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: The biochemistry of the human body is now well enough understood to verify what philosophers and sages have been telling us for ages, and then some. That’s what this lively book is about: how dopamine is the hormone that gets us addicted to pleasurable experiences, from opioids to sugar, and how serotonin can rescue us from addiction. Serotonin is the hormone of the happiness and contentment with life long sought by Stoic philosophers, mystics, ascetics, and other spiritual seekers. But corporations now understand our biochemistry too, and use it exploit our weaknesses for financial gain. That is, addiction is very profitable, despite the unhappiness and early deaths. Fortunately, the cures are cheap and very effective if we pursue them with zeal: a good night’s sleep, a low sugar / processed food diet, mindful meditation, regular exercise, helping others, building community, and other ways of contributing to a better world. Lustig is a medical doctor and researcher who is now devoting his life to combatting the corporate manipulations that making so many of us so sick. Some of his concluding sentences: “No thing can make you happy. Experiences can make you happy. People can make you happy…Those who abdicate happiness for pleasure will end up with neither. The science says so”.

This deep analysis of the US Constitution makes it clear why the US is in trouble today. Our Constitution was revolutionary for its time because the relative equality of US society was itself unprecedented. Previous constitutions, what Sitaram calls “class warfare” constitutions, assumed very unequal classes, as in Rome. These constitutions gave rich and poor certain powers and protections from the other. That is, the property of the rich had to be protected from mob rule, while the poor needed protection from enslavement or oppression by the rich. Today the US middle class is shrinking and has lost its political power to the plutocracy. But our founding fathers thought that the relative equality of the US population would likely continue to prevail in the long run, not foreseeing how new sources of wealth (king cotton, industrial revolution, computer revolution) might be captured by new oligarchies. The classical danger was that “Without political redress from a self-satisfied opulent elite, the people might turn to a demagogue – only to become a tyrant”. Sitaram, sometime advisor to Senator Elizabeth Warren, asks us to find better way – new constitutional changes. For example, citizens could to refuse to support any candidate who does not commit to a certain package of fundamental reforms, not just in campaign finance and lobbying but in taxes, health care, education, housing, banking, etc., like the “no new taxes” pledge on the right.

Here are the 10 principles that the rich have used to engineer the escalating inequality and misery of the last 40 years: ‘Reduce Democracy’, ‘Shape Ideology’, ‘Redesign the Economy’, ‘Shift the Burden’, ‘Attack Solidarity’, ‘Run the Regulators’, ‘Engineer Elections’, ‘Keep the Rabble in Line’, ‘Manufacture Consent’, ‘Marginalize the Population’. The quick read only expands on the excellent video, which is the best overview ever of our predicament. Chomsky offers no blueprint for redemption – it all depends on the skill and energy of our activism. Chomsky tells how James Madison designed the US Senate to protect the property of the wealthy from the rabble. But Aristotle had advised distributing profits to the workers. After the 1960s even the “liberal internationalists” of the 1970s sought to curb the “excess of democracy” . Putting youth into the chains of debt slavery was one of their biggest achievements. Another was subjugating the working class by placing them in direct competition with workers around the world, making them insecure and poorly paid. Taxes were shifted off the wealthy and services cut for working people. Instead citizens could act out of solidarity to fund free health care and college, plus projects for future generations and true full employment. Instead of one set of rules for the rich, another for the poor, big money in politics could be eliminated, returning the people to power. I would only add a more historical and global perspective.

