Thinking Outside the Box

[This is an online post that I made on December 7, 2011 to the environmental economics class that I teach online at Front Range Community College, in our General Discussion forum, where I post things to keep up my students' interest, outside of the required material. It is a sort of end-of-year sendoff note, meant to encourage my students that what they learned in this introductory course still contains powerful ideas that are currently completely absent from mainstream economics courses, such as those thought by Dr Mankiw....] Hello class, Here is another article that I thought would be of interest, if you have the time.... It is from last Sunday's New York Times editorial pages (Dec 4, 2011), where Prof Gregory Mankiw (pronounced man-queue), who's a frequent contributor, wrote an artilce titles " Know What You're Protesting ." In it, he talks about how some of his students (5-10%) recently staged a walkout on his class, Economics 10, in sympathy with the...

[This is a comment that I made on a guest commentary in the Boulder Daily Camera newspaper on Nov 6, 2011, titled " The Occupy movement and Prop. 103 ", which would have increased sales taxes slightly over the next few years in Colorado to help make up the budget shortfall in funds for public education, but which was defeated 2-1 in the Nov 1 election. I thought the author's analysis rather missed the point, and felt compelled to write this in response.] The entire point of this well deserved commentary is contained in the sentence: "The defeat of Proposition 103 should serve as a clarion call for all of us who believe we need more robust public institutions for our democracy to survive." I agree; but the author's argument contains some serious flaws, resulting in an incorrect analysis of what's wrong. We already have several institutions whose explicit purpose is supposedly to protect our democracy: namely, the US Congress, the US Supreme Court and ...

[This was a comment I posted at slashdot.org today (October 12, 2011) in response to a solicitation about what people thought about the Occupy Wall Street movement. As you can see, I have some pretty strong views on the matter, which I believe are well supported by history! --Rick] I have not read all of the many interesting comments here , but a text search tells me that no one has yet mentioned the issue of corporate personhood; but it deserves mention, because it is the Achilles heel in the legal armor that corporations have used to rise to prominence in our economy -- and deserves to become a more prominent part of the hue and cry at OWS events. (I've seen it as part of their demands, but not very prominently.) This singular fact is well known to some in the progressive activist community -- Thom Hartmann, Amy Goodman, Dennis Kucinich, Chris Hedges, Van Jones, to name a few -- but not to the mainstream media, much less the American public. The main activity center trying to...

[For those not aware, the steady deregulation of the financial industry since the 1980's basically gave the big banks and associated industries (insurance, credit rating, etc) the freedom to do whatever the hell they want, which pushed us back into the situation of the 1920's, where there was zero regulation of anything financial -- ie, recreating conditions that led to the Great Crash of 1929 due to a huge asset bubble (that time in stock prices, this time in housing prices), and inducing the Great Depression...which we only narrowly averted reenacting in 2008, and are still experiencing. A big area of interest in how to restructure the financial industry landscape is state banks, in which we have a living, breathing example in North Dakota. A great article was recently published on this very topic, and I have taken the liberty of reproducing the key excerpts from it...which I hope convey its vital essential message that this is a HUGELY GOOD IDEA to put our support behind. --...

[This was a reply I made on August 27, 2011 to a question poised on the steadystaters@googlegroups.com listserv. It mainly points out how raising awareness among the general public is the underlying action that needs to happen -- which can be thought of a lifelong service to a noble goal.] Sharon, To reply to your questions, please see my responses below: is there something else that needs to happen besides abolishing the right of corporations to be treated as 'people'? I think what needs to happen is raising awareness and education among the general public which amounts to consciousness raising about the issue of corporate personhood and why we must change it. This will not happen quickly, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of activist organizations all over the world working hard on this goal. Have you heard of Bioneers and wiserearth.org , started by Paul Hawken ? They are certainly in the vanguard but unfortunately the mainstream media does not quite ...