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“It’s interesting he [Josephus Daniels] may not have been the most die-hard racist, but he just saw that racism is how you win elections. I think we see echoes of that today. I think it’s also notable to recall that this is the only successful insurrection on U.S soil in U.S history. People started finding out a little bit about it when the capital siege occurred because people started asking, “has an insurrection ever happened?” Actually the answer is yes, and it would be Wilmington. It’s the only time this has ever happened to a municipal government and it was the state that allowed this to happen, allowed these militias to run amok. It was the state that was really responsible at the end of the day for this violence. And there have never been any reparations of any kind even though there are people living in Wilmington today who can who can say, “my ancestor owned this plot of land that was taken.” They’ve never had any reparations. If it was a white person that could prove that, I think we would be talking about justice. But it mirrors the Tulsa situation, it was the success of black people that was the problem. Not this idea of inferiority which had been the racial mythology. it was actually the fact that black people had persevered and were very successful even in the face of all of this oppression.” ….It’s just happened time and time again in Wilmington, Tulsa, Detroit, elsewhere, that the American dream has just been incredibly elusive for black Americans through absolutely no fault of their own. What I think is pretty clearly structural racism.”— Lynn Parramore

Canadian economist Mario Seccareccia, recipient of this year’s John Kenneth Galbraith Prize in Economics, says it’s time to reconsider the idea of full employment. He spoke to Lynn Parramore of the Institute for New Economic Thinking about why 2021 offers a rare opportunity to rebalance the economy in favor of Main Street.

Watch INET at the Trento Economics Festival online

Why do patriarchal systems survive? What is missing in how economics relates to the concepts of identity and power?

By Stefano Sannino Secretary-General, European External Action Service (EEAS), Jutta Urpilainen EU Commissioner for International Partnerships, European Commission, Rohinton P. Medhora President, The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), Andrew Michael Spence Nobel Laureate of Economics, Co-Chair, Commission on Global Economic Transformation, Jayati Ghosh Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Andrea Renda (moderator) Senior Research Fellow, Head of GRID Unit, CEPS

How do we break free of the cycle of restrictive thinking which has plagued economics, and the world?

“Now it’s maybe particularly an Indian phenomenon because of the strong lockdown we had last year, but I think across the world what we’re seeing in fact is that people are trapped in poverty because of the lack of employment opportunities, lack of income support, they’re increase in indebtedness, and their earnings remain depressed. So in that sense the news is extremely bad. Also, we’re seeing huge dislocations in the labor market itself. People who finally came into the formal labor force and had some sort of formal protections are now becoming informalized or worse as is the case with women in India, just leaving the labor force. When one asks for example social cohesion what can one say –it is devastating for any kind of view of an inclusive growth process where we’re trying to encourage many people into gainful employment and to actually see their welfare rise. Of course, financial vulnerabilities have risen many fold as a result of that. In addition, one ought to underline that this thing isn’t going away. Right now in India we’re in the second wave which is quite devastating. There are the very simple and awful thoughts of just basic mortality. What it’s going to do to you know many people’s indebtedness, their ability to earn incomes because this is not limited in India for example only to let’s say the relatively elderly but across the population distribution. I think we’re just at the beginning of trying to of seeing what it will do for social cohesion or destruction more likely. I think we had a mild wave last year and what we’re going to see this year as a result… we have yet to see but it will be bad.” — Arjun Jayadev

“Ransomware demands have increased exponentially in the last six months, according to Melissa Hathaway, president of Hathaway Global Strategies and a former cybersecurity adviser to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. The average ransom demand is now between $50 million and $70 million, Hathaway said. While those demands are often negotiated down, she said companies are frequently paying ransoms in the tens of millions of dollars, in part because cyber insurance policies cover some or all of the cost. She estimated that the average payment is between $10 million and $15 million.” — Kartikay Mehrotra and William Turton, Bloomberg

“This survey gives a voice to US health care workers who have been on the frontlines of COVID-19,” David Michaels, a professor of environmental and occupational health at the George Washington University and former administrator of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said. “Health care workers have valuable first-hand knowledge about this pandemic and this report offers recommendations that could help keep the U.S. on a steady course now and in the future.” …. Michaels and Melissa Perry, a professor and chair of the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, provided guidance in producing the report. The McElhattan Foundation and the Institute for New Economic Thinking provided financial support for the survey and the report.” — George Washington University

The plight of white blue-collar workers is well-known, but Blacks in that category were feeling the squeeze long before their white counterparts.

How once-promising Black upward mobility reversed course, and what can be done about it

“But COVID vaccines are by no means unique — most medicines developed and approved in the United States involve taxpayer investment. Between 2010 and 2019, every single new medicine approved by the Food and Drug Administration included taxpayer-funded research through NIH. Drug companies patent the drugs we pay to develop and then charge us exorbitant prices for them that increase every year — sometimes twice a year.” — Terry Minow, Missoulian

“[T]he U.S. Department of Justice should determine and make clear that paying a ransom is illegal,” Hathaway said in an article posted May 13 by the Institute for New Economic Thinking. “This step would likely force organizations to further invest in their security and ability to withstand and recover from an incident (i.e., increase their resilience). Categorizing ransom payment as an illegal activity would also clearly remove coverage for these types of payments from insurance policies,” Hathaway wrote.” — Charlie Mitchell, Inside Cybersecurity

Despite fear-mongering about the latest Consumer Price Index, unemployment remains elevated and stimulus is needed to prevent a collapse in demand

Despite fear-mongering about the latest Consumer Price Index, unemployment remains elevated and stimulus is needed to prevent a collapse in demand