Dean Baker sur Twitter : "I got cited in a #NYT column under my professional name, «no one»"
▻https://mobile.twitter.com/DeanBaker13/status/941675950571446272
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Chomsky : pour 40% de la population américaine, le réchauffement climatique n’est pas un problème, puisque de toute façon le Christ sera de retour dans quelques décennies… (je note cette remarque presque amusante, mais ce n’est qu’un détail parmi d’autres longues considérations.)
Trump in the White House : An Interview With Noam Chomsky
▻http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/38360-trump-in-the-white-house-an-interview-with-noam-chomskyAccording to current information, Trump broke all records in the support he received from white voters, working class and lower middle class, particularly in the $50,000 to $90,000 income range, rural and suburban, primarily those without college education. These groups share the anger throughout the West at the centrist establishment, revealed as well in the unanticipated Brexit vote and the collapse of centrist parties in continental Europe. [Many of] the angry and disaffected are victims of the neoliberal policies of the past generation, the policies described in congressional testimony by Fed chair Alan Greenspan — “St. Alan,” as he was called reverentially by the economics profession and other admirers until the miraculous economy he was supervising crashed in 2007-2008, threatening to bring the whole world economy down with it. As Greenspan explained during his glory days, his successes in economic management were based substantially on “growing worker insecurity.” Intimidated working people would not ask for higher wages, benefits and security, but would be satisfied with the stagnating wages and reduced benefits that signal a healthy economy by neoliberal standards.
Working people, who have been the subjects of these experiments in economic theory, are not particularly happy about the outcome. They are not, for example, overjoyed at the fact that in 2007, at the peak of the neoliberal miracle, real wages for nonsupervisory workers were lower than they had been years earlier, or that real wages for male workers are about at 1960s levels while spectacular gains have gone to the pockets of a very few at the top, disproportionately a fraction of 1%. Not the result of market forces, achievement or merit, but rather of definite policy decisions, matters reviewed carefully by economist Dean Baker in recently published work.
The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the ’50s and ’60s, the minimum wage — which sets a floor for other wages — tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it is considered a political revolution to raise it to $15.
With all the talk of near-full employment today, labor force participation remains below the earlier norm. And for working people, there is a great difference between a steady job in manufacturing with union wages and benefits, as in earlier years, and a temporary job with little security in some service profession. Apart from wages, benefits and security, there is a loss of dignity, of hope for the future, of a sense that this is a world in which I belong and play a worthwhile role.
[…]
There are other factors in Trump’s success. Comparative studies show that doctrines of white supremacy have had an even more powerful grip on American culture than in South Africa, and it’s no secret that the white population is declining. In a decade or two, whites are projected to be a minority of the work force, and not too much later, a minority of the population. The traditional conservative culture is also perceived as under attack by the successes of identity politics, regarded as the province of elites who have only contempt for the ’’hard-working, patriotic, church-going [white] Americans with real family values’’ who see their familiar country as disappearing before their eyes.
One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades. About the same percentage believe that the world was created a few thousand years ago. If science conflicts with the Bible, so much the worse for science. It would be hard to find an analogue in other societies.
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By the year 2050, 41% of Americans believe that Jesus Christ definitely (23%) or probably (18%) will have returned to earth.
▻http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/jesus-christs-return-to-earth
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Je ne peux m’empêcher
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Corporate Inequality Is the Defining Fact of Business Today
▻https://hbr.org/2016/05/corporate-inequality-is-the-defining-fact-of-business-todayDean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has suggested that patents and copyright law are skewing corporate returns, a possibility Criscuolo mentioned to me as well.
“One problem with American capitalism has been overlooked: a corrosive lack of #competition,” wrote The Economist in March, summing up these concerns. “America is meant to be a temple of free enterprise. It isn’t.”
