BRANKO MILANOVIC-Capitalism Rules the World-How do we shrink inequality?
Written on March 21st, 2020In Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World, BRANKO MILANOVIC says we’re all capitalists now. Liberal capitalism delivers rampant inequality and capitalist excess as it fights for hearts and minds with political capitalism, as practiced by China. Milanovic asks – What are the prospects for a fairer world now that capitalism is the only game in town? And what can we do to make that more likely?
https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/people/milanovic-branko/
NEW Free Forum PETER SCHRAG – California Fights Back:The Golden State in the Age of Trump
Written on February 23rd, 2018PETER SCHRAG, longtime editor of The Sacramento Bee, makes the case that “no party, no lobby, no organization has been as formidable an adversary to the Washington of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell as California has. None has both the will and the heft that California brings to this fight. None has been as determined.” And he reminds us that California has come a long way since 1994 and Prop 187.
Free Forum – Two classic political interviews from 2004 THOMAS FRANK, WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America GEORGE LAKOFF, DON’T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate
Written on March 4th, 2017Originally Aired in 2004 They noticed trends, asked questions, offered warnings and gave advice.
“Why does the pro-life factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically?”
– Thomas Frank
“In politics framing is about making sure the debate takes place in language that fits your worldview. Framing trumps facts and self-interest.”
– George Lakoff Twelve years later their worst fears came true.
Free Forum Q&A – MICHAEL LEWIS MONEYBALL; THE BIG SHORT; THE BLIND SIDE BOOMERANG: Travels in the New Third World includes a profile of Greece post-global crash
Written on July 16th, 2015
Originally aired October 2011
As the two countries play a high stakes game of chicken, it’s a good time to see what Greece and Germany looked like in the aftermath of the global crash. Who better to be our tour guide than best-selling author MICHAEL LEWIS?
Lewis’s book, BOOMERANG: Travels in the New Third World is made up of articles originally published in Vanity Fair and picks up where 2010’s THE BIG SHORT left off. Governments are the focus of this book. Mostly because they have taken on the bad debts of the too-big-to-fail banks, so now they are themselves at risk. Now politics and culture become much more important as to how they will deal with that risk. The book also profiles Ireland, Iceland, and California.
Both Ira Glass and Malcolm Gladwell say today’s guest is their favorite storyteller. In his books and magazine articles, Lewis writes about sports, business, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, political campaigns, fatherhood. Stuff that matters to a lot of people. He’s smart and he has a sense of humor. Once a trader at Salomon Brothers, he wrote his first best-seller, LIAR’S POKER about the excesses of Wall Street during the 1980s. He continues to write about that world with his last two books, a column for Bloomberg, and articles in Vanity Fair. We also talk about the twisted path taken to get MONEYBALL into movie theatres.
Free Forum Q&A – LESTER BROWN, Founder of Worldwatch and Earth Policy Institute author of PLAN B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
Written on July 9th, 2015
Originally Aired October 2009
We are in a race between tipping points in natural and political systems.
Which will come first? Can we mobilize the political will to phase out coal-fired power plants before the melting of the Greenland ice sheet becomes irreversible? Can we halt deforestation in the Amazon basin before the forest becomes vulnerable to fire and is destroyed? Can we cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the Himalayan glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia? Can we win this race?
LESTER BROWN thinks we can…
In his book, PLAN B 4.0: MOBILIZING TO SAVE CIVILIZATION, BROWN lays out the symptoms, the diagnosis, and the cure. He estimates that we could solve all the world’s greatest problems for $200B a year – less than half the US defense budget.
PLAN B 4.0 is a comprehensive plan for reversing the trends that are undermining our future. Its four overriding goals are to stabilize climate, stabilize population, eradicate poverty, and restore the earth’s damaged ecosystems. Failure to reach any one of these goals will likely mean failure to reach the others as well.It’s time for Plan B: an all-out response at wartime speed proportionate to the magnitude of the threats facing civilization.
http://www.earth-policy.org/about_epi/C32