Protest of the day

The graffiti behind the youngster reads: “30 years of humiliation and poverty.” source

Heart of solidarity

The other day, I criticized the dark side of the freedom Edward Glaeser sees as the moral heart of economics. Nancy Folbre has developed a different but not unrelated critique, based on the ideas of social responsibility and solidarity. Long before Karl Marx invented the term “class struggle,” socialist ideals grew out of family values [...]

Criticizing behavioral economics

Apparently, behavioral economics has come under attack. Tim Hartford discusses some of the criticisms of behavioral economics that are beginning to appear, for example, by the psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer and the economist Nathan Berg. Take the simple act of catching a ball in flight. The spirit of neoclassical economics would say that people act “as [...]

Economic disaster porn

Noreen Malone makes the case against economic disaster porn (such as the photos of Detroit I posted the other day). These indelible pictures present an un-nuanced and static vision of Detroit. They might serve to “raise awareness” of the Rust Belt’s blight, but raising awareness is only useful if it provokes a next step, a [...]

Joke’s on us

Pete Cashmore has collected some of the jokes about bankers that have been making the rounds. Here’s one: A man is stuck in traffic. He asks a police officer about the hold-up and he replies: “The head of the Bank Of England is so depressed about the economy he’s stopped his car and is threatening [...]

Inequality and social health

As the Economist well understood beforehand (here and here), inequality has been a hot topic among the rich and powerful in Davos. Some of them, it seems, are worried about growing inequality causing political and social instability in the countries where they rule. Philip Aldrick reports on some of the remarks: “The increase in inequality [...]

Egypt and neoliberalism

Like many people who are not experts on Egypt but also not satisfied with simplistic references to a Twitter Revolution or the universal desire for democratic reforms in the Arab world, I have been looking for good background material. What is it that is driving the current protests and what might the consequences be? As [...]

The bailouts explained

 

Protest of the day

source  

Class conflict in Egypt

According to Juan Cole, the Mubarak government has lost its legitimacy, at least in part as a result of the changing class structure of the country over the course of the past 30 years. Here are excerpts from his analysis: Revolutionary Arab nationalist leader Gamal Abdel Nasser (d. 1970) conducted extensive land reform, breaking up [...]