may or may not be teetering on the edge of another Depression.

Right now I wish to god I understood economics enough to evaluate this stuff critically, but in lieu of my own PhD, thought I'd toss out this editorial by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz:

Bail-out blues

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the United States' financial system – indeed, global finance – is in a mess. And now, with the US House of Representatives having rejected the Bush administration's proposed $700bn bail-out plan, it is also obvious that there is no consensus on how to fix it.

I've been thinking about utopian economic structures (because really, what's as fun as grooving out to utopian economic structures?) and their relationship to the world as it is. I call myself an anarchist but in all honesty, if we take the idea of immediate, spontaneous revolution off the table (and I don't really think it belongs there) this is a very vague assertion. It is a set of loose principles held together more by historical continuity or quasi-mystical intuition more than through any strict parameters, organizational coherence, or platform of particular doctrines and dogmas. As a political project it is grand and open, and demands the widest possible creativity in experimenting with new forms and models for living, or with adapting existing forms.

Kiva

Kiva is a remarkable application of the peer-to-peer possibilities of the internet. If you've paid attention to the Democratic presidential primaries this season or the last, you know that the big shift in campaign financing is the enormous about of money raised from small donors via the internet. That technique allowed Howard Dean to threaten the party establishment a little last time around, and it has allowed Barack Obama to wage an unprecedented campaign against a candidate considered a sure bet in the early days of the race.

Kevin Phillips has a great piece in the current Harpers about how the economy is much shakier than is painted by official stats. Essentially, they've been tweaking the meaning of the Consumer Price Index, unemployment, etc. for decades, and if we used the older standards our rates wold be far more worrisome. Our unemployment rates would be close to those in Europe, etc.

Here's a telling line:
'"All in all," Williams points out, "if you were to peel back changes that were made in the CPI going back to the Carter years, you'd see that the CPI would now be 3.5 percent to 4 percent higher"—meaning that, because of lost CPI increases, Social Security checks would be 70 percent greater than they currently are.'

From the publisher: Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity , here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.
Reviews

"Harvey's book is deeply insightful, rewarding and stimulating. His history of neoliberalism may indeed be brief, but the richness and profundity of this volume is without question."--Michael J. Thompson, democratiya

From the publisher:
John Perkins’ controversial and bestselling exposé, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, revealed for the first time the secret world of economic hit men (EHMs). But Perkins’ Confessions contained only a small piece of this sinister puzzle. The full story is far bigger, deeper, and darker than Perkins’ personal account revealed. Here other EHMs, journalists, and investigators join Perkins to tell their own stories, providing the first probing and expansive look into this pervasive web of systematic corruption.

From the author's site: In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.