Most of the coverage regarding the Eurozone crisis has understandably focused on the politics of austerity. Less attention, however, has been paid to the longer term trends in the industrial relations of those countries hardest hit by the crisis: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain; the so-called PIIGS countries. Recent
Continue readingTag: capitalism
Joe Fantauzzi: Open Letter To Council Requesting Affirmation Of Toronto As A Sanctuary City
Dear Deputy Mayor, Councillors and city staff. My name is Joe Fantauzzi. I’m a resident of Toronto and first generation Canadian. My family immigrated to this country from Italy in 1957, fleeing a region of that nation torn by the Second World War. My family was lucky. Low-skilled urban labour was
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Open Letter To Council Requesting Affirmation Of Toronto As A Sanctuary City
Dear Deputy Mayor, Councillors and city staff. My name is Joe Fantauzzi. I’m a resident of Toronto and first generation Canadian. My family immigrated to this country from Italy in 1957, fleeing a region of that nation torn by the Second World War. My family was lucky. Low-skilled urban labour was
Continue readingMark Carney on capitalism eating its children
Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, formerly Governor of the Bank of Canada, isn’t exactly your average leftie. Indeed, bank governors tend to turn up on the opposite end of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, Mr. Carney, at a speech last week to the Conference for Inclusive Capitalism, sounded
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Greenwashing Capitalism – Doomed to Fail
This is what we get for not changing the system that is killing us – a half-assed, piecemeal romp toward oblivion. “Richard Smith, in a tour de force paper published in the Real-World Economics Review, “Green capitalism: the god that failed,” summed up the dilemma: “[T]he problem is not just
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Savage capitalism is back – and it will not tame itself | David Graeber | Comment is free | The Guardian
Savage capitalism is back – and it will not tame itself | David Graeber | Comment is free | The Guardian. Occupy Wall Street protesters in New York’s Times Square. ‘A miserly 1% are presiding over a social order marked by increasing social, economic and even technological stagnation.’ Photograph: Mario
Continue readingDead Wild Roses: Turkish Canaries – Capitalism Doing What it Does Best
The general capitalist framework sets up people and resources for exploitation. Without a strong social democratic counterweight to capitalist exploitation we necessarily get the tragic results as exemplified by the mine disaster in Soma, Turkey. “Turkish police are investigating 18 people, including mining company executives and personnel, as part of
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Not Trickledown But Gush-Up
“Trickledown hadn’t worked. But Gush-Up certainly has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2 billion, India’s one hundred richest people own assets equivalent to one fourth of the GDP.” [Yesterday’s election results only promise to worsen that.] That’s how the extrordinary writer-and-activist Arundhati Roy, one of the world’s leading public
Continue readingParchment in the Fire: Hundreds of protesters arrested in Brussels as business leaders debate ‘maintaining citizen’s trust’ | EurActiv
Hundreds of protesters arrested in Brussels as business leaders debate ‘maintaining citizen’s trust’ | EurActiv. Filed under: Capitalism, Democracy, Europe Tagged: Eurozone, TTIP
Continue readingStudents instruct teachers to bring economics into the real world
Following the Second World War, Western nations embarked on securing the welfare state as a balance to the capitalist market economy, the result of which was the most prosperous and equitable societies ever known. The most influential economist through this period was Britain’s John Maynard Keynes with his prescription of
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: Corporatism, capitalism and real alternatives: On the power to choose our destiny
Corporatism is simply a more virulent form of capitalism – or a late stage of capitalism: it is what happens when capitalism is left unchecked, to run its own course. First comes the tendency towards ever-increasing concentrations of money, resources and economic power under a capitalist economy, as Marx rightly
Continue readingMelissa Fong: How to ABUSE Canadian Citizenship: Blame Temporary Foreign Workers for problems of a global Capitalist Economy
How to ABUSE Canadian Citizenship: Blame Temporary Foreign Workers for problems of a global Capitalist Economy: Once again, the media uses the wrong gaze to look at a program that does […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Why France’s Economic Problems Matter
I’ve had the good fortune to live in France for the past 10 months on a year-long sabbatical and therefore been able to witness firsthand the travails of the Socialist government as it wrestles with the country’s economic woes. Indeed, the unpopularity of president Francois Hollande was exposed a couple
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Ontario’s neoliberalism: Coercive, Intense
Do you ever wonder why policing budgets rise in Ontario when the crime rate falls? At Illuminated By Street Lamps, I argue Ontario has been, and remains, among the jurisdictions at the forefront of a business-friendly neoliberal agenda in Canada, despite rising structural unemployment, major challenges in the core manufacturing sector
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Ontario’s neoliberalism: Coercive, Intense
Do you ever wonder why policing budgets rise in Ontario when the crime rate falls? At Illuminated By Street Lamps, I argue Ontario has been, and remains, among the jurisdictions at the forefront of a business-friendly neoliberal agenda in Canada, despite rising structural unemployment, major challenges in the core manufacturing sector
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Whose efficiency? what efficiency?
Efficiency is formidable. It rears its head most everywhere. Witness the tyranny of the target at more and more workplaces: from more greets per hour to more exam points per teacher. At the same time, efficiency also nurtures increasing tyrannies at home: get fit in 12 minutes per day instead
Continue readingMore to Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations than meets the neoliberal eye
When we think of Adam Smith, the great Scottish philosopher and economist, and his seminal book The Wealth of Nations, we are inclined to think of free markets, individual self-interest, and the invisible hand. However, reading another good book recently, How Markets Fail by John Cassidy, I was reminded there
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Toronto’s G20 Summit As A State of Exception
At Illuminated By Streets Lamps, I have posted a paper I have written on the security apparatus put in place for the 2010 Toronto G20 Summit. I argue that the Province of Ontario employed a coercive, secretive state of exception in order to facilitate the flow of international capital during the Toronto
Continue readingJoe Fantauzzi: Toronto’s G20 Summit As A State of Exception
At Illuminated By Streets Lamps, I have posted a paper I have written on the security apparatus put in place for the 2010 Toronto G20 Summit. I argue that the Province of Ontario employed a coercive, secretive state of exception in order to facilitate the flow of international capital during the Toronto
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