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Articles by Samir Sonti
Los fundamentos del capitalismo financiero del siglo XXI
Ha sido una semana turbulenta para el mercado de valores. La intención de Donald Trump de remodelar el orden capitalista mundial ha provocado el frenesí de los inversores. ¿Hacia dónde se dirige todo esto? Quién sabe. Pero ante una posible guerra comercial, vale la pena dar un paso atrás y reflexionar sobre la forma que adopta hoy el sistema financiero global. Para empezar: ¿Cuáles son los acontecimientos más importantes en Wall Street en los últimos años?
Understanding the Basics of 21st-Century Finance Capitalism
It has been a tumultuous week for the stock market, as Donald Trump’s quest to reshape the global capitalist order has sent investors into a frenzy. Where is all of this headed? Who knows. But going into a possible trade war, it’s worth stepping back to reflect upon the shape of our financial system. To start: What are the most important developments on Wall Street in recent years?
“One Dedicated, Single-Minded Staff Aide”: John M. Blair and Institutional Keynesianism in Postwar US Economic Policy
In March 2021, President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Lina Khan as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Then a thirty-two-year-old legal scholar, Khan’s reputation as a leader in the field of antitrust policy owed to a provocative study that she had published, while still a student at Yale Law School, on the scope of market control wielded by Amazon.
Labor’s Partisans
Essential Writings on the Union Movement from the 1950s to Today The top American writers on labor provide vital historical context for the current upsurge in union organizing “A remarkable accomplishment . . . an authoritative account.” —The Washington Post on Nelson Lichtenstein’s State of the Union In 1954, the American labor movement reached its historic height, with one-third of all nonagricultural workers belonging to a union—and much higher percentages in the nation’s key industries.
People-Side Economics: Who’s Afraid of the Federal Reserve?
Gloom shrouds the news on the economy. Workers get blamed for inflation and the common solutions on offer bring more pain. But when we center the interests of workers and communities, we get a different picture of the causes and cures for our economic woes. While wage increases can contribute to inflation, they don’t have to. Corporations can absorb higher wages by cutting profits or CEO salaries, for example.
The Democrats Will Probably Lose the Midterms, Because Our Society Is Falling Apart
It’s time to get real about how bad the upcoming US election could be. We are facing a political disaster with implications possibly even worse than the 2016 election. The Democrats have a good chance of losing the midterm elections, badly. The Senate and House races look dire, and even in Democratic-leaning New York State, where I live, we could get a far-right governor. There are a few reasons we could cite for this looming horror.
To Fight Inflation, Jamaal Bowman Says We Need Price Controls
Given Congress’s current composition, it’s unlikely that the Emergency Price Stabilization Act will quickly pass. Nevertheless, both Bowman’s office and the unions and organizations that back the bill see ongoing opportunities to build support for the legislation and for specific pro-worker policies contained within it. The congressman’s office incorporated input from endorsing organizations and economic experts when it drafted the bill.
Who Pays for Inflation? | Samir Sonti & JW Mason
The inflation of the past year has reshaped the political economic landscape in the United States and around the globe. While the IMF and World Bank echo UN calls about the recession risk of globally-synchronized rate hikes, the debate over the causes—and definition—of inflation continues to be unsettled. As does the question of the politics of inflation and its distributional impacts—who benefits and who pays.
Who Pays for Inflation?
Caption: Fred Wright cartoon from the 1970s, updated to reflect increases in corporate profits, prices and wages over the past year. As of mid-2022, it is clear that inflation has become the Biden administration’s greatest liability. Rising prices have undermined what has otherwise been a strong recovery from the depths of the pandemic, as steady nominal wage growth has failed to keep up with elevated costs.
Tracking the Wave of Starbucks Worker Organizing
Venti cappuccino in one hand and a ballot in the other, the Starbucks organizing drive is on a roll.
The Hidden Costs of Being An American Worker
When it comes to buying stuff online, American workers have it made. But when it comes to “mass services” — transportation, housing, education, health insurance, and childcare — American workers are getting fleeced. The “standard of living” seems like a straightforward concept: Take some measure of the typical income. Compare it to some index of consumer prices. The resulting ratio should give you a snapshot of society’s level of material well-being.
