Archive for the 'Economy' Category

Oil’s Dirty Not-So-Little Secret: Why Electric Cars, Bicycles and High-Speed Rail Are Better and Cheaper

by Editors @ Saturday, August 14th, 2010. Filed under Economy, Environment

Gas Is Really Costing Us About $15 a Gallon

 

Calculating the true cost of

living in a country built on oil

 

By Mark Engler

TomDispatch.com

August 13, 2010  |  

This might be an opportune time to make a disclosure: I am a BP shareholder. Admittedly, I’ve never attended the company’s annual meeting, and if I did, I would have very little weight to throw around.

I own two shares of BP stock. I received my stake in the company as a Christmas gift in 1989, when I was 14 years old. The previous June, I had taken a "summer enrichment" course in the Des Moines public schools, designed as an introduction to the world of business. The teacher gave each of us in the class a modest hypothetical budget to invest in the stock market.

Earnest young capitalists, we made our picks and then followed the quotes in the morning paper. I invested heavily in Amoco and finished the summer feeling that my portfolio had done quite well. As a result, my younger brother decided that I should receive a real piece of the enterprise that was once John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. He conspired with my mom to get me an Amoco share for the holidays.

I’ve watched the oil industry as an interested party ever since. In 1998, my Amoco stock split, turning my one share into two. Then, a few months later, the company was acquired by BP. This "oil mega-merger," as the BBC called it, gave me a stake in yet another energy titan. It also allowed the combined corporation to shed 6,000 jobs, prompting its new chief executive, Sir John Browne of BP, to confidently assure the press that "he hoped the merger will increase pre-tax profits of the two partners by 'at least' two billion dollars by the end of 2000."

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US Looks Pitiful Next to China on High-Speed Rail

by Editors @ Tuesday, August 10th, 2010. Filed under Economy

China Developing 600 mph

Airless Maglev High-Speed Train

By Andrew Nusca

Aug. 9, 2010

High-speed rail just got a whole lot faster.

China is reportedly developing a high-speed train that will travel at 1,000 kilometers per hour, or approx. 621 miles per hour, through Maglev lines in airless tubes underground.

Researchers at the National Power Traction Laboratory of Southwest Jiaotong University reportedly toldBeijing-based Legal Evening News that they were working on a prototype “vactrain” with an average speed of 500 to 600 kilometers per hour (approx. 311 to 373 miles per hour.)

The researchers say the technology could be in use within a decade. In the meantime, a smaller model train may be introduced in two or three years, they said.

The technology at the heart of the train is Maglev, short for magnetic levitation, technology. A concept that’s been around for more than 100 years, Maglev tech entails the suspension of a train via powerful magnets to remove the friction present at the rails of conventional trains.

The catch with maglev technology is that there’s still friction from the air rushing past the train as it hurtles down the tracks. To date, the fastest Maglev train managed about 361 miles per hour — not much faster than a conventional high-speed train.

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There’s a Lesson Here: Union Workers, New Skills and a Green Energy Future

by Editors @ Sunday, August 8th, 2010. Filed under Economy, Education, Trade Unions

The Power of One: Tracy Hall

Brings Renewable Energy

to Northwest Indiana


By Andrea Buffa
Apollo News Service 

 

July 22, 2010 - Tracy Hall of Munster, Indiana has been an electrician for 30 years. He is among the thousands of construction trades workers hit by the current recession, who have seen unemployment in the trades rise to almost 25 percent nationally. But Hall hasn’t had time to sit around getting depressed about the state of the economy. Instead, he’s spent the time when work has been scarce developing a new expertise. As the only union worker in Indiana who is certified as a solar photovoltaic installer by the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners, and a LEED Accredited Professional by the U.S. Green Building Council, he has become one of Northwest Indiana’s most knowledgeable renewable energy technicians.

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Fast Capital and the City: ‘One Vast Gated Community for the Rich’

by Editors @ Thursday, July 22nd, 2010. Filed under Economy, Environment, Marxism

David Harvey's Urban Manifesto:

Down With Suburbia; Down With

Bloomberg's New York City

 

BY Greg Lindsay

Fast Company, Wed Jul 21, 2010'

via http://solidarityeconomy.net

 

"New York? The whole damn place has been turned into a suburb," sneered David Harvey, startling a roomful of New Yorkers who prided themselves on the same things he derided: the makeover of the city's parks; the new network of bike lanes; the pedestrian malls along Broadway. "The feel of the city is losing its urbanity and being made okay for suburbanites to enjoy Times Square," he continued, going on to condemn New York's gentrification not on aesthetic or nostalgic grounds, but for being at the root of the financial crisis.

