Portside

Seymour Melman believed that both political and economic decline could be reversed by vastly scaling back the U.S. military budget which represented a gigantic opportunity cost to the national economy. He believed in a a revolution in thinking and acting centered on the reorganization of economic life and the nation’s security system.  The core alternative to economic decline was the democratic organization of workplaces.

A universal basic income would shore up the market. We need ideas that shrink it.

The way major U.S. companies provide for retiring workers has been shifting for about three decades, with more dropping traditional pensions every year. The first full generation of workers to retire since this turn offers a sobering preview of a labor force more and more dependent on their own savings for retirement.

Erica was a rare person whose honesty far outweighed her self-interest. In a life full of tragedy, she died too soon.

The democratically-elected president and parliament (let alone the media and ordinary citizens) have no prayer of checking the powers of the Supreme Leader. As a result, the system has remained opaque, blind to its own flaws, resistant to growth and incapable of adaptation to its evolving internal and external environments. These uprisings express the frustration of the people with that obdurate rigidity.

Christian Picciolini on his new book, "White American Youth: My Descent into America’s Most Violent Hate Movement—and How I Got Out."

The dominant role played by U.S. corporations in the international arms trade owes a great deal to the efforts of U.S. government officials. “Significant parts of the government,” notes military analyst William Hartung, “are intent on ensuring that American arms will flood the global market and companies like Lockheed and Boeing will live the good life.

Year-end lists; Bluegrass at the end of the world; Bass action

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force." The German Ideology, Karl Marx

Just cause — a legal right to your job — should be an essential part of any package of reforms to restore workplace dignity and fairness.