Spring Turned to Winter
The widespread popular upheaval known as the “Arab Spring” ended one decade ago this year. Tunisia, whose Jasmine Revolution inspired many other demonstrations in 2011, is the only country to participate that still has an intact democracy. But even Tunisia now slouches back toward authoritarianism. Remove Icon ESC
Has Sinn Féin’s Day Come?
Sinn Féin is now the leading party across Ireland. But its real test will happen in power. The unthinkable has happened: Sinn Féin has established itself as Ireland’s best-supported political party on both sides of the Irish border. In the Northern Ireland Assembly election held on May 7, the party overtook its unionist rival, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), to become the region’s leading political force.
The American Right’s Joan Baez
Small As the folk revival movement swept through the country, helmed by leftist musicians like Joan Baez, the Right equipped its own champion with a guitar: Janet Greene. A former children’s television star, Greene was tapped by Fred Schwarz, founder of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC), to be his anti-Baez in 1964.
Issue 46: Misery Index
Crunching the numbers on the class war.
Europe’s Breadbasket
As war rages in Ukraine, farmers have abandoned their work mid-season to take up arms against Russia. Those who stayed behind are in a race to harvest their crops before stray rockets torch their fields. Together, Ukraine and Russia produce 30% of global traded wheat and 12% of global calories — and 26 countries rely on the duo for food security.
The Faces of Inflation
Inflation isn’t just an economic abstraction. It’s a slow, deadly squeeze on working people. Christopher Saperstein, who works as a utility porter at a luxury New Jersey apartment co-op, needs housing for his family. He and his wife, Luz, can just barely afford the $1,400 they currently pay in rent each month.
Too Many Commas
Children of the Weimar Republic play with devalued banknotes, 1919. Others found use for the worthless marks as wallpaper, craft and kite material, and kindling. In 1923, the Associated Press reported on a new malady sweeping through the Weimar Republic, which was then experiencing extreme hyperinflation, with an estimated 93 quintillion marks in circulation. Berliners were said to be “prostrated by . . .
The Reindustrial Revolution
California representative and Bernie 2020 campaign chair Ro Khanna on building a new economy and winning back workers.
When Italy’s Escalator Ground to a Halt
Postwar Italy’s “escalator” system kept wages ahead of price hikes. In the 1980s, a socialist government brought it grinding to a halt — sending workers’ incomes on a decades-long downward trend. In August 1983, Bettino Craxi became Italy’s first Socialist prime minister — but it didn’t herald a triumph for socialism, or even for his Partito Socialista Italiano.
The Great Replacement Theory Isn’t Going Anywhere
After the mass shooting in Buffalo, don’t expect conservative leaders to stop promoting the “great replacement theory” that inspired the gunman. In May, a gunman opened fire in a supermarket in a black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, killing ten people. The eighteen-year-old murderer, Payton S. Gendron, is said to have scrawled racial slurs on the barrel of his gun and to have published a racist manifesto that runs into the hundreds of pages.
The Hard Times Behind Philly Soul
Beneath the strings and sequins, the Sound of Philadelphia was the backing track to the economic crisis that hit black America in the 1970s. Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff understood early on how plans and aspirations could be vulnerable to economics. Meeting by chance in an elevator — as the only black songwriters in Philadelphia’s Schubert Building — the songwriting partners spent the 1960s hustling for hits, repeatedly thwarted by bad deals and worse luck.
Food Fights
From the earliest days of American history through the first decades of the 20th century, Americans rose up repeatedly to beat back rising food costs. They did so out of the belief that all members of the community had the right to a just price for bread. Remove Icon ESC
The Disinformation Scam
We shouldn’t embrace the war on disinformation just because the Right hates it. You didn’t have to be a right-wing nut to agree that a Department of Homeland Security–led “war on disinformation” sounded Orwellian.
Red the Fed
The Federal Reserve’s response to inflation is bad for workers — but it doesn’t need to be. One of the most consequential statements of Joe Biden’s presidency came around Memorial Day, and it went largely unnoticed.
Inflation Jargon Explained
Defining the terms you keep pretending to understand.
