“The new Republican tax code deliberately rigs the economy in favor of the political donor class – the CEOs, corporations, and millionaires who fund campaign – and virtually guarantees that a tiny number of the richest people in the country will get significantly richer while working families and the middle class get screwed. “Among other …

Continue reading ‘“The new Republican tax code rigs the economy.”. A millionaire investor’ »

“I’m one of the 1.8 million British citizens living in mainland Europe; no deal will have a devastating impact on us. And it is our government, not our EU hosts, that will be stripping us of our right to continue living and working here. “Much as we’d love to hide on 30 March 2019, hoping …

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The endless battles over Brexit mean that few politicians are “seriously engaged” in thinking about “how the world might look after our departure”. It’s time they started. “Simmering resentment with the power of Whitehall” could well ensure that it becomes the next target of “a growing urge to take back control”. In terms of taxes, …

Continue reading ‘“Taking back control” in Britain’ »

Hyman Minski, an economist, created the “financial instability hypothesis”. Financial systems – and the free market economies that rest on them – are by nature unstable, tending towards what he called “Ponzi finance”. In good times companies take on too much debt, and that gets them into trouble when profits fall. They then sell assets …

Continue reading ‘A calamity in the making, part 2’ »

Inequality, poverty, corruption – Nicaragua has many of the characteristic problems that afflict Central American nations. Yet there is one way in which it stands out from its neighbours: its relative lack of violence. Its homicide rate, according to the latest regional report from InSight Crime, is a mere seven per 100,000. This compares with …

Continue reading ‘The benefits of gentle police work’ »

It has not been a good year for gun makers. Remington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after its sales fell 27.5% in the first nine months of Donald Trump’s presidency. (Its officials had expected a 2016 Hillary Clinton victory and a burst of gun purchases). Sales have been ragged across the industry. Gun company stocks …

Continue reading ‘A nation based on fear cannot be “great”.’ »

A year after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico, the official death toll has been raised to 2,975 people – compared with the previous official figure of 64. The Adminstration, meanwhile, has done little or nothing to help Puerto Ricans. If the hurricane had occurred in Kansas, also full of American citizens, and not in a …

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“The answer for me to E. J. Dionne’s rhetorical question about why people stay Catholic is simple: I attend Mass to deepen my relationship with the Lord. It matters not who wears the miter and carries the crosier. I don’t care if my priest is gay. The hierarchy and politics of the church offends me …

Continue reading ‘Letter to the Washington Post, 30 August 2018’ »

Could capping top incomes tackle our rising inequality more effectively than conventional approaches to narrowing ghe vast economic divide? The Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies hss published “The Case for A Maximum Wage”, by Sam Pizzigati, an IPS associate fellow and the co-editor of Inequality.org.   Pizzigati docusses how egalitarians worldwide are …

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All the signs suggest that leaving the EU will cause economic hurt, yet voting intentions over Brexit remain unaltered. Why? The answer lies in a novel written 60 years ago by a Labour Party grandee. In “The Rise of the Meritocracy”, Michael Young envisioned a dystopian future polarised between a class of winners (exam-passers) and …

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“I am opposed to the UK government’s key policy (Brexit), but then so, until recently, was she (Theresa May). There’s a job that doesn’t need doing and, increasingly, it feels like she is just the person not to do it.” (David Mitchell, Guardian Weekly, April 13) Meanwhile, a friend pointed out that the ineffectiveness of …

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“Here’s some advice to my fellow liberals: If you want to defend liberal democracy in this age of “noisy populist movements”, stop condemning people who disagree with you about immigration. In both America and Europe, liberal commentators tend to treat every call for immigration curbs as a xenophobic assault on democracy. “Yet the conflation of …

Continue reading ‘Are you being a “fascist” if you want to curb immigration?’ »