Economy

Caste Does Not Explain Race

The celebration of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste reflects the continued priority of elite preferences over the needs and struggles of ordinary people.

The Gadfly of American Plutocracy

Thorstein Veblen was the most important economic thinker of the Gilded Age.

How Latin America Reimagined Classical Economics

The region has a long legacy of critical engagement with classical political economy, helping to change the way we think about markets and morals.

COVID-19 Provides All the More Reason to Tax the Rich

Tax policies like New Jersey’s new Millionaires Tax are essential—not only for an equitable recovery, but also for reining in pre-pandemic inequality.

The World Henry Ford Made

On the global legacy of Fordist mass production—and its appeal on both the left and the right.

Political Economy After Neoliberalism

The government—not the market—is the only viable solution to some of our greatest challenges.

Rethinking Political Economy

Rejecting market fundamentalism, Rethinking Political Economy will provide space for advancing alternatives—in theory, politics, and policy—to the neoliberalism of the last forty years.

To Save the Climate, Give Up the Demand for Constant Electricity

Waiting to ensure uninterrupted power for everyone as we transition away from fossil fuels will cost too much time—and too many lives.

In the Shadow of Reagan

Only a few decades old, the corporate autocracy the former president unleashed on the United States is not natural law. It had to be created, and it can also be undone.

Colonizing the Future

Working people are forever kept on the brink of going broke—preventing them from having any control over their own futures.

The Trouble with Carbon Pricing

Only a bold approach that centers politics can meet the scale of the climate crisis.

The Economic Case for a People’s Vaccine

Ensuring a COVID-19 vaccine is available to all makes both moral and economic sense.

Neoliberal Hong Kong Is Our Future, Too

Economists lionize the city as the ideal free market, but the social consequences have been disastrous.

Pigs and Capital

The meat business has become a vast, fragile beast teetering on the brink of ecological and financial ruin.

Tearing Down Black America

In the mid-twentieth century, city governments, backed by federal money, demolished hundreds of Black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal.

Dismantling Medical Elitism

American medicine has long put professional prestige over the well-being of patients and physicians alike.

India’s Response to COVID-19 Is a Humanitarian Disaster

The government enforced a strict lockdown for weeks, giving the illusion of responsible policy. Poor people are now paying the price.

The Keynesian Revolution

A new biography reveals the full scope of John Maynard Keynes’s critique of unfettered capitalism, emphasizing the economist’s larger philosophical vision of the good life.

When Will Capitalism End?

Rumors of its imminent death have often been greatly exaggerated.

We’re Not All In It Together

The deep, growing divisions in U.S. society have an outsize effect in determining who suffers from this pandemic—as well as how the government responds.

What 30 Percent Unemployment Looks Like

As we know from South Africa's crisis, political and social fault lines will shape the contours of joblessness.

Recessions often improve population health, but COVID-19 may be different

Mortality rates typically fall during economic downturns. But the unprecedented features of the COVID-19 shutdown suggest that trend might not hold this time.

What a Solidarity Economy Looks Like

Despite President Bolsonaro's COVID-19 denialism, a small Brazilian city has one of the most ambitious responses in the world.

Work After Quarantine

COVID-19 has exposed the fragility of our labor markets just as much as the fragility of our public health and welfare systems. As we take the economy out of its induced coma, we should ask what kinds of jobs we want and need.

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