In his account of the turbulent decade of the 1960s, in which New York City dealt with endemic corruption, racism and economic distress, English begins by telling us “(u)ntold thousands, perhaps millions, have fallen prey to the perils of municipal dysfunction, to the growing pains of a city forced to adjust to violent demographic shifts, […]
At the end of the 19th century, Werner Sombart (1976 [1906]) asked what has frequently become a repeated question: why is there no socialism in the USA? At the time, Europe’s workers were constantly organizing and pushing for greater participation and a share of the economic benefits of the Industrial Revolution, joining unions and forming […]
The November 2010 election in the USA resulted in a wave of conservative candidates winning in local and national contests, and taking office in January 2011. Most analysts argued that this election result was due to a combination of typically small voter turnout for by-elections, a strong turnout by zealous advocates of the now well known […]
It would seem that 2011 is going to be a pivotal year. Conservative Republicans, many under the banner of the Tea Party, have captured the US House of Representatives and promise to correct the course this country has taken. Echoing the actions of the coalition government in the UK, these members of Congress announced an […]
We live in truly bizarre times. In the midst of what everyone routinely refers to as a major economic crisis, with the unemployment rate hovering near 10 percent and ever more people leave the ranks of the unemployed discouraged and resigned to never finding another job, and when fis- cal austerity is the word of […]
The last century ended in a decade of relative prosperity, a generally strong economy, and the ability of the working classes (indeed most people) to mask the fact that real wages had remained more or less stagnant for almost 30 years through access to seemingly unlimited credit sustaining ever growing levels of consumption. Consumption is […]
We are inundated almost daily with word that the economy remains sluggish, that we may be in for a double dip recession, that there is a worry about a deflation, that the economy is barely limping along, that unemployment rates will remain high, that unemployed workers over 55 may never find a job that pays […]
Government: the office, authority or function of governing. Governing: having control or rule over oneself. Governance: the activity of governing. Accordingly, governance is a set of decisions and processes made to reflect social expectations through the manage- ment or leadership of the government (by extension, under liberal democratic ideals, the will of ‘the people’ as […]
We often forget how fast things change; for example, my father was born at a time when a wagon ride to the major city center 50 miles away took half a day and by the time he died almost a century later he could travel across a major ocean and traverse a continent in the […]
In his farewell address on January 17, 1961 outgoing President Eisenhower coined the now well worn phrase “military industrial complex” in his warning that there is a danger in the confluence of the government’s military establishment and a growing industrial based serving those interests. Specifically, he cautioned that “(i)n the councils of govern- ment, we […]