Browsing articles in "Media Library"
Mar 9, 2015

Monopoly power v. solar power

The Washington Post reports from the electricity battleground in the clean energy transition, where surprising political realignments are emerging:

“Conservatives support solar — they support it even more than progressives do,” said Bryan Miller, co-chairman of the Alliance for Solar Choice and a vice president of public policy for Sunrun, a California solar provider. “It’s about competition in its most basic form. The idea that you should be forced to buy power from a state-sponsored monopoly and not have an option is about the least conservative thing you can imagine.”

Read more here.

Mar 7, 2015

Banned in China: know your air

The powerful film (with English subtitles) on pollution – initially hailed, then banned, by Chinese officialdom:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM

From New York Times story on the ban:

On Friday evening [the day the film was banned], Xinhua, the state news agency, posted on Twitter, which is also blocked here, that “President Xi Jinping vows to punish, with an iron hand, any violators who destroy ecology or environment, with no exceptions.” That night, the United States Embassy air monitor in Beijing rated the air “hazardous.”

Read more here.

POSTSCRIPT: Chinese officials are not the alone in trying to suppress bad news on the environment. Check out the latest from Florida, here.

Mar 5, 2015

Guaranteed income from common wealth

Peter Barnes writes in Yes! magazine:

THERE’S LONG been a notion that, because money is a prerequisite for survival and security, everyone should be assured some income just for being alive.  The notion has been advanced by liberals such as James Tobin, John Kenneth Galbraith, and George McGovern, and by conser­vatives like Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and Richard Nixon.  It’s embedded in the board game Monopoly, in which all players get equal payments when they pass Go.  And yet, with one exception, Americans have been unable to agree on any plan that guarantees some income to everyone.  The reasons lie mostly in the stories that surround such income.  Is it welfare?  Is it redistribution?  Does it require higher taxes and bigger government?  Americans think dimly of all these things.

But then, there’s the exception.

Read all about it here.

Feb 19, 2015

Rising student demand for new economics

From the Economist:

“I DON’T care who writes a nation’s laws, or crafts its advanced treatises, if I can write its economics textbooks.” So said Paul Samuelson, an American economist who more than achieved his aim by producing a bestseller. But debate swirls around the teaching of the dismal science—nowhere more so than in Britain.

Read more here.

Feb 15, 2015

A glimpse of the future economy

From the E3 Network’s Future Economy Initiative:

Source: http://www.futureecon.org/

Feb 2, 2015

Diminishing Marginal Utility

Or: Is a Dollar Worth More to a Billionaire or a Secretary?

Here’s a first example of Econ4’s instructional economics videos. More to follow if and when funding permits. Please stay tuned!

Jan 18, 2015

Inequality.org

A portal for people seeking information and analysis on economic inequality in the United States, with lots of data, news items and links:

http://inequality.org/

Jan 7, 2015

CEO Payday

The numbers tell the story (source: Economic Policy Institute).

 

Dec 27, 2014

Staying awake during the climate revolution

Rebecca Solnit writes in the Guardian:

Dismantling the fossil-fuel economy would undoubtedly have the side effect of breaking some of the warping power that oil has had in global and national politics. Of course, those wielding that power will not yield it without a ferocious battle – the very battle the climate movement is already engaged in on many fronts…

Read more here.

Dec 27, 2014

Facing climate adaptation

Econ4’s James Boyce writes in the Los Angeles Times:

In the years ahead, climate change will confront the world with hard choices: whether to protect as many dollars as possible, or to protect as many people as we can.

 

Read more here.

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