Driving in Reverse
Now that Roe v. Wade is overturned, individual states are implementing draconian restrictions on abortion. Bans across the Bible Belt might require women to drive hundreds of miles — in some cases, over 1000% farther than previously — to receive abortion care. If all 26 states classified as likely or certain to ban abortion by the Guttmacher Institute follow […] Remove Icon ESC Small Now that Roe v. Wade is overturned, individual states are implementing draconian restrictions on abortion.
Europe’s Central Bank Has a New Tool to Protect Bond Markets. When Will It Protect Workers?
The European Central Bank (ECB) has a dilemma. With the Eurozone facing unprecedented inflation (8.6 percent in June), many on the Governing Council want to see a rapid and substantial rise in interest rates. But raising rates too much, or too quickly, risks destabilizing the euro by threatening the fiscal sustainability of the Eurozone’s most indebted countries. Italy, the European Union’s third-largest economy, is the chief concern.
Handling Radical Republicans
This morning, I heard a commentator allude to “Mitch McConnell and other conservative senators.” Yesterday, a news report described the upcoming Alaska Republican primary as pitting Trump’s “conservative wing against Murkowski’s more moderate base.” I keep seeing references to the “conservative majority” on the Supreme Court. Can we get real?
5 Tips to Learn French through Movies
What do you really need to learn French fast? The direct answer to this question is - essential resources. You may have multiple supportive things to learn the language. But, French movies are highly notable among them. Watching a movie will let you learn numerous daily-life French words and phrases. Besides, a French movie will show you the accurate situation to apply those words with the right expression. It goes without saying how powerful movies can be to learn French.
Miami Runner-Up Max Martínez Releasing 'Running Against The Most Famous Mayor In America’
In this fascinating, action-packed memoir about his candidacy for Mayor of the City of Miami, Max Martínez tells the story of his improbable odyssey from a young leader searching for a cause to stepping up and battling a 4-decade political dynasty for the opportunity to stand up for a generation and solve the time-sensitive issues facing his hometown.
Inflation and Your Next Union Contract
What’s going on with inflation? It’s a question that everyone is asking, and one that is particularly important for anyone entering bargaining this year. We can’t predict what is to come, but the evidence from the past year hasn’t been good for workers. The Consumer Price Index rose by more than 8 percent, its fastest pace in 40 years. Essential expenses like housing, food, and gas have climbed especially fast.
3 Beneficial Effects of IV Therapy on Your Physical Health
IV therapy can boost energy levels, reduce pain, and improve the health of your skin. It can also boost immune function and help provide an overall feeling of well-being. Here are just three of the beneficial effects of IV therapy on your physical health. 1. Boosts athletic performance If you are an athlete who trains hard every day to improve your performance, your body can start feeling worn down. You have higher nutritional demands to fuel your body to achieve performance levels and retain them.
Inflation and Your Next Union Contract
Above Photo: Despite all the talk of labor shortages and a tight job market, wages have not kept pace with the cost of living, especially essential expenses like housing, food, and gas. Profits, on the other hand, have boomed—so employers can afford to pay more. (Rulenumberone2). What’s going on with inflation? It’s a question that everyone is asking, and one that is particularly important for anyone entering bargaining this year.
Corporations Are Profiting From Inflation
Central bank intransigence on the matter of interest rates is a harbinger of the mass economic and social destruction to come. Many central banks adopted a somewhat more flexible stance in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008–9, but with the inflation genie out of the bottle the bankers are now stiffening their resolve. Once again, reducing inflation has been elevated above all other economic, social, and environmental priorities.
No, Rising Prices Are Not Being Driven by Rising Wages
Anyone observing the political debate about inflation in the UK could be forgiven for thinking that rising prices were being driven by rising wages. Politicians and technocrats from across the political spectrum have taken it upon themselves to chastise workers for demanding wage increases in line with inflation. These calls for wage restraint were intolerable enough when they were coming from the head of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, who earns more than half a million pounds a year.
Hijackobin!
The new issue of Jacobin will be out on Tuesday. Subscribe today and get a yearlong print and digital subscription.