Harvey is having a bit of a moment in America, as much as any neo-Marxist economic geographer can. Earlier this month, his lucid explanation of the "econopocalyspe" (accompanied by animated whiteboard doodles) was a modest hit on Boing Boing. Richard Florida borrowed his concept of the "spatial fix"--the idea that capitalism gets bigger and badder every time it's wriggles out of a crisis--for his latest book, The Great Reset. And Harvey's own book-length explanation of the crisis, The Enigma of Capital is set to be published on these shores in September.

On Tuesday night in Manhattan, Harvey made a rare American appearance to discuss "experimental geography" and the role cities and suburbia played in the crisis. Starting from the idea of a "geographic unconscious"--"the way we think of space and time as 'natural' when they're really constructed,"--Harvey blamed suburbia for brainwashing Americans into being good capitalists.

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Cleveland: Linking School Reform with Worker Coops

by Editors @ Monday, July 19th, 2010. Filed under Economy

Cleveland Public School Students

Wow Crowd at Foundation Meeting

 

Margaret Bernstein, The Plain Dealer Margaret Bernstein, The Plain Dealer

john hay grads.jpg

View full sizeMarvin Fong / The Plain Dealer

All the seniors from the Cleveland School of Science and Medicine will attend college.

CLEVELAND, Ohio, June 10 -- Cleveland Foundation leaders enlivened their annual meeting Tuesday at Severance Hall by spotlighting several examples of hope hewn from poverty.

President and Chief Executive Officer Ronald B. Richard said signs of success are sprouting for the 10 "innovation schools" his foundation has helped fund in the Cleveland school district in recent years.

He then wowed the crowd by telling them that 100 percent of seniors at the School of Science and Medicine on the John Hay campus have been accepted to four-year colleges.

The audience of about 600 cheered and some wiped away tears when nine John Hay youths in lab coats trooped on stage to announce, in confident voices, the colleges that accepted them and the scholarship dollars they won.

"Fixing America's failing public school systems is, at present, the single most important mission of our nation, and of our city," Richard said, to enthusiastic applause. "And for the Cleveland Foundation, it's priority No. 1."

He updated attendees on several other foundation projects, including the worker-owned Evergreen Cooperative in University Circle, which has created 38 jobs so far for Cleveland residents, with potential for 500 more.

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In the Barrio: Venezuelan Socialism Meets the Solidarity Economy

by Editors @ Wednesday, July 7th, 2010. Filed under Economy

Venezuela Slum Takes Socialism Beyond Chavez

* Caracas slum a lab for Chavez's socialist project

* Radical groups are key part of president's support

* Opposition sees militants as Chavez's personal army

 

By Esteban Israel

Reuters, July 6, 2010

CARACAS, July 6 (Reuters) - While President Hugo Chavez struggles to revive the battered bolivar, in a hillside slum overlooking his palace, die-hard supporters are talking about getting rid of the Venezuelan currency altogether.

Welcome to the 23 de Enero barrio, home to about 100,000 people and something of a laboratory for Chavez's nationwide socialist experiment. Here you find dogs named "Comrade Mao", and even a "revolutionary car wash."

"We are creating a popular bank and are going to issue a communal currency: little pieces of cardboard," says Salvador Rooselt, a soft-spoken 24-year-old law student and community leader who often quotes Lenin and Marx.

Some 20 militant groups sometimes described as Chavez's "storm troopers" run this urban jungle in western Caracas, where hulking concrete buildings daubed with colorful murals -- one depicting Jesus Christ brandishing an AK-47 rifle -- show off the neighborhood's radical tradition.

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Randy Shannon: The Case for Full Employment

by Editors @ Wednesday, June 9th, 2010. Filed under Economic Democracy, Economy, Labor Movement

It’s Time to Fight

for Full Employment!

The Progressive Path

Out of Our Crisis

A Project of the Labor Committee of CCDS

The Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism

www.cc-ds.org

 

The Struggle for Full Employment:

A Strategy to Defeat the Neoliberal Assault

on the US Working Class

by Randy Shannon

Treasurer, PA 4th CD Chapter,

Progressive Democrats of America

----------------------------------------------------------------

“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;”

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt: State of the Union Address, January 11, 1944

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.”

