David Cay Johnston: Truths and myths about the rise of part-time #jobs | Al Jazeera America

Aggregate demand is the problem, not ‘Obamacare’

July 31, 2014 6:00AM ET

When the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 288,000 jobs had been added in June, critics cried foul. They said the news was misleading: The details showed a deteriorating job market, which many critics blamed on the Affordable Care Act requirement that employers provide workers with health insurance or risk prosecution or penalties.

But an examination of the data tells an entirely different story about what has hobbled the recovery from the Great Recession, which started in December 2007 and ended in the summer of 2009.

Continue reading David Cay Johnston: Truths and myths about the rise of part-time #jobs | Al Jazeera America

3 Reasons Subsidized Jobs Should Be Part of an Economic Mobility Agenda | Center for American Progress

By Rachel West | July 30, 2014

The House Ways and Means Human Resources Subcommittee is holding a hearing today on subsidized employment as a tool for boosting economic security. It is high time for Congress to re-examine the evidence on subsidized jobs and to discuss the potential this approach may hold for alleviating our country’s continuing unemployment woes and connecting disadvantaged workers to job opportunities.

Continue reading 3 Reasons Subsidized Jobs Should Be Part of an Economic Mobility Agenda | Center for American Progress

Hillary for Liberals: A Conversation With Walter Shapiro | The American Prospect

This piece originally appeared in The American Prospect
By HAROLD MEYERSON
JULY 23, 2014
“As a campaigner, Hillary can do a shot and a beer better than Barack Obama can,” Shapiro says. So there’s that.

As a reporter and columnist for Time, Newsweek, the Washington Post, USA Today, Esquire, Salon, and other publications, Walter Shapiro has covered nine presidential elections and the nation’s politics for four decades. He is currently a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and a lecturer in political science at Yale while he finishes a book about his great-uncle, a vaudevillian and con man who once swindled Hitler.

Shapiro is also an accomplished Hillary-ologist, having first interviewed Hillary Clinton in the Arkansas governor’s mansion for Time in September 1992. In early May, Shapiro sat down with Prospect editor-at-large Harold Meyerson to talk about a question he’s internally debated for years: On balance, would a Hillary Clinton candidacy and presidency be a good or bad thing for the liberal cause?

Continue reading Hillary for Liberals: A Conversation With Walter Shapiro | The American Prospect

Jared Bernstein: Financial Market Oversight, Economic Recoveries, and Full Employment: Some Crucial Linkages

“The way to make a train go fast is to keep it from going slow.”
July 29th, 2014 at 2:59 pm

That bit of Zen was told to me by one of the nation’s foremost rail experts back when I worked on that issue. He was explaining that part of developing a high-speed rail system entails straightening out existing curves in the track. But to me, it’s become a metaphor for the importance of financial market oversight.

Continue reading Jared Bernstein: Financial Market Oversight, Economic Recoveries, and Full Employment: Some Crucial Linkages

What Does the Democratic Party Actually Believe? | The Nation

By William Greider

To put it crudely, the dilemma facing the Democratic party comes down to this: Will Dems decide next time to stand with the working people, or will they stick with their big-money friends in finance and business? Some twenty years ago, Bill Clinton taught Democrats how they can have it both ways. Take Wall Street’s money—gobs of it—while promising to govern on a heart-felt agenda of “Putting People First.”

Continue reading What Does the Democratic Party Actually Believe? | The Nation

Une société sans croissance: la politique à l’heure de la «grande stagnation» | Slate fr

Limits of growth / net_efekt via Flickr CC
Fabien Escalona    [bing_translator]

L’entrée des démocraties occidentales dans une ère sans croissance paraît de plus en plus crédible. Or, le triomphe de l’Etat nation libéral-démocratique et social a été profondément lié aux «Trente Glorieuses». Que peut-on en attendre pour l’avenir de nos régimes politiques? Continue reading Une société sans croissance: la politique à l’heure de la «grande stagnation» | Slate fr