Portside

Economists have seriously failed the public in important areas over the last three decades. And these failures played a role in fostering the upward redistribution of income over the last four decades. People have a right to be angry.

Donald Trump is doing everything he can to convince the world that, under his leadership, the United States is an unreliable trading partner.

As a major proponent of global warming, Trump apparently thinks it benefits him to be perceived as a savior of jobs in the coal industry, not because he can do much to protect coal jobs, but it allows him to appear to be supporting workers.

Since President Biden took office, the media have run a constant stream of news stories about how high various prices were and telling their audiences that this has led to mass suffering.

The whole subsidy to retiree story is a diversion from the many important issues facing the country. Even the core idea, that we don’t adequately support the young because we give too much to the elderly is wrong.

One recent media report is emblematic of the kinds of errors the press makes when it sees a chance to put pressure on a Black progressive mayor.

The moral of the story is that there is nothing about AI technology that should lead to mass unemployment and inequality. If those are outcomes, it will be the result of how we structured the rules, not the technology itself.

Should China should be terrified that its population is now falling, as all our leading news outlets are telling us?

Fortunately, there are some ideas for challenging the control the rich have over the media. We are not going to be able to prevent the rich from buying media outlets. Instead, we will have to go the other way and allow the non-rich to have a voice.

Policies that give more money to people at the top are inflationary. If we want to help the working class we have to pursue policies that reverse upward redistribution, not promise the return of manufacturing jobs that no longer offer a wage premium.