Walkabout

Students in Britain have, once again, walked out to protest tuition fees. The third and most peaceful mass protests against the government’s higher education plans took place today as thousands of students took to the streets despite the freezing weather. Large demonstrations took place in Brighton, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford and London, and there [...]

While on the road. . .

I finished reading Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets, an extraordinary ethnography of life and economy in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Home projects. Venkatesh is refreshingly candid about every aspect of his study, from how the crack economy works (for some but not for many others) and how [...]

Political economy of crisis

Slavoj Žižek explores what the idea of political economy means in terms of understanding the current crises: One thing is clear: after decades of the welfare state, when cutbacks were relatively limited and came with the promise that things would soon return to normal, we are now entering a period in which a kind of [...]

Public art of the day

Dublin [source]  

Cartoon of the day

Taming Ireland—for the banks

Simon Johnson clearly explains the magnitude of Ireland’s debt crisis and the measures that are being adopted to save the country from default. They’re not touching the corporate tax rate. They’re not restructuring most of the debt. Neither is part of the anti-crisis policy mix. Why? The most obvious answer is: Ireland’s European partners do [...]

Explaining corporate profits

Why are businesses so cranky when their profits have rebounded and they’re setting new records? That’s the question posed by Justin Fox, who does some useful empirical work to try to make sense of secular shifts in the profit share. Here’s what he discovers: The fact is, the third-quarter 2010 profit share, at 9.46 percent, [...]

A day in the life

On my way to Oz, I cease to exist for a day. But, before that happens, I get to enjoy a day of full-body scans and enhanced pat-downs. . .

Happy Thanksgiving

“Are you unemployed?”