A Great Guide To Understanding Climate Change

This article asks ten important questions about climate change and it provides answers that are well thought out and concise.  There are things individuals can do to fight climate change but governments will have to play a major role. Politicians don't think beyond the next election so one our biggest problems is the absence of pressure by well informed constituents on our politicians.  The best thing that you can do is to forward this article to 50 your friends and associates.

Paul Krugman Reviews Robert Reich's Book On Reversing US Plutocracy

Everyone knows that inequality in the US has been increasing since the early 1980's.  This raises two questions for those who worry about the prospect of plutocracy in the US:  It is important to understand the causes of rising inequality, and to make changes that might reverse our descent into plutocracy.  Robert Reich's new book provides his answers to both of those questions.  Paul Krugman argues that Reich's explanation for rising inequality is superior to explanations which focus on the role of technology in the labor market.  There is little evidence to support the idea that incomes are rising for workers with technical skills and falling for those who lack those skills.  Its also difficult to support the argument that machines are reducing the demand for human labor.  Reich argues that rising inequality has been coupled with growing political power within the economic elite.  The economic elite has been able to use government to reduce competition and produce monopolistic profits in many industries.  They have also been able to reduce the power of unions in the US.  In short, the growth in income inequality is a result of a rising imbalance in political power.

Krugman is generally sympathetic to Reich's explanation for rising inequality in the US. He also agrees with many of Reich's suggestions about what might be done to create a more equal society.  He is more pessimistic, however, about the political prospect for reversing a trend that has been well organized carefully managed over the last 40 years.  The plutocrats know what they want and how to get it.  All of the GOP candidates for the presidency are in general agreement about what they want.  They differ from each other primarily on style and personality. Its not easy to see this kind of agreement within the Democratic Party. 

Remaking Politics In Illinois To Serve The Ultra Wealthy

The state of Illinois has a long history of poor government.  This article describes the new governor of Illinois, along with his policies and his unprecedented sources of campaign funding.  His campaign was funded by ultra wealthy supporters from Illinois and other states who share the same philosophy of government.  The upshot is that a handful of ultra wealthy families have an opportunity to reshape the state's agenda.  It turns out that their policies are quite different from the majority of voters in the state.  This is a strange form of democracy.  We might as well be governed by aristocrats and dispense with the corrupted electoral system that we have enabled by changing campaign finance laws which permit a minority to purchase the kind of government that serves their interests.

What's Holding Back The US Economy?

The answer to the title question is simple: the Republican Party is holding back the economy.  The NY Times published an article that provides some suggestions on what we might do the improve the economy.  The suggestions were all pretty good but they are politically impossible because the Republican Party is no longer a political party that is concerned about the public welfare.  It has captured many Americans who have suffered from changes in the labor market by blaming their problems on government.  Consequently, the GOP will block any efforts to improve the welfare of those affected by changes in the labor market and claim that getting rid of government is the solution.  The GOP will also promote policies that benefit their financial backers at the expense of the right wing populists who follow them.  The right wing populists provide the votes and the super rich finances GOP campaigns.  It is a marriage made in hell. but it has helped the GOP to win elections.

Melting Glaciers And Global Cooling??

This article shows photos of rapidly eroding glaciers in the US.  It also shows how the loss of snow melt will impact states that depend upon snow melt for fresh water.  Of course, many Americans who learn much of what they know from Fox News and other misinformation sites, believe that we are in a period of global cooling and that global warming is a left wing conspiracy.  I have no idea how they can manage the cognitive dissonance that might occur to them when they can see photos of glaciers disappearing.  Unfortunately, not much can be done to save the glaciers.  Temperatures at their level in the atmosphere are warming faster than those at ground level.