Nancy Isenberg shines a harsh spotlight on how the fortunes of the few were founded on the exploitation and debasement of the many, even though white. She goes all the way back to Jamestown and the Puritans, with plenty on the founding fathers, Andrew Jackson, squatters vs. slaves, sharecroppers, up to Elvis Presley and more recent politicians and media. Yet I found it surprising that the actual economics behind the evolving class structure is mentioned only in passing. For example, there is a lot more to the Civil War, both locally and globally, than the conventional race and class narrative. Later she talks about suburbia and “trailer trash” without saying anything about the car culture and its roots in oil, or of the corrupting effects of easy money, whether true gold, white gold (cotton), or black gold (oil). Likewise we get only glimpses of the evolving subcultures of the white underclass, typically only through commentary on popular media and political figures instead of authentic accounts. An unexpected but persistent theme is breeding, with Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson sounding like British aristocrats, consigning the “low bred” to eternal poverty, or a century later subject to eugenics sterilization. Nevertheless, this fascinating book shows that there is a big opening for a progressive politics of bottom-up inclusion, of black and white together, a Bernie Sanders type New Deal politics, or the unity politics of William Barber’s “Poor People’s Campaign”.

Thomas Frank has long chronicled the inconvenient truths suppressed by the corporate Democrats, the truths of escalating inequality and societal destruction that led directly to Trump. These satirical essays are a joy to read, even as Trump’s many futile gestures to mask the declining imperial power proceed apace, and the billionaire / corporate establishment continues to floor-board its engine of greed, oblivious to the storm clouds of decay and fascism. Frank shows us that the decay is not just in the industrial heartland, with its boarded-up store fronts and poverty-wage jobs at Walmart, but also in academia. Here students become debt slaves, while the humanities are squeezed out and integrity bows before money. Then he takes on the incrementalism and bipartisanship of the corporate pundits at the Washington Post who make the New Deal politics of Bernie Sanders unacceptable, out-of-bounds, despite both its popularity here and reality in places like Scandinavia. Nor is Frank afraid to take on Obama for bailing out Wall Street instead of Main Street. Or to recognize that a key reason Trump resonated with voters was his consistent talk about bad trade deals. The good news from Frank is that Trump’s “election in 2016 was little more than an obscene gesture by an angry public using the candidate as its instrument.” The bad news is that Trump could still win a second term if he lucks out on economic growth, or even that “Trump wins in 2020 by the Democrats not changing”.

Like Steve Keen, Yanis Varoufakis is on a crusade to dethrone Economics - the Naked Emperor of the Social Sciences. He quickly cuts to the chase, using plain language and common-sense reasoning, starting with money and debt in ancient Mesopotamia. He ends with a bold call to step outside our society, to see it as an “outsider, a refugee”, to see how today’s economics is the narrative that the new ruling class uses to legitimatize itself, piling one “mystical notion” on top of another. Instead of privatizing and commodifying everything, hence escalating extreme inequality, Varoufakis’ solution is to democratize our economy by universal ownership. I’ve come to the same conclusion, extending it to “stakeholder ownership”. This is a formidable political challenge, as dictated by the political nature of money and debt and their pivotal role in the power structure: Finance on top, then Industry, then Government, and last the People. Varoufakis shows us exactly why booms and busts happen, and why capitalism is hell bent on destruction. But he also delves into deep philosophical conundrums, starting with Faust, then Frankenstein, and onto Blade Runner and the Matrix: free will versus fate, good versus evil, artificial intelligence versus humanity. The profit motive is a bargain with the devil. And he wonders, is capitalism leading us into a robotic dystopia on a degraded planet? Or will we return to our roots – sharing societies living with nature, instead of dominating it?

This is a very readable introduction to minerals and energy, from ancient times to the present, and the role they play in the rise and fall of civilizations. How and when might we be affected on limits to copper, uranium, lithium, coal, or oil, among many others? With enough cheap energy we could extract, or even manufacture, all the needed minerals by one means or another. But with the end of cheap fossil fuels we are in deep trouble. It’s not just “peak oil” but a number of other mineral “peaks” will compound the end of cheap oil over the coming decades. Although Bardi foresees “a mighty hangover once the party is over”, he still holds out hope that we won’t revert completely to a primitive agrarian society. He thinks that a basic electrical infrastructure could be created using minerals like iron that are abundant, if properly reused and recycled. But will electricity from renewable sources really be up to the heavy duty requirements of mining, transporting, and processing low grade ores? Perhaps, Bardi suggests, if our requirements are drastically reduced. But what level of world population could be fed by a radically reduced global economy? That’s the big question that Bardi does not address directly, though he suggests that depletion of phosphorus could force the decline of industrial agriculture after a few more decades. And he notes that the famous limits-to-growth studies of the 1970s indicate that trouble could begin within a decade or two.