At Starbucks, There Are No Workers, Only “Partners”
A December 2021 missive from managers at the Elmwood Avenue location of Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, after workers voted 18 to 9 in favor of unionizing, shared by Starbucks Workers United on Twitter. Subject: We are all partners Dear Elmwood Partners, We have results of the vote and I want you to hear directly from me we had 8 NO ballots, 19 YES ballots and 0 challenged ballots.
Jeremy Corbyn: What You Should Read
What’s sitting on the nightstand of the Labour Party’s greatest living leader? I love reading — and I’m always reading something. Sometimes two or three books at the same time, not counting all the material I dive into as an activist member of parliament and for the Peace and Justice Project. Here’s what I’ve been engaging with recently. Remove Icon ESC Small I love reading — and I’m always reading something.
What You Need to Know About Inflation
What You Need to Know About Inflation It’s bad and could get worse. Socialists need a response.
American Exceptionalism Off the Rails
Why the United States spends so much but gets so little public transit. After just a few weeks in Madrid, Christine, an American exchange student, was ecstatic about the city’s subway system. “One of the first things I noticed was Madrid’s metro is much cleaner than New York’s. . . .
On Canceling Writers
While certain writers or texts might fall afoul of polite society today, great writing can and will never stay canceled. The status of literary reputation is in a funny place. On the one hand, we inhabit a necrophiliac literary culture. Lost classics, never-before-translated classics, and unjustly forgotten geniuses are exhumed every month, and laurels are placed on their authors’ skeletons.
Spaghetti Junctions
How did New York become the only metropolis in the world to insist that its transit map reflect the layout of the city above? Among the world’s metropolitan transit systems, the New York City Subway has the most stations, the most riders, and the ugliest map. In 1972, the new Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA brought in a striking, colorful diagram masterminded by the Italian designer Massimo Vignelli.
Putin Didn’t Unite Europe - He Just Militarized It
Whatever the outcome of the Ukraine war, it’ll mean a more divided and armed Europe. For a while there, it looked like the European security order might be in the middle of a fundamental shift.
Didion on the New Left
Much of the late Joan Didion’s writing from the 1960s and ’70s is characterized by a pessimism about the New Left. She thought hippies and the rest of the counterculture were worthy of contempt, and she thought radicals like the Black Panther Party and various Marxist groups were both ludicrously far from power and frightening menaces to society. “[Michael Laski’s] place in the geography of the American Left is, in short, an almost impossibly lonely and quixotic one, unpopular, unpragmatic.
“We’re New - We Don’t Have Any Customs”
Two films about the Tennessee Valley Authority stress its utopian promise and the lives that had to be destroyed to fulfill it. If you want to be moved in complex ways by the lost ideal of great American infrastructure as a boon to a democratic society, I can recommend a film experience for you. First, watch the 1944 documentary short Valley of the Tennessee.
A Stunning New Chapter Begins for Amazon Warehouse Workers
In a staggering upset, Staten Island Amazon workers just won a union election. It’s the start of a new chapter for workers at one of the world’s most powerful companies In an upset for which there are few parallels in the US labor movement’s post-Reagan history, Amazon warehouse workers in the United States have won recognition of a union for the first time ever.
57,000 Channels and There’s Nothing On
American TV once threatened to become radical and strange through the proliferation of local stations. But it wouldn’t be allowed to last. It is difficult today to imagine an era when an antenna-studded box sat in the American living room with only four channels available, all of them “free” to view. I subscribe to TV services I don’t use, want, or need, yet the automated payments still fly out of my bank account every month.
Sports Are Sinking in Crypto Snake Oil
The crypto takeover of European football promises to empower supporters — but in truth, it’s just marketing fluff for a giant pyramid scheme. European football fans have had to put up with a lot lately, enduring ballooning ticket and streaming prices and, in many cases, pandemic-induced empty stadiums. How do beloved clubs repay their loyal supporters for sacrificing time, money, and attention just as these things seem scarcer than ever?
The Casualties of the Drone War
Since the War on Terror began, the US military has used aerial bombing campaigns to avoid American combat losses. But they’ve led to a staggering number of civilian deaths. Azmat Khan is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and an investigative reporter for the New York Times who covers the human cost of war, including through a multi-award-winning, yearslong investigation into the civilian casualties of US air strikes in the Middle East.
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