30 September 2017 — TRNN
Economist Bill Black says that both Republicans and Democrats are financially illiterate when they speak about the deficit, and Trump’s economic experts are ‘completely disconnected from the real world’
Tag: taxes
Wounds of Class By Mark Fisher
7 November 2013 — Wounds of Class
[This is an interesting and evocative essay which in some respects, parallels my own life. Fisher is also the author of the book, ‘Capitalist Realism:Is there no alternative?‘. WB]
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I have just come back to London from the North West of England, from my hometown, Barrow-in-Furness. My father died a few months ago, at the start of the summer, a week after I returned from Japan, where I had lived on and off for the previous three years. Now, my mum is on her own. Because of this I have decided to stay in the UK. Not entirely because of my mum’s situation, but also because I felt guilty about being abroad, that I should be back home, back here, doing something. Nor was it really a decision in the full, free sense. Luckily, a job came up at the last minute in the school I return to work in during the summer and I took it.
Enemies of the People: Georgina Rinehart By Branford Perry
8 August 2013 — Hipokrisy Monitor
Get to know your ruling class!
In the huge barrel of plutocratic arrogance rotten apples don’t come much bigger than Gina Rinehart, the cantankerous, cheap, and mean-spirited Australian mining heiress for whom Randian hyper individualism and the law of the jungle come as naturally as breathing.
Video: Portugal's Architect of Austerity Resigns After Nationwide Protests
4 July 2013 — The Real News Network
President Silva’s austerity policies made Portugal a darling of the troika, but highly unpopular at home (inc. transcript)
Video: Portugal’s Architect of Austerity Resigns After Nationwide Protests
4 July 2013 — The Real News Network
President Silva’s austerity policies made Portugal a darling of the troika, but highly unpopular at home (inc. transcript)
“Let us glory in our inequality.” By Michael Hudson
8 April, 2013 — Michael Hudson
Failed Privatizations – the Thatcher Legacy
By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. His latest book is “The Bubble and Beyond”.
This is from my book on privatization, written some 15 years ago, never published.
The Worldwide Offshore Banking System: Cyprus, Offshore Haven of the Russian Oligarchs By Valentin Katasonov
20 March 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
The news about the Cyprus banks has been on the radar screen recently.
Democracy, Disillusion and The Political Process By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin
7 March, 2013 — Global Research
A new nationwide opinion poll in Ireland has shown that people are becoming more and more disillusioned with the political process leading one to wonder if democracy (people rule) has simply become demopsefia (people vote). This type of disillusionment is becoming widespread across Europe in general. While no one is naive enough to believe all the promises of politicians, in recent years the desires of the electorate seem to be ever more blatantly subsumed to the financial interests/problems of recent governments.
Media: Tom Friedman's Apple Hunch By Peter Hart
20 February 2013 — FAIR Blog
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is, for reasons that remain entirely unclear, considered a wise man in elite media circles. His columns and books are read by others in the business, who then turn around and pretend they know something because they read it in a Tom Friedman column.
NYT’s Friedman
Austerity Can’t Solve Crises of Capitalism By Gene Clancy
8 February, 2013 — IACenter.org
Millions of workers across the United States received a rude and unpleasant jolt this January when they discovered that their take-home pay had just shrunk by 2 percent. The Social Security payroll tax cut of 2009 was restored, costing workers an average amount of $850 a year, a significant wage decrease for workers on the edge of financial ruin.
America’s Deceptive 2012 Fiscal Cliff By Michael Hudson
28 December 2012 — Michael Hudson
How today’s fiscal austerity is reminiscent of World War I’s economic misunderstandings
When World War I broke out in August 1914, economists on both sides forecast that hostilities could not last more than about six months. Wars had grown so expensive that governments quickly would run out of money. It seemed that if Germany could not defeat France by springtime, the Allied and Central Powers would run out of savings and reach what today is called a fiscal cliff and be forced to negotiate a peace agreement.