Ugo Bardi carries on the great tradition established by the Club of Rome when it sponsored the Limits-to-Growth studies of the 1970s. He draws on an observation of Seneca, the great Roman Stoic philosopher: “Growth is slow but the road to ruin is rapid”. There are certainly many signs of an impending collapse of our civilization, yet how close are we to it, and what can, or should, be done? His ultimate answer is, appropriately, a Stoic one: Don’t fret over what is beyond our control – big change is coming whether we like it or not. But do try to understand the complex system we live in and look for “leverage points” – feasible actions with big effects that might nudge the coming collapse into less dangerous territory. Bardi’s prime example of pulling a lever in the wrong direction is “economic growth”, which will only accelerate the collapse now and make it far more painful. Then he lists 12 leverage points identified by Donella Meadows. These he combines into three broad categories: (1) Oscillations (e.g. financial booms and busts) and instabilities (e.g. war and political turmoil), (2) Critical resources (e.g. fossil fuels), and (3) Ways the system works (e.g. commerce, governance, culture). Bardi advises not to take a brute-force approach (prohibition of alcohol or drugs, and violent revolutions, etc) despite their political popularity, but instead to engineer regulatory and cultural changes designed to overcome the forces of resistance in more strategic ways.

Partanen does very well at displaying the real cultural differences between the US and Nordic societies, taking her native Finland as the prime example, versus the propaganda against Scandinavia by opponents of a Bernie Sanders social democracy. Though skeptical, we can still be influenced by this propaganda if we do not get a reliable counter narrative. That is why this book is so important. Her theme is that the human rights recognized in practice, not just in name, by Nordic governments, yield far more freedom with far less stress. That is, US “freedoms” work quite well for the affluent or privileged, thank you, but not for majority of us. She examines child rearing, education, health care, aging, business, taxes - you name it. Even the notorious Nordic taxes, when you add them all up, are not much different than in the US. In the Nordics get far more tax “bang for the buck”: free health care, parental leave, day care, college education, assisted living, long vacations, and more. Businesses and entrepreneurs do better, with a more level playing field, the state taking care of “benefits” and social services. All this is based on the “Nordic Theory of Love … Authentic love and friendship are possible only between individuals who are independent and equal”. Thus our ancestral ethic of mutual obligation and sharing is met by paying taxes to support the services we all need throughout our lives. By comparison the US is stuck in a wild-west sink-or-swim “rugged individualism”.

T.R. Reid draws on impressive global reporting (like in “The Healing of America”, 2010) to assure us that there are far better ways to do our taxes, some of them absurdly simple, just common sense. So what gets in the way? Politics: everyone 32 years the US tax code gets so byzantine that Congress makes a big show of fixing it, then turns around and adds hundreds of tax breaks that are added every year as acts of fealty to wealthy special interests. The favored solution is BBLR = “broad-based, low-rate” taxes, with no deductions or credits. Almost everyone pays so that government can cut tax rates in half yet still collect the same revenue, maybe even fill out your tax form for you. In reality, Trump’s recent tax bill keeps as many tax breaks (like the notorious “carried interest” break for Wall Street billionaires) as it eliminates, simplifying little. The only particular tax that Reid promotes, is the “VAT”, or values added tax, already adopted by most countries. Basically a sales tax on all goods and services, both wholesale and retail, tax collectors love it. It is very easy to collect and brings in big money too, since rates are often 20% or higher. Yet the beloved VAT has the same problem as other broad-based taxes – it is regressive, just like flat rate income taxes. Yet, all in all, I can recommend Reid’s book as easy and stimulating reading. Though not comprehensive, it will open your mind to concepts of taxation rarely covered by mainstream media.