- United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948

I. Introduction

The “Great Recession” that began in 2007 has caused the greatest percent of job losses since the Great Depression of 1929. This crisis is the end of an era of unrestrained ‘neo-liberal’ capitalism that became public policy during the Reagan administration. The crisis marks a new level of instability with the growth of a global financial elite that targeted US workers and our trade unions after World War II.

The election of President Obama reflected the growing struggle of America’s progressive majority to reverse the neo-liberal policy of war and austerity that has undermined the social advances established by the New Deal and the United Nations. It also begins a long period of readjustment for capitalism as it responds to multiple crises, struggles to maintain its system of social control, and seeks a new system of profit accumulation.

Serial Crises

During the seven decades since World War II, US workers have faced ten periods during which the economy lost jobs for over twelve months. Each successive recession in employment lasted longer than the previous downturn.

In the above chart, each line represents an employment crisis since World War II. The vertical axis shows the percent of jobs lost each month and the horizontal axis shows the duration of the crisis in months since the last peak in employment. The right end of each line is the point at which employment returned to its former high.

In the crisis of 1990 the economy lost jobs for two and one half years. Then in the 2001 recession, it was four years before job losses ended. Although these last two downturns were prolonged, and the recoveries were weak, job losses at around 2% were not enough to cause widespread protest.

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Shadow Elite: How Global Power Brokers Undermine Democracy

by Editors @ Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010. Filed under Economy, Globalization

Review: Shadow Elite

by Janine Wedel

The New 'Flexian'

Transnational Elites

 

By Ariana Huffington

Huffington Post

My first HuffPost Book Club selection of 2010 is Janine Wedel's Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market. It's a gripping, disquieting book that exposes and explains why it's been so hard to bring about any real change in our country -- why Washington no longer seems capable of addressing the problems our nation faces. Fingers have been pointed at everything from gerrymandering to partisan polarization to the misuse of the filibuster. But, according to Wedel, the real problem is much deeper -- and more disturbing -- than any of these.

As she writes in Shadow Elite, a new "transnational" class of elites has taken over our country: "The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible."

Wedel dubs this new class of influencers "flexians," and the closed system they've created for themselves the "flex net." She attributes their power, among other factors, to the "embrace of 'truthiness,' which allows people to play with how they present themselves to the world, regardless of fact or track record."

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NJ University and Green Tech Firms Go Solar in a Big Way

by Editors @ Friday, February 12th, 2010. Filed under Economy

 

Nautilus Solar Energy and

SunDurance Energy to Build

Solar Power Facility at

William Paterson University

 

WAYNE, N.J., Jan. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- William Paterson University ("WPU"), Nautilus Solar Energy, LLC ("Nautilus Solar") and SunDurance Energy, LLC ("SunDurance") announced today an agreement to build the largest solar energy facility at a university in the United States. The 3.5 MW solar energy project ("Project") will comprise of rooftop and parking lot solar installations on the WPU campus in Wayne, New Jersey. The first 3 MW phase is expected to go on-line during the summer of 2010; the remaining 500 kW is expected to go on-line in early 2011.

"Nautilus Solar is proud to support WPU's leadership in sustainability by supplying low cost clean solar power," said Nautilus Solar CEO James M. Rice.

Nautilus Solar will finance, own and operate the solar facility under a 15-year Power Purchase Agreement ("PPA"), through which WPU will purchase a renewable energy source at a reduced rate without any upfront costs. The solar power system is expected to reduce WPU's energy costs by $4.3 million over the 15-year term. The Project will be designed and constructed by SunDurance Energy, a leading NJ based solar system installer. Nautilus Solar will fund the installation in part through a loan provided by New Jersey Economic Development Authority.

Stephen Bolyai, WPUNJ's Vice President for Administration and Finance, states, "This project will be a landmark project for the University. In addition to reducing our energy costs and carbon footprint, the solar facility will provide excellent learning opportunities to our students."

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Jobs Campaigns, New Deal History, National Service and Socialist Values

by Editors @ Tuesday, December 29th, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Economy, Labor Movement, Organizing, Socialism

A Left Role, Renewed Identity,

and How-To, in Campaigns for

National Service Jobs Programs

 

By John Case

Socialist-Economics Group

 

Does the current crisis justify an expanded role for government as an employer of last result?

