Puppets rap ‘economic man’

Homo economicus? These puppets have a better idea of who we are:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx13E8-zUtA.

Annals of hypocrisy: Welfare … or social insurance?

Robert Reich dissects the hypocrisy about government “handouts”:

Read/see his comment here.

Political Economy of the Environment: New video series from Econ4

Econ4 is pleased to announce its new video series on the Political Economy of the Environment, produced in partnership with the University of Massachusetts Amherst department of economics.

Part One: Introduction

1. The economy & the environment. Are people different from pondweed?
2. Limits to growth – of what? It’s time for a new formula: grow the good, and shrink the bad.
3. Political economy. Who wins, who loses, who decides?
4. Safety, efficiency, sustainability, and justice. What should be the goals in environmental policy?

Part Two: Environmental protection – in theory and practice

5. What is efficiency? There’s more – and less – to neoclassical efficiency than meets the eye.
6. Discounting the future. Are the lives of our grandchildren worth less than our own?
7. The value of a statistical life. How do economists put a monetary value on risks of death?
8. Externalities. External costs and benefits are not the exception – they’re the rule.
9. The Coase theorem. Why private bargaining can seldom solve environmental externalities.
10. The tragedy of the commons. More accurately, the tragedies of open access.
11. Environmental justice. Defending the right to a clean and safe environment.
12. Power & the environment. Costs and benefits weighted by the power of those to whom they accrue.
13. Regulation & environmental protection. Rules as a solution to environmental problems.
14. Incentive-based environmental policies. Prices as another way to solve environmental problems.
15. Market failure & government failure. Democracy versus oligarchy: beyond the market-versus-government debate.
    

Part Three: Global dimensions

16. Globalization & the environment. The globalization of market failure poses new challenges for governance.
17. The environmental Kuznets curve. What happens to the environment as per capita income goes up?
18. Population & the environment. What Malthus got wrong.
19. Tropical deforestation. How transnational alliances can change balances of power.
20. Building natural assets. How poverty reduction and environmental protection can go hand-in-hand.
21. Agriculture & the environment. The costs of industrial agriculture and benefits of ecological agriculture.
22. Cultivated biodiversity. Small farmers sustain some of the world’s most valuable biodiversity.

Part Four: Climate policy

23. Climate change. The defining environmental challenge of the 21^st century.
24. Carbon pricing: 1. Why & how? Why we need to put price on fossil carbon, and how we can do it.
25. Carbon pricing: 2. The social cost of carbon. What should be the price on carbon dioxide emissions?
26. Carbon pricing: 3. Revenue allocation. The trillion dollar question: who will get the money?
27. International climate negotiations. No-regrets policies can help overcome myopia and the free rider problem.

Rethinking the economic role of the state

Mariana Mazzucato offers a counterpoint to market fundamentalism: the state is the “investor of first resort,” whose key role in the innovation ought to be recognized and rewarded.

Source: Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET).

Meanwhile in the real world: Countries moving to a fossil-free future

For a glimpse of what’s happening in countries that take climate change seriously, check out this short video:

Source: http://enb.iisd.org/videos/climate/unfccc-cop23-side-events/implementing-paris-and-the-sdgs-through-fuel-subsidy-reform-and-taxation/?autoplay

California working

A video from the Labor Center at UC-Berkeley reports on the employment and growth results of progressive state policies in California:

Source: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/california-is-working/

“Five Things They Don’t Tell You About Law & Economics”

A new video from APPEAL – the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law – challenges the “pro-efficiency” and “anti-regulation” ideology purveyed under the banner of “Law and Economics”:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoak05emri4&feature=youtu.be

Unnatural disasters

Disasters are not like rain that impartially falls on everyone beneath the cloud. Instead vulnerability is shaped by class, race, ethnicity and gender. Check out this trailer for a powerful new documentary:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/embed/WdZBO3lFmUc.

Rediscovering the modern relevance of the commons

Laura Flanders interviews Econ4’s David Bollier:

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

Arms race – children’s version 1.0

More than three decades ago, the classic American television show “Mister Rogers” explained the “logic” of arms races – and their social cost – to children. The tapes, lost for years, just resurfaced:

Last week, someone mysteriously uploaded a series of lost episodes of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood to YouTube. The episodes, called the “conflict series,” originally aired on PBS at the height of Cold War tensions in 1983 and sought to teach children about the dangers of stockpiling weapons.

Sound timely?

Read more here. (The “Neighborhood of Make-Believe” clip begins at the 15:25 mark in the YouTube video embedded in the story.)

Check it out, kids.