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EconAtrocities/EconUtopias
Posted by CPE Website Admin on April 9th, 2013
by Anastasia Wilson
Think capitalism isn’t working? Several Massachusetts businesses agree and are doing something about it.
Real Pickles, Green River Ambrosia, and Katalyst Kombucha are fermenters of all kinds in Western Massachusetts, The Just Crust in Cambridge rises up by baking pizzas, and all of these businesses have transitioned into worker-owned cooperatives within the last few months.
A capitalist firm typically has a hierarchal structure of owners, bosses, and workers, with those on top [...] read more >
Posted in EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Economic Democracy, Social/Solidarity Economy | 1 Comment »
Posted by emilykawano on November 10th, 2009
In a remarkable and historic move, the United Steel Workers union (USW) and Mondragon International[1] announced that they would be working together to establish Mondragon manufacturing cooperatives in the U.S. and Canada.[2] The Mondragon Cooperative Corporation (MCC) is the world’s largest industrial workers cooperative, located in the Basque region of Spain. It employs almost 100,000 workers in 260 cooperative enterprises that include manufacturing, a university, research and development, social security mutual, and retail shops. In 2008, MCC [...] read more >
Tags: Imported, Mondragon, Mondragon Cooperative Coorporation, United Steelworkers, USW
Posted in EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Economic Democracy, Globalization, Labor, News, Social/Solidarity Economy | 2 Comments »
Posted by emilykawano on March 17th, 2009
By Patrice Woeppel, Ed.D.
Author of Depraved Indifference: the Workers’ Compensation System
March 16, 2009
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) records 5,488 worker fatalities for 2007, the most recent year for which their data is completed. But the number of worker fatalities recorded by BLS is grossly under-reported.
Worker deaths from toxic exposures, other work illnesses are conservatively estimated by NIOSH and other researchers at 50,00 to 60,000 deaths each year, or ten times the number of fatalities from work injuries.[fn1] [fn2] [...] read more >
Tags: Imported
Posted in EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Healthcare, Labor, News, Politics | 3 Comments »
Posted by emilykawano on January 18th, 2008
By Amit Basole
CPE Staff Economist
Global Charity
In the year 2000, the richest 10 per cent of the world’s population held 85 percent of its total income and wealth. The bottom half owned a mere 1 percent. Such glaring global asymmetries have long justified redistribution of wealth from the “Global North” to the “Global South” in the form of development aid and loans. So much so, that the stock image of a developing country that springs to mind (particularly in sub-Saharan Africa) [...] read more >
Tags: Imported
Posted in EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Globalization, Inequality, News | No Comments »
Posted by emilykawano on July 12th, 2007
[See part one]
Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, CPE Staff Economist
It’s worth remembering that commons already exist, lots of them, in various places and parts of the world’s economies. Most often, however, they are informal arrangements—holdovers from before the rise of modern market capitalism. In general, commons are not recognized formally by governments as a type of property arrangement deserving protection, the way conventional private property is legally protected.
It is this lack of protection that enables the famous “tragedy of the commons.” Barnes [...] read more >
Tags: Imported
Posted in Books, Commons, EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Economic Democracy, News, Political Economy, Social/Solidarity Economy | 1 Comment »
Posted by mash on June 24th, 2007
An important debate in the social health literature is whether more inequality causes worse health. At some later date I’ll post a bibliography, or maybe commenters can help. In any case the list of publications is long, the contributors illustrious, and the findings varied and at odds with each other. Some of the most important papers representing a range of findings include those by Deaton, Deaton and Lubotsky, Mellor and Milyo, Lynch, et al., Kawachi, Subramanian, et [...] read more >
Tags: Imported
Posted in EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Healthcare, History, News | 5 Comments »
Posted by mash on June 23rd, 2007
The 14,500 doctors and 58,000 nurses of this health-care organization serve 7.6 million enrollees, delivering care that outperforms both commericial insurance and Medicare–let alone poor, underfunded Medicaid–on a host of indicators of quality of process and outcome. While Medicare costs increased from $5,000 to $6,800 (36 percent) per patient-year between 1996 and 2004, its costs stayed constant at $5,000 per patient-year. And the patients receiving this high-quality, moderate-cost care are disproportionately poor and disabled.
Is it Kaiser Permanente? [...] read more >
Tags: Imported
Posted in EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Healthcare, News, Politics | No Comments »
Posted by emilykawano on June 20th, 2007
Jonathan Teller-Elsberg, CPE Staff Economist
A few weeks ago, CPE Staff Economist Jerry Friedman wrote an Econ-Atrocity reviewing Bill McKibben’s new book, Deep Economy. Though he says McKibben “has written a clear attack on much of what ails us,” Friedman nonetheless criticizes McKibben for approaching the environmental and social problems of the day from an individualist perspective. For all that McKibben wants to promote and revive “community,” he has the attitude (says Friedman) of a “personal Salvationist . . . [who [...] read more >
Tags: Imported
Posted in Books, Class, Commons, EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Energy, Environment, Inequality, News, Political Economy, Politics, Social/Solidarity Economy | No Comments »
Posted by emilykawano on May 14th, 2007
By Helen Scharber, CPE Staff Economist
Last month, the recall of 60 million cans and pouches of pet food by Menu Foods left Americans concerned and confused. The pet deaths and illnesses that spurred the recall have since been linked to melamine, a chemical added to animal feed in China to boost its reported protein content. Melamine is not digested in the same way as vegetable protein, however, and therefore lacks nutritional value. Why, then, are Fluffy and Fido eating it? [...] read more >
Tags: Imported
Posted in Agriculture/Food, EconAtrocities/EconUtopias, Globalization, News | 2 Comments »