Akerlof and Shiller are well known economists, whose deep faith in Capitalism is tempered by the abuses described in this popular little book. They detail how we all end up being taken for fools (and our hard-earned money) by clever and unscrupulous marketers: “most adults still go to bed worried about their bills”. The problem is the absence of good governmental regulation, whether it’s buying a house, car, medicines, or stocks, or succumbing to addictions like gambling. Attempting to be good marketers themselves, they use the computer lingo of “phishing” for how we are lured or baited for “phools”. Yet they mystify when they adopt the economic jargon of “phishing equilibrium”. You may not realize that the focus on “equilibrium” is typical of the spectacular failure of mainstream economic theory. In fact the biggest challenge is understanding the “dynamics” – the booms and busts, the chaotic unpredictability, and the evolution of economies. Ironically, phishing techniques play key roles in driving these imbalances, as in the financial crash of 2008. Models that use the mathematics of nonlinearity and complexity (see “Origin of Wealth” by Eric Bienhocker) would naturally incorporate the psychology which, Akerlof and Shiller lament, is missed by current theory: “we should be inclusive of whatever thinking, conscious or subconscious, that is the basis for people’s decisions” instead of theory based on the mythical “rational economic man”.

Berkeley economist Claire Brown got fed up with free market economics and turned to Buddhism. She sought a science that would serve both humanity and planet earth through the ages. This very readable little book describes how Buddhism principles can transform how we do and think about economics. Instead of being all about GDP and growth, it’s about seeking human well-being in a sustainable economy. Her vision is far more egalitarian and just, emphasizing simple living and a much smaller ecological footprint for the developed world, along with meeting UN sustainable developmental goals for a shrunken global population. Along the way you’ll learn key facts, such as “Happiness and quality of life are related to a country’s level of inequality, but not its average income”. And you’ll see the broad scope of Buddhist action, such as “the global response to climate-change must integrate four forces: scientific, economic, moral, and political”. Claire Brown calls for more holistic measures to replace GDP, such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) and the Happy Planet Index (HPI). To get there, she calls for carbon taxes, progressive taxes, living wages, employee ownership, foundational incomes or endowments, and stronger global commitments. As to theory, she identifies key faulty assumptions (individual rational self-interest) and narrow values (materialism) of mainstream economics, but not more realistic and compassionate models that utilize non-linearity and complexity.

This is a good book for students and others who want to understand how money is actually created and managed in today’s world. The many elementary examples and answers to frequently asked questions lift the veil of obfuscation spread by mainstream economic and political discourse, especially concerning the roles of taxes, the Fed, and full employment. However the result is a bit repetitious, and the economic jargon, though explained, takes some getting used to. The powerful conclusion is that we have far better and more equitable ways to manage economies, such as the US economy, ways that have been blocked by ideologically generated misconceptions about money. The historically accurate message is that “taxes drive money”. That is, a government’s imposition of taxes and fees obliges residents to work for the currency to pay those taxes and fees. Then government spending comes after taxes, not before. And if a government, like the US, floats it foreign exchange rates, it always creates money “out of thin air” by crediting certain bank reserve account, without any “backing”, like gold. The actual constraints on money come from the government’s budget and from the monetary goals, such as for inflation and employment. Wray’s primary monetary prescription is to achieve full employment by government as the employer of last resort, creating more money to do this in recessions and increasing taxes as necessary in booms, eliminating most forms of “welfare” as a byproduct.

