Sorry folks, this isn’t Trump University, I don’t have the plan for you to get rich quick. But it is important for everyone to understand exactly why Bill Gates is very rich. It’s called “copyright protection.”
Outstanding student loan debt in the United States reached a record US$1.35 trillion in March, up six percent from a year earlier.
When I first served in Brazil in the mid-1960s as a young American diplomat stationed at a small consulate in Belem on the mouth of the Amazon River, the country was in its second year of a 20-year military regime.
Across the world, the current generation of youth has been remarkably active in mobilizing against inequality. From the Arab Spring and the global Occupy movement to many political campaigns across the world, young people are often at the forefront of the fight.
There is a well-documented “digital divide” between rural and urban areas when it comes to broadband access. As of 2015, 74 percent of households in urban areas of the U.S. had residential broadband connections, compared with only 64 percent of rural households. This gap has persisted over time.
According to many economists, the economy is at or near its full employment level of output; see, for example, the San Francisco Federal Reserve President’s recent comments.
Pico Rivera is a dusty working-class Latino suburb of Los Angeles. After the school district, Wal-Mart is the city’s largest employer and the source of 10 percent of its tax revenue. More than 500 families in the town depend on income from the store.
You often hear inequality has widened because globalization and technological change have made most people less competitive, while making the best educated more competitive. There’s some truth to this. The tasks most people used to do can now be done more cheaply by lower-paid workers abroad or by computer-driven machines.
- By Dean Baker
The United States International Trade Commission (USITC) recently came out with projections on the economic effects of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The USITC’s report is the third major study on the TPP from the past two years.
Disgruntled Icelanders recently forced their prime minister to quit, and are threatening to hand power to self-styled pirates at an early election. But whereas other European voters are culling traditional parties out of weakness, Reykjavik’s are rebelling out of strength.
Companies could improve their profits by 2-10% each year by saving energy. That’s just one of the findings of ClimateWorks Australia’s Energy Productivity Index, a world-first attempt to assess companies' energy performance and help investors make better decisions.
Reproductive health isn’t just about abortions, despite all the attention they get. It’s also about access to family planning services, contraception, sex education and much else.
Faced by falling oil prices and plunging profits, big oil companies are investing in renewables and clean energy, but still focussing on fossil fuels.
- By Dean Baker
The Federal Reserve Board's Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided not to raise interest rates at its meeting last week. However, the FOMC also made clear that a rate hike was still an option for its June meeting.
Marketers are supposed to be inventive folk – and attempting to interpret their thinking can sometimes invite a descent into the futility of literary criticism.
One key goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to lower health care costs by giving consumers more choice over their insurer. Economic theory suggests that when consumers make informed and active choices in a competitive market, companies respond by lowering prices and improving the quality of their offerings.
Recent debates about China have focused on its role in the gradual eastward shift in the global economy. This process was accentuated by the financial crisis of 2007-08 and ensuing recession in the West.
A new study by the Pew Research Center spurred a rash of headlines last week about “the dying middle class.” But the word “dying” might be more appropriate if we were watching the regrettable but inevitable effects of natural forces at work.
“How do we grow the economy?” is an obsolete question. Local initiatives across the world are looking for maturity instead as they rebuild caring, place-based communities and economies.
Many people might think that Donald Trump can only teach the country how to offend women, African Americans and a range of non-European ethnic groups. While that may be his area of expertise, it seems that his rants on dealing with debt may actually provide a teachable moment. As a result, the country, and possibly even the policy elites, may get a better understanding of when and how debt can pose a problem.
Any election demands knowledge, attention and wisdom from the whole electorate. When a campaign season does not seem to be going well, there’s often angst about whether the public has been sufficiently educated.
The 4th Largest Economy In The World Just Generated 90 Percent Of The Power It Needs From Renewables
On Sunday, for a brief, shining moment, renewable power output in Germany reached 90 percent of the country’s total electricity demand.
Losing jobs to technology is nothing new. Since the industrial revolution, roles that were once exclusively performed by humans have been slowly but steadily replaced by some form of automated machinery.