Al Gore Reinvents Capitalism: He Calls It Sustainable Capitalism

Al Gore lost his opportunity to become President of the United States when the Supreme Court decided that he lost Florida to George Bush.  The world suffered enormously from that decision because Bush made one of the worse foreign policy decisions in history.  Al Gore has prospered since losing the election.  His net worth is in the hundreds of millions.  He started up an investment firm that has provided a 12% return to investors over the last decade.  This article describes the investment strategy (via Manan Shukla) that has proven to be so successful.  It invests in firms that will produce profits over the long term and also be good for the public welfare.  Capitalism needs to reinvent itself over time.  Things change and capitalism must adapt.  We are currently living in an era of short term greed.  Businesses are operated to increase short term profits and short term shareholder value.  The financial crisis provided us with an example of what can happen when short term greed governs corporate behavior.  Many firms failed and shareholders suffered along with millions around the world who were affected by the collapse of the financial system.  We have also seen how short term greed has caused one of the world's most successful automobile firms to destroy much of its equity and its reputation. Al Gore's investment firm is focused on long term greed.  It is totally different from the ways in which most investment firms operate.  Anyone who has watched one of the financial news stations, like CNBC,  can witness the maniacal focus on quarterly performance and short term movements in stock prices.  Gore believes that his success is being noticed by other investment firms and that some will follow his lead and help to develop a more sustainable version of capitalism.

Anarcho-Capitalism And Drug Advertising

The American Medical Association has asked Congress to ban direct to consumer drug ads.  The US along with New Zealand are the only nations that permit direct to consumer drug advertising.  It was banned in the US prior to 1962 for a good reason.  Consumers are not able to properly evaluate the effectiveness of newly released drugs for their specific medical needs.  Drug companies marketed prescription drugs by calling directly on doctors to inform them about newly released drugs.  Today the drug companies spend most of their marketing budgets on direct to consumer advertising.  The drug companies have decided that it is more effective to sell their products to poorly informed consumers than it is to trained physicians.  Anyone watching television in the US bears witness to this shift in the marketing of drugs.  They are inundated with drug ads which tell them how some new drug will alleviate one of their symptoms.  Following the good news they are quickly warned about possible side effects that often include death. The drug companies must have found that consumers are more interested in relieving their symptoms than they are in potential side effects.  Since they are primarily concerned with increasing their profits, they are less concerned with effectiveness of the drugs that they bring to the market. They are promoting consumer freedom and business freedom to increase their profits.

The Food and Drug Administration was created to protect consumers from products which may not be effective or harmful.  The FDA has decided that it lacks the power to limit direct to consumer marketing by the drug companies.  The US Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are individuals and that corporate advertising is a form of free speech which is protected by the US Constitution.  The powerlessness of the FDA is probably good news for so called libertarians who believe that governments should not interfere with the market.  They preach the virtues of consumer sovereignty.  Consumers are better judges of their needs than government agencies or medical professionals.

John Stuart Mill, who was an effective advocate for the expansion of human liberty, would turn over in his grave if he could witness the misuse of his concept of liberty by anarchists who call themselves libertarians.  Capitalism could not operate in absence of government rules, regulations and laws which have been designed to enable markets to serve the public interest.  Most business leaders understand this.  The so called libertarians abuse the concept of liberty an freedom when they are unable to capture government agencies to serve their purposes.  Unfortunately, they have been successful in the US.  The FDA feels powerless against drug company advertising and the US Treasury believes that it does not have the power to stop multinational corporations from using complex schemes like inversions to avoid paying US taxes.

The Koch brothers advocate a form of "Anarcho- Capitalism" as a form of libertarianism.  They oppose government subsidies, even though they benefit from some government subsidies.  They also object to the Federal Reserves bailout of the banking system.  Apparently, we should have let the banking system collapse along with the global economy.  A second Great Depression is simply the price we pay for freedom.  They probably forget that libertarian ideology led to the deregulation of banking industry which gave bankers the freedom produce toxic securities which they fraudulently sold to investors.  At a more practical level, the Koch brothers are more concerned about the potential for the Environmental Protection Agency to use the threat of global warming to limit the use of fossil fuels.  They are one on the largest coal producers in the US.