But the Great War dragged on for four destructive years. European governments did what the United States had done after the Civil War broke out in 1861 when the Treasury printed greenbacks. They paid for more fighting simply by printing their own money. Their economies did not buckle and there was no major inflation. That would happen only after the war ended, as a result of Germany trying to pay reparations in foreign currency. This is what caused its exchange rate to plunge, raising import prices and hence domestic prices. The culprit was not government spending on the war itself (much less on social programs).
Obama's Second Term: Following Angela Merkel in the Oval Office? By Ingo Schmidt
29 November 2012 — The Bullet • A Socialist Project e-bulletin …. No. 737
A debt crisis in Europe, an electoral campaign in the United States, and Canada watching from the sidelines; this is how the trans-Atlantic world was depicted in the media over the past months. Though the votes had not yet been counted, warnings suddenly emerged about a fiscal cliff. In order to keep discussions of budget policy out of the campaign, the Republicans and the Democrats agreed on a pact earlier this year, which increased the debt ceiling of the federal government to the point that drastic spending cuts or tax increases could be postponed until after the election. If, however, the parties in Congress cannot agree on another budget by year’s end, expenditures throughout all departments will be automatically cut and the tax reductions provided by Bush and Obama in previous years will be revoked. Continue reading
Video: Fiscal Cliff An Artificial Crisis
25 November, 2012 — The Real News Network
Michael Hudson: Fiscal cliff was manufactured to shift more of the burden of the crisis onto ordinary people (inc. transcript) Continue reading
The Death Agony of Anti-Imperialism, 2 Egypt, 1 By S. Artesian
17 November, 2012 — Wolf at the Door
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1. The organization of landed property, of the landed estate, and of landed labor in <strong class=’StrictlyAutoTagBold’>Egypt was driven and determined by that which could not truly be appropriated as property—water. Water and the lack thereof, regulated, so to speak, the oscillations between scarcity and abundance. Water and the lack thereof imposed an approximate egalitarianism; a communalism among those who settled along the banks of the Nile, just as water and the lack thereof compelled a rough equality among the Bedouins, the nomads of the desert. Continue reading
Video: Portugal General Strike: This is What Austerity Looks Like By grtv
15 November 2012 — GRtv
Excerpt from: The Strike in Southern Europe:
A storm is brewing in Southern Europe. In Greece on November 6 and 7 another general strike will take place. On November 14 Portuguese, Cypriot, Spanish and Italian trade unions intend to go on strike in opposition to the austerity policies of the European Union. Belgian and British trade unions, as well as the European and German trade union confederations, are also calling for action. If the mobilization is successful, this transnational strike will be a milestone in the formation of a European protest movement desperately needed to prevent the final demolition of the European welfare states… Continue reading
Video: Bill Black and Glen Ford on Presidential Debate #2
17 October 2012 — The Real News Network
Is there a significant difference between the candidates on foreign or domestic policy? Continue reading
Video: Anti-Austerity Protests and Strikes Rock Spain
18 September 2012 — The Real News Network
Spain‘s struggling public sector workers and the unemployed converged on Spain‘s capitol to denounce their governments decision to implement deeper spending cuts. Continue reading
Israel on the Offensive In Bid To Press President Obama To Attack Iran By Danny Schechter
13 September 2012 — The News Dissector
New York, New York: It feels like Iran Week in the USA
Using an exaggerated if fictive Iranian threat to create nuclear weapons as their pretext, Israeli politicians are blatantly and publicly inserting themselves in America’s Presidential elections, demanding that President Obama do their bidding by articulating so-called “red lines” to further threaten Tehran.
The Greek affair: Symbol of the crisis of the European Union or paradigm of Europe’s salvation By Gaither Stewart
23 May 2012
It is an ironic twist of history that Greece, the cradle of Western culture, today, 2500 years after the acme of Hellenic glory, appears on the stage of history in the best of cases as victim, and in the worst, as the symbol of the threat to the collapse of the West European society.
Continue reading
IT’S TAX TIME: IS IT TIME TO OCCUPY THE IRS? By Danny Schechter
4 April 2012 — The News Dissector
Every year I trek down to a nondescript office building near Wall Street with a bag full of receipts and a belly full of anxiety.
The New Dark Age 