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Jimmy Carter in the 1970s visiting a town in Brazil that commemorates Confederate expats.

Jimmy Carter, 1924-2024

As an individual, Jimmy Carter stood as a rebuke to our venal and heartless political class. As a politician, his private virtues proved to be public vices.
by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on January 1, 2025
The Vessel in New York City.

Stumbling Into Submission: How Real Estate And Finance Capital Conquered New York City

Hudson Yards received a $6 billion cocktail of public subsidies, including tax breaks and infrastructure improvements, to create a billionaires' playground.
by Katelin Penner via The Metropole on September 6, 2023
Jimmy Carter at a podium against the backdrop of an American flag.

Is Jimmy Carter Where Environmentalism Went Wrong?

Carter’s austerity was part of a bigger project. It didn’t really have much to do with environmentalism.
by Kate Aronoff via The New Republic on April 18, 2023
Luigi Einauldi, present of Italy in 1948, seated at his desk

The Dawn of Austerity

An interview with the author of "The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism."
by Nick Serpe, Clara Mattei via Dissent on February 17, 2023
View from the Empire State Building, August 1975.

A Crisis Without Keynes: The 1975 New York City Fiscal Crisis Revisited

An analysis of the factors that contributed to NYC's massive financial crisis in the 1970s, and the austere solutions that perpetuated it.
by Michael Beyea Reagan via The Gotham Center on August 12, 2021
Cars in the rubble of a burned out building in New York in the 1970s.

Fiscal Fright in NYC

A review of Kim Phillips-Fein’s "Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics."
by Michael R. Glass via The Metropole on May 15, 2019
Elon Musk, David Stockman, and a federal building.

The Education of Elon Musk

The Reagan administration offers a cautionary tale about cost-cutting zeal crashing up against the reality of how government works.
by David A. Graham via The Atlantic on March 20, 2025
Book cover of Counterrevolution by Melinda Cooper.

A Tax Haven in a Heartless World: On Melinda Cooper’s “Counterrevolution”

Why should taxpayers fund schools that violate their own values, the Moms for Liberty wonder? A new book traces how this kind of thinking about public spending came to be.
by Sarah Brouillette via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 15, 2024
A "political funeral" during the height of the HIV/AIDs epidemic.

The Right to Grieve

To demand the freedom to mourn—not on the employer’s schedule, but in our own time—is to reject the cruel rhythms of the capitalist status quo.
by Erik Baker via Jewish Currents on March 13, 2023
A Coca-Cola billboard in Moscow in 1997.

Capitalism Triumphed in the Cold War, but Not by Making People Better Off

In the wake of economic crises, liberal democracies proved most adept at imposing austerity.
by Andre Pagliarini via The New Republic on September 29, 2022

Puerto Rico Can Blame Its Total Blackout on Predatory Companies and Poor Decisions in Washington

Hurricane Fiona hit the island as only a Category 1 storm. But thanks to bad management, the electrical grid immediately collapsed.
by Kate Aronoff via The New Republic on September 20, 2022
Architectural drawing of Boston Harbor from above.

Who Profits?

How nonprofits went from essential service providers to vehicles for programs shaped and approved by capital.
by Justin H. Vassallo via The Baffler on July 25, 2022
President Bill Clinton laughs after delivering remarks on welfare reform.

How the Democrats Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Free Market

In the 1990s, the New Democrats trusted corporations to do the right thing. The results were disastrous.
by Maia Silber via Jacobin on July 18, 2022
A woman wearing a winter coat and a mask walks outside the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C., January 2022.

How the System Was Rigged

The global economic order and the myth of sovereignty.
by Branko Milanović via Foreign Affairs on June 21, 2022
Pile of US paper currency.

Austerity Policies In The United States Caused ‘Stagflation’ In The 1970s

U.S. government policies must continue to support physical and social infrastructure spending amid the continuing pandemic to avoid ‘stagflation’.
by Andrew Yamakawa Elrod via Washington Center For Equitable Growth on January 11, 2022

We Can’t Blame the South Alone for Anti-Tax Austerity Politics

The legacy of slavery is often invoked to explain the stunted welfare state. But the strongest resistance to taxation and redistribution came from the Northern ruling class.
by Noam Maggor via Jacobin on November 15, 2021
Image of John C. Calhoun

How Slavery Haunts Today’s Big Debates About Federal Spending

John C. Calhoun knew what a strong federal government might do.
by Ariel Ron via Slate on September 22, 2021
The 1.25-million-square-foot USC Village residential complex in Los Angeles.

The Rise of the UniverCity

Historian Davarian Baldwin explains how universities have come to wield the kind of power that were once hallmarks of ruthless employers in company towns.
by Davarian L. Baldwin, Meagan Day via Jacobin on September 2, 2021
Cover page of the August 1957 issue of Nation's Business, featuring a clamp tightening in on dollar signs.

Preferred Shares

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said America faces an economic crisis fifty years in the making. But how can we name the long crisis, much less explain it?
by Tim Barker via Phenomenal World on June 24, 2021

It’s Time to Break Up the Ivy League Cartel

Democracy requires something more than a handful of super-rich universities.
by Matt Stoller, Sam Haselby via The Chronicle of Higher Education on May 28, 2021
A graphic that reads "taxpayer dollars."

"Taxpayer Dollars:" The Origins of Austerity’s Racist Catchphrase

How the myth of the overburdened white taxpayer was made.
by Camille Walsh via Mother Jones on April 5, 2021
A composite photograph of South Carolina's majority-black legislature created and circulated by opponents of Reconstruction

The Austerity Politics of White Supremacy

Since the end of the Confederacy, the cult of the “taxpayer” has provided a socially acceptable veneer for racist attacks on democracy.
by Vanessa Williamson via Dissent on January 11, 2021

How Did the GOP Become the Party of Ideas?

If Trump was the end of the “party of ideas,” the rise of Reagan was its start. But what were those “ideas” in the first place, and were they really as new as people said?
by Lawrence B. Glickman via Boston Review on December 9, 2020

Built to Last

When overwhelmed unemployment insurance systems malfunctioned, governments blamed the 60-year-old programming language COBOL. But what really failed?
by Mar Hicks via Logic on August 31, 2020

We Should Still Defund the Police

Cuts to public services that might mitigate poverty and promote social mobility have become a perpetual excuse for more policing.
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The New Yorker on August 14, 2020

A Historian of Economic Crisis on the World After COVID-19

A leading expert on financial crises explains how the pandemic is upending economic orthodoxy and raising the stakes of the 2020 election.
by Eric Levitz, Adam Tooze via Intelligencer on August 7, 2020

When Conservatives Called to Freeze Police Budgets

The loudest opponents to police funding were once fiscal conservatives.
by David Helps via The Metropole on July 22, 2020

Joe Biden Tried to Cut Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare for 40 Years

Joe Biden was once a New Deal Democrat. Then he “evolved” and starting backing decades of Republican plans to cut Medicare and Social Security.
by Branko Marcetic via Jacobin on January 29, 2020

How the IRS Was Gutted

An eight-year campaign to slash the agency’s budget has left it understaffed and hamstrung. That's good news for corporations and the wealthy.
by Paul Kiel, Jesse Eisinger via ProPublica on December 11, 2018

Worlds Apart

How neoliberalism shapes the global economy and limits the power of democracies.
by Patrick Iber via The New Republic on April 23, 2018
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