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Patent Monopolies and the Costs of Mismarketing Drugs
By Ravi Katari and Dean Baker*
▻http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/mismarketing-drugs-2015-04.pdf -
La techno n’a pas tué les emplois de la classe moyenne, c’est la politique publique qui l’a fait - TheGuardian.com
▻http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/25/technology-middle-class-jobs-policyPour Dean Baker, l’opinion veut que la hausse des inégalités aux Etats-Unis soit un effet secondaire malheureux du progrès technologique qui aurait éliminer des dizaines de millions d’emplois de la classe moyenne. Un moyen bien commode pour se dédouaner et en appeler à l’éducation pour améliorer les compétences de ceux qui ont perdu leur #emploi. Mais les données ne donnent pas raison à cette fable. Depuis 2000, la hausse de l’emploi a surtout eut lieu dans les professions à bas salaires. Pour Dean Baker, la technologie n’est pas responsable de cette transformation, mais il faut plutôt la chercher dans la dérèglementation qui a favorisé les baisses de salaire des plus nombreux et les hausses de ceux qui sont au sommet de l’échelle, l’affaiblissement des syndicats, la concurrence internationale... (...)
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Course aux brevets, prime au gâchis, par Dean Baker (#2012/08 en accès libre)
▻http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2012/08/BAKER/48031Victoire aigre-douce pour la société Samsung dans le conflit juridique qui l’oppose à Apple : la justice britannique a estimé que sa tablette ne plagiait pas celle de la marque à la pomme puisqu’elle n’était pas « aussi cool ». La guerre des #brevets se poursuivra néanmoins, absorbant des millions de dollars au prétexte de protéger l’#innovation. Mais n’existerait-il pas d’autres moyens de stimuler l’invention de choses utiles ?
#Patents #Santé #Internet #Économie #Entreprise #Technologie #Industrie_pharmaceutique #Propriété_industrielle #Propriété_intellectuelle #Technologies_de_l’information #États-Unis
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Too-Big-to-Fail Banks Limit Prosecutor Options, Holder Says - Bloomberg
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-06/too-big-to-fail-banks-limit-prosecutor-options-holder-testifies.htmlThe size of the largest financial institutions has made it difficult for the U.S. Justice Department to bring criminal charges when there’s wrongdoing, Attorney General Eric Holder said.
Criminal charges against a bank — something that could threaten its existence — may also endanger the national or global economies in the case of the largest ones, because of their size and interconnectedness. That has “made it difficult for us to prosecute” some of those institutions, Holder said today at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Dean Baker: Big Bank Immunity: When Do We Crack Down on Wall Street?
▻http://www.cepr.net/index.php/op-eds-&-columns/op-eds-&-columns/big-bank-immunity-when-do-we-crack-down-on-wall-streetFirst off, we should not assume that just because the Justice Department says it is concerned about financial instability that this is the real reason that they are not prosecuting a big bank. There is precedent for being less than honest about such issues.
When Enron was about to collapse in 2002 as its illegal dealings became public, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who was at the time a top Citigroup executive, called a former aide at Treasury. He asked him to intervene with the bond rating agencies to get them to delay downgrading Enron’s debt. Citigroup owned several hundred million dollars in Enron debt at the time. If Rubin had gotten this delay Citigroup would have been able to dump much of this debt on suckers before the price collapsed.
The Treasury official refused. When the matter became public, Robert Rubin claimed that he was concerned about instability in financial markets.
It is entirely possible that the reluctance to prosecute big banks represents the same sort of fear of financial instability as motivated Robert Rubin. In other words, it is a pretext that the Justice Department is using to justify its failure to prosecute powerful friends on Wall Street. In Washington this possibility can never be ruled out.
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Les banquiers de la banque centrale européenne sont des cancres incompétents. Ils sont heureusement rééduqués...
Protest Movements Teach Economics to Bankers
►http://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/the-world-economic-crisis/general-analysis-2/50549-protest-movements-teach-economics-to-bankers-.html?itemid=id#130
Protest Movements Teach Economics to Bankers
( World Economic Crisis)In this Op-Ed piece, Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), criticizes the European Central Bank’s (ECB) fixation on maintaining low levels of inflation. According to Baker, the ECB’s anti-inflationary measures exacerbate the problems that countries, such as Portugal and Greece, are currently facing, by making it harder for them to service their debt and tackle high levels of unemployment. The author argues that Southern Europe’s popular movements should use their newly gained political leverage to “teach the ECB crew some basic economics” while pushing them to adopt alternative measures that allow for fairer, less painful and yet economically sound reforms.