Consider the following facts from EPI research:

Number unemployed: 15.4 million (up from 7.5 million in December 2007) Portion of official unemployed considered structural: 3.9 million Portion of unemployed who have been jobless more than six months: 38.3% Total jobs lost during the recession: 8.0 million Jobs needed to return to pre-recession unemployment rate: 10.9 million Number of job-seekers per job opening: 6.1 Unemployment rate: 10.0% Underemployment rate: 17.2%; Share of workers un- or underemployed: more than 1 in 6 States with double-digit unemployment in October, 2009: 15 White unemployment: 9.3%; African-American unemployment: 15.6%; Hispanic unemployment:12.7% Manufacturing jobs lost since the start of the recession: 2.1 million (15.5% of sector's jobs) Construction jobs lost in the recession: 1.6 million (20.8%, nearly one in five construction jobs) Mass layoffs (50 or more people by a single employer) in October 2009: 2,127; jobs lost:217,182 Under- and unemployed, marginally attached and involuntary part-time workers: 26.9 million

Americans with no health insurance in 2008: 46.3 million Annual Social Security benefit for average retiree: $13,922; Share of older Americans receiving all their income from Social Security: more than 1 out of 4 Number of children in poverty in 2008: 14.1 million (over one-third) Drop in real median income from 2007 to 2008: 3.6% (largest one-year drop since 1967) Growth rate of nominal, hourly wages of production workers over the last three months:1.7% Additional people covered by Medicaid/SCHIP in 2008: 3 million

Not since the Great Depression has structural unemployment been so intense or sustained. Despite faster and smarter liquidity and fiscal efforts by government than occurred then, employment decline has merely decelerated 24 months into what is now dubbed 'The Great Recession'. It is not yet near enough to avert 5-10 years of unemployment rates above 6% (the level at which the 'Great Recession' started). The foundation of New Deal anti-depression actions, and one of the most successful and long lasting in its effects, was directly putting men to work in public works projects that became associated with several national service programs. The economist Hyman Minsky coined the term 'Employer of Last Resort' to describe government full employment efforts, which were part of his economic prescription, discussed more below, for countering capitalism's inherent vulnerability to financial instability.

This article explores the appropriateness, precedents and how-to's of national service programs (the chief US version of employer of last resort). in responding to the current crisis. The moral and social virtues of putting the unemployed to work in the creation of useful and meaningful public goods, instead of subjecting them to sustained idleness, should be self-evident.

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Marxism and Keynesianism: Contested Ground of Alliance and Struggle

by Editors @ Sunday, December 27th, 2009. Filed under Economy

Reviving

Keynesianism:

A Critique


By Rick Wolff


The global crisis has undermined the neo-liberalist phase of capitalism that dominated the last 30 years of the world economy.  It has likewise challenged the hegemony of neo-classical economics as the theoretical rationale of neo-liberalism's celebration of private enterprise and markets.  The form this challenge takes is a revival of Keynesian economics.  As the crisis requires states everywhere again to intervene in the "private" economy -- and massively this time -- Keynesian economics provides much of the rationale and many of the prescriptions of what the state should do.

Of course, different interpretations of Keynes (as of Marx) have always contested with one another.  Multiple interpretations emerged because of pressures upon Keynesians from both the left (those who criticized them for "saving" capitalism) and the right (those who attacked them for "threatening" capitalism).  What matters are the stakes among contesting Keynesianisms, the social consequences that flow from the hegemony of one versus another of them.  How are we to understand differences and overlaps between Keynesianisms and Marxisms?  What political alliances might be crafted between some Keynesians and some Marxists?

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Yankee Doodle Ecologist: Tom Friedman and the Green Revolution

by Editors @ Tuesday, December 15th, 2009. Filed under Economy, Environment, High Road Economics, Socialism

Hot, Flat, and Crowded

by Thomas Friedman.

New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.

$27.95. Pp. 438.

 

By Jerry Harris

SolidarityEconomy.Net

Thomas Friedman is always the head cheerleader for the next big thing. At first it was globalization and now it’s the green revolution. Friedman’s instincts are good, it’s just his analysis and politics are lacking. There are certainly valuable and interesting insights in his work, but his adolescent enthusiasm for capitalism often turns his critique to shallow propaganda.

The book’s title, Hot, Flat, and Crowded is a good indicator as to how Friedman understands environmental problems. Underline that word crowded because the book takes us on a Malthusian ride through the Third World. It’s overpopulation, not capitalism and its need for every expanding accumulation that is destroying the world’s environment.