Just like everything else, mathematics can be corrupted by big money. This book lays bare the deceptions behind the trillion-dollar swindles on Wall Street and in London. These are the false assumptions and claims used to bait both investors and the public, the “innovations” (mathematical models and algorithms) that hide risk and shift it to you and me while pretending to do the opposite. Meanwhile obvious reforms never seem to happen due to the obscene levels of greed, corruption, regulatory capture, etc. The lack of enforced ethical standards in economics and finance is no accident, with the possibility of even bigger financial crashes and scandals in the future. That is, financial economics could be facilitating the economy that we need, instead of an economy of greed. Wilmott and Orrell do hint at the possibility of monetary reform but mostly they give us worthy, but common place, prescriptions such as breaking up the big banks, stronger regulation, a financial transaction tax, simplicity, and transparency. The unaddressed problem here is the need for a “political revolution” to overcome the power of big money to resist even the most commonplace of reforms. Strangely, they do not cite other insider critiques, such as the Yves Smith blog “NakedCapitalism.com” or her great book “ECONned” on the crash of 2008. Yet this book does give quantitative types a much better understanding of what we’re up against, and it is an opening for some “beyond Wall Street” sequels.

Steve Keen is the world’s leading heterodox economist, so when he speaks, I listen. In this little book he sums up his model of money and debt, the one that he used to predict the financial crash of 2008, and even the “great moderation” before it. Most economists were left red-faced, running for cover. Even today, Keen’s simple, common-sense approach is fiercely resisted by mainstream economists like Paul Krugman, who are wedded to a very primitive barter-like concept of money. This book expects some familiarity with the terminology and thinking of economics, including models and graphs, but for such readers it is expository rather than technical in nature. Keen shows what countries (“debt-zombies-to-be”) are at risk of future financial crises, or prolonged stagnation like Japan. This is due to their level of debt and their inability to write down that debt or inflate it away. First, and foremost, of course, is China, with the US already categorized as a “debt zombie” after the 2008 meltdown. According to Keen, monetary authorities should carefully monitor the “private debt to GDP ratio”, doing whatever it takes to keep it below 100%. But he considers this unlikely in most countries, given the continued dominance of neo-liberal economics and the stranglehold of big finance on politics. Instead global stagnation is the likely outcome. Here I wish Keen had noted that even the best financial policies will not overcome the limits-to-growth imposed by planet earth.

John Geyman is a family practitioner and administrator who has experienced first hand the transformation of the US health care system into an immensely wasteful and corrupt health care industry. Though Obamacare has extended coverage, it has also propelled profiteering, contributing “to the medical profession’s loss of its moral compass”. Supposed savings have been soaked up by executives and owners. Privatization has meant perverse incentives, replacing the medical ethic of compassionate care by profits at the expense of the poorest and sickest. This book is an up-to-date and readable overview of how the health care industry actually works, set against the backdrop Dr. Geyman’s personal journey over the last half century, from a classical family practice in the mountains of northern California, to leadership of the University of Washington Department of Family Medicine, to a retirement of investigation, reflection, and writing. Other books dive more deeply into the politics and scandals, but I suggest starting here. The US has the best health care in the world for those who can pay for it, yet by far the worst health care system of any developed nation. We spend twice as much per person with poorer overall outcomes. Like most other medical reformers, Geyman recommends improving Medicare and making it universal (“Medicare for All”), with the US citizenry pocketing the savings. Both professionals and patients will be a lot happier.

