Econ4 in Chronicle of Higher Ed
Recently critics have mounted a more fundamental line of attack on mainstream economists, taking aim at the ideology that has grown dominant over the past 30 years, which they say played a significant part in causing the Great Recession and not doing much to help solve it.
Read the entire piece here.
The High Price of Materialism
A new video from the Center for a New American Dream.
Source: http://www.newdream.org/resources/high-price-of-materialism
“Get It Done”
Youth delegate Anjali Appadurai at the Durban climate summit.
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3e6G_7GY4.
Market share among U.S. banks
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/12/11/magazine/11economy2.html?ref=magazine.
From the same issue of the Times, Gretchen Morgenson’s excellent piece on TBTF (too big to fail):
Reducing the perils of gargantuan institutions — and the threat to taxpayers — is an idea that seems to be taking hold in Washington. To be sure, the army arguing for change is far outgunned by the battalions of bankers and lobbyists working to maintain the status quo. But some combatants seeking reform believe they are making headway.
Read it here.
Make More Videos
From Ben, November 28, 2011:
Make more videos. Your audience is waiting.
Econ4 replies:
Thanks, Ben. That’s exactly what we want to do. We are now seeking funding to make it possible.
Economics 4 People, the Planet, and the Future
From James Boyce’s post on the TripleCrisis blog:
Our current economic crisis is not only a crisis of the economy. It is also a crisis of economics. The free-market fundamentalism of the closing decades of the 20th century today has been thoroughly discredited – or at least, should have been – by financial collapse, swelling inequality, global imbalances, mass unemployment, and environmental degradation.
Read the rest of the article here.
Wanted: Worldly Philosophers
Economists should see the big picture – and ask the big questions. But in a recent oped piece, Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman argue that the profession has been so preoccupied with the trees that it lost sight of the forest:
It’s become commonplace to criticize the ‘Occupy’ movement for failing to offer an alternative vision. But the thousands of activists in the streets of New York and London aren’t the only ones lacking perspective: economists, to whom we might expect to turn for such vision, have long since given up thinking in terms of economic systems — and we are all the worse for it.
Read their piece here.
Authority Figures
From Jody, November 25, 2011:
I love your website. Thanks so much for making this possible. One small comment is it that I think it would help your argument to include the titles for the individuals involved. You are building an argument that will benefit from either ‘Dr.’ at the front or ‘PhD’ at the end.
Econ4 replies:
Thanks, Jody. You’ve put your finger on a dilemma. It’s important for those of us with PhD’s in economics to make use of our authority to affirm that another economics is possible. But we don’t want to imply in any way, shape or form that economics is only for the credentialed. So we take the untitled road.
Nancy Folbre: Occupy Economics
From Nancy Folbre’s NYT Economix post, Occupy Economics:
The Occupy Wall Street movement, displaced from some key geographic locations, now enjoys a small but significant encampment among economists.
Concerns about the impact of growing economic inequality fit neatly into a larger critique of mainstream economic theory and its deep faith in the efficiency of markets.
Read the rest of the article here.
We are the 99%
Animation on U.S. income distribution from The Guardian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab6Ji-fSlTk&feature=player_embedded
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/video/2011/nov/16/99-v-1-occupy-data-animation