Friedman marches us through China, India, Brazil and Nigeria offering a myopic view that only occasional refers to the developed countries and their use of energy and resources. When it comes to energy markets transnationals such as Exxon and Shell disappear as does any discussion of imperialism and its history in the Middle East. Instead Friedman targets “petrodictorships” and “Sheikhs…with bags of cash” indoctrinating madrassa students to “breed like rabbits” and “swarm” over the Islamic world. (p. 88)

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Food for Thought Dept: Tennessee’s New Wave of High-Road Green Jobs

by Editors @ Monday, December 7th, 2009. Filed under Economy, High Road Economics, Organizing

 

Green Tide: State

taking big steps toward

energy-efficient future

 

By Ed Marcum

Sunday, December 6, 2009

A modest zero-energy project has multiplied into a major career change for one-time software developer David Bolt.

The Roane County resident may be on the cutting edge of an industry wave that could mean valuable jobs for an East Tennessee economy hungry for new investment.

Bolt grew interested in sustainability - also known as energy and environmental conservation - as he was renovating his family's 2,400-square-foot home in Harriman. Through various energy savings features, he modified the house to become a "zero energy" home - one that creates as much energy as it consumes.

Then in 2005, Bolt founded Sustainable Future, an online company that does turnkey design and installation of solar energy systems to homes and businesses.

Bolt may be the tip of a trend that area economic developers pray will lead to widespread employment opportunities in the near future.

By many estimates, a wave of green jobs is about to wash over Tennessee. But some observers question whether the swift current will lift all boats.

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A Chicago Public School Studies Mondragon Worker-Owned Coops

by Editors @ Sunday, November 15th, 2009. Filed under Economy

Forget Rio - Austin Kids Headed to Spain


Students to learn self-empowerment

and economic development


Photo: Bon voyage: Good grades and recommendations from teaches landed eight students from Austin Polytechnical Academy, a Chicago public high school, a chance to study in Spain.

 

By LA RISA LYNCH,

Contributing Reporter
October 07, 2009

Good grades and recommendations from teachers garnered eight lucky Austin Polytechnical Academy students a chance to study abroad. And the country of choice is where Nikki Green, 16, has dreamed about going ever since she was little.

"I always wanted to go to Spain," said Green, a junior at the academy.

Her aunt often traveled to Spain and would bring back mementos from the places she visited. Green hoped her group's nine-day trip would include a stop in Barcelona. But she will have to settle for Madrid instead.

"I'm excited," she said. "I can't wait."

Students embark on their journey today.

The trip to Spain is not your usual study abroad program. The kids will have a chance to learn the Spanish language and explore the country's history and culture while touring Madrid, Segovia and Toledo. But they will also look at how creating jobs in manufacturing revitalized one small Spanish town nearly devastated by civil war.

Students will spend five days in Madrid and then four in Mondragon, located in the Basque region in northern Spain. They'll stay in a local university dormitory while visiting a manufacturing cooperative that contributes to much of Spain's economy. The area of Mondragon is an allegory for the Austin community, said Erica Swinney-Stein, director of community programs at Center for Labor and Community Research, which is sponsoring the trip.

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Targeting the Main Enemy: Low-Road Finance Capital

by Editors @ Tuesday, October 13th, 2009. Filed under Economic Democracy, Economy, Financial Crisis

 The Dominance of the Financial

Sector has Become a Mortal Danger

to our Economic Security

 

 

By Robert Creamer
Huffington Post

Over the last several decades, the financial sector has grown relentlessly. It has doubled in size over the last 14 years. During the period 1973 to 1985 the financial sector never earned more than 16% of domestic profits. This decade, it has averaged 41% of all the profits earned by businesses in the U.S. In 1947 the financial sector represented only 2.5% of our gross domestic product. In 2006 it had risen to 8%. In other words, of every 12.5 dollars earned in the United States, one goes to the financial sector, much of which, let us recall, produces nothing.

That growth has not been among community or regional banks -- or credit unions. I'm talking about Wall Street.

Wall Street's growth is one big reason that most of America's economic growth during the last decade has flowed into the hands of investment bankers, stock traders and partners in firms like Goldman Sachs. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that fully two-thirds of all income gains during the last economic expansion (2002 to 2007) flowed to the top 1% of the population. And that, in turn, is one of the chief reasons why the median income for ordinary Americans actually dropped by $2,197 per year since 2000.

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