Thomas Frank really tears into the Clintons and Obama for abandoning the US working class in their quest for a utopia of meritocracy and technocracy for the professional class. Instead we have a nightmare of inequality and dysfunction. This in spite of, or perhaps because of, their personal charm, educated brilliance, and rhetoric of virtue. These liberal elites stabbed their Democratic base in the back while handing out extraordinary favors to the elites of Wall Street and the ‘New Economy’. Obama on monopolies: “Anti-monopoly investigations went from a barely breathing 4 in 2009 to a flat 0 in 2014”(p 156). Obama on Wall Street “unwound Bush’s bailouts…fired bad regulators…stopped AIG bonuses…put ‘zombie’ banks into receiverships…shifted FBI agents to white collar crime…”(p 157). The Trump victory was understandable to Thomas Frank. Like Bernie Sanders, he has long called for a return of the Democratic Party to its New Deal roots and says, “Would Bernie have won? Hell, Yes”. Yet, unlike Bernie, who called for a “political revolution”, Frank calls for moral outrage –that liberal leaders put on great displays of moral virtue (toward women and minorities) even as their loyalties now lie with the top 10%, not the bottom 50%. The jolt of activism impelled by the Trump disaster gives me hope, yet, living in liberal Seattle, I see that Frank’s moral revolution has a long way to go. And with an increasingly corrupt and entrenched oligarchy, that means a rough road ahead.

Dean Baker is a progressive economist, and a smart one too. Regrettably, thinking like an economist is both his strength and his weakness. It’s great that he can tell us exactly how to restructure the way we do drug R & D, to save many billions and get better results. But he fails to tell us that we’ll likely need Bernie’s “political revolution” to do it. Nor does Baker seem to realize that in a world facing limits-to-growth, a capitalist economy may become impossible to sustain. That is, capitalism is designed to concentrate wealth and power, unless severely constrained. When the growth imperative falters, as it must, the capitalists are quick to blame the constraints, hence the escalating inequality since Reagan and Thatcher. Finally, the dynamic of the “rich get richer, while the poor get poorer” itself reaches a breaking point, as it must, hence Trump. Though missing this big picture, Baker has some wonderful ideas for slashing the horrendous waste that plagues US capitalism. For example, he’d take most medical R & D into the public domain, more like the US military, where the big companies work under contract. Except, full public disclosure would be required instead of patents, resulting in drug prices that would fall by 99% for today’s most expensive drugs. He’d take on the monopoly power that produces extravagant doctors’ salaries, bypassing their political power by promoting medical tourism, even to India. Then Wall Street, corporations, taxes, trade, even textbooks.

From UUJEC.com. This book hypes the developing robotics revolution in technology, yet balances this extravaganza with warnings on growing inequality and job losses. It reminds me of Alvin Toffler’s blockbluster books of decades past, forecasting the stresses of technological and societal change, but this time from the narrower point of view of an economist. The authors see our “winner take all” society as a consequence primarily of technology, ignoring power relationships. Also, “growth” is the ultimate solution to escalating inequality, ignoring limits-to-growth. They welcome ideas to reduce inequality like a guaranteed minimum income, but are hesitant about full employment policies and about shifting heavy payroll taxes to more progressive income, capital gains, and wealth taxes. They boost education and immigration as great inequality solvers but seem unfamiliar with conflicting research. Piketty is not cited, even though he shows that increasing inequality is inevitable when the rate of return exceeds the rate of growth. Brynjlofsson and McAfee say, correctly, that artificial intelligence has come of age due to exponential growth in computer power (Moore’s Law). Yet they do not consider the lessons that might be learned from how the extreme inequality of the late 19th century industrial revolution was finally resolved after decades of turmoil, upheaval that now appears to be commencing in earnest for the “second machine age” after the election of Trump.

From UUJEC.com: George Lakey is an activist Quaker who married a Norwegian gal. Only after the financial crash of 2008 did Americans ask him about Scandinavia. Before that American exceptionalism held sway. Now escalating economic inequality has given rise to enormous disillusionment with the political establishment, on both the left and the right (Bernie & Trump). Lakey shows how Scandinavian success came from persistent and strategic mass movements, especially by labor, not just ordinary politics. Now support for democratic socialism is strong across the political spectrum. A prime example of this persistent advocacy for equality is the Norwegian policy of full employment at living wages. When you combine that with free higher education and universal health care, plus strong support for public transit and affordable housing, you have the recipe for extraordinary economic, social, and environmental success. These universal programs create high labor productivity, even as people work many fewer hours than Americans. Of course that means higher taxes, but the Scandinavians strongly support these taxes, knowing that their governments are serving the 99% and not the 1%. On a final note, Lakey is amazed at the social sciences in Scandinavia – how they analyze and experiment, then actually implement, without the ideological baggage and gridlock so evident in the United States. This penchant for elegant and rational design extends to architecture, furniture, music - you name it.

