Business and economics

Bringing Back the WPA

The New Republic, March 15, 1975

PEOPLE HAVE two main complaints about jobs these days: there aren’t enough of them, and most of those that do exist are pretty unsatisfying.

View full article...

Beyond Antitrust

The New Republic, July 6,1974

ANTITRUST is a criminologist’s approach to economics: it seeks to punish unwanted behavior.  In addition to that, we need public competitors to giant corporations.

View full article...

Lamenting the Rent

The New Republic, April 13, 1974

LIKE SOME 25 MILLION Americans, I pay monthly tribute to an absen­tee landlord for the privilege of having a roof over my head.  A good-sized portion of that is profit for banks, insurance companies, real estate agents and present and past landlords.  Why?

View full article...

The Case for a Tax on Wealth

Business and Society Review, Winter 1974

WEALTHY PERSONS in America enjoy secu­rity, privilege, power, and freedom from demeaning chores.  Some of these benefits derive from wealth itself, others from its unequal distribution.  It is the latter that are properly the concern of the non-wealthy.

View full article...

TVA After 40 Years

The New Republic, November 10,1973

WHEN THE TENNESSEE Valley Authority was created by Congress in 1933, it was conceived of not only as an effort to revitalize an impoverished region, but also as an experiment in public enterprise.  Forty years later the returns on TVA are pretty much in.

View full article...

Socialist Experiment In Canada

The New Republic, October 13, 1973

THREE of the four provinces in western Canada — Man­itoba, Sas­katchewan and British Columbia — are gov­erned by socialist parties.  With the over­throw of Salvador Allende in Chile, these are now the only democratic socialist governments in the Western Hemisphere.

View full article...

Review of “The New Populism” by Fred Harris

The New Republic, September 8, 1973

BOOKS BY POLITICIANS tend to be boring, staff-produced efforts designed to dis­play The Boss as a thoughtful public servant.  What sets Fred Harris’ apart is his unique angle of vision.  He is the only major politician who says publicly and indeed vo­ciferously that American capitalism is a shuck.

View full article...

Elites and Alternatives

The New Republic, March 31, 1973

Our economy is controlled by an extremely small, largely unaccountable set of elites operating on behalf of a wealth-owning minority.  To alter this pattern of own­er­ship and control is politically unfeasible at the moment, but so are many things until enough people decide they want them.

View full article...

The Berkeley Co-op: Democratic, Up to a Point

The New Republic, December 1, 1972

THE FIRST thing that strikes a shopper entering a Co‑op supermarket is a feeling that the store is on his side.  But cooperatives, like small farms and many other forms of independent busi­ness, have fallen vic­tim to the mid-century dictum of expand or die.

View full article...