Doug Henwood edits Left Business Observer and is the host of Behind the News. His latest book is My Turn.
The latest economic numbers are dismal: GDP is projected to be down 33 percent from the first to second quarter of 2020. Even if we see some recovery soon, the long-term damage — people unemployed, businesses shuttered, confidence hammered — will be massive and lingering.
The United States is facing an unprecedented economic, political, and social breakdown. With the Right discredited and the Democrats out of ideas, now is the time for socialists to think big.
The only thing keeping workers in the United States from absolute destitution has been unemployment insurance and other social welfare benefits. If Congress doesn’t extend unemployment benefits at the end of the month, the economy will hurl off a cliff — and millions will be immiserated.
A new study finds that American jails — not just prisons — are a major hot spot for spreading coronavirus. The solution is simple: stop arresting so many people.
We could experience in months what took three or four years to unfold after the 1929 