From UUJEC.com: Chuck Collins may have given away his inheritance at age 26 after organizing mobile home parks, but he has not forgotten how to engage the affluent. This book recounts inspiring stories of how one percenters have been welcomed back into the 99%, by dedicating themselves to the common good. Yet all too many of the affluent have “disconnected” into bubbles of privilege, taking advantage of a system rigged by a minority of the rich. A surprising example of rigging is charitable giving. This means large tax payer subsidies (50 cents on the dollar) to rich people who pay themselves exorbitantly as foundation trustees or who give very little to true charity. Instead they mostly support things like elite colleges and art museums. Far better: (1) donate for systemic change, and (2) charity is no substitute for well-funded government services, so: “pay your taxes”, even “don’t deduct donations”. As to systemic change, Collins is right on: We must “reduce the concentration of wealth” or democracy is dead. Yes, we need strongly “progressive income, wealth, and inheritance taxes” to “redistribute” concentrated wealth. But equally important is to “predistribute” wealth by paying living wages and by broad based ownership of enterprises. In short “we need to stand with the commonwealth against the forces of predatory wealth”, to develop “generative capitalism” instead of “extractive capitalism”, and to directly invest in our communities – “going off the Wall Street grid”.

From UUJEC.com: In this marvelous little book Reverend Barber traces his transformation as inheritor of the long arc of history bending toward justice, as celebrated by Martin Luther King Jr. But his context is not just the Civil Rights Movement but the history of fusion politics going back to the Civil War. By fusion politics he means “black and white together”, yet also almost every other good cause you can think of, knowing that minorities need a wide variety of allies to challenge brutal political repression. Like MLK, Barber understands that the issue is one of both “race and class” – that white supremacy has been used to divide the white working class from its natural allies – the working classes of all ethnic and racial groups. He cites the success of the fusion politics of the 1890s until it was crushed by the Jim Crow politics of the white power structure. Today the Koch Brothers are conspiring with local multimillionaires like Art Pope to restore white power by passing laws for voter suppression, defunding public education, lavish tax benefits for the rich, etc. In response to the right wing backlash to Obama’s election in 2008, Barber organized the first “Moral Monday” demonstrations at the state capital in North Carolina. He concludes by listing fourteen steps for organizers, such as “Use moral language to frame and critique public policy, regardless of who is in power” and “Intentionally diversify the movement with the goal of winning unlikely allies”.

From UUJEC.com: Branko Milanovic demonstrates that escalating economic inequality within nations is occurring globally, not just in the US. Yet, at the same time, the numbers show an overall trend toward convergence of incomes across nations. But are nations really getting more equal when the numbers depend so much on China, while Africa has been left behind? Even within, nations may be at different historical stages, which he calls waves of inequality. For example, inequality increased in the United States until the Great Depression and World War II set the stage for a growing middle class and more egalitarian society, with another wave of escalating inequality beginning around 1980. In contrast China is still in its first wave of capitalistic inequality. Milanovic correctly identifies the strong plutocratic forces driving inequality in the US, along with their divide and conquer tactics based on identity politics. Greater equality “in the ownership of assets and in education” are possible antidotes. Yet he missed this year’s political revolt by Bernie and Trump supporters. And, like most economists, he fails to understand limits-to-growth – that the world cannot just grow itself into equality when so many of its resources are maxing out and ecosystems are severely disturbed (think fossil fuels and climate), despite all the wonders of technology. How to tackle global inequality remains a huge challenge, but at least some economists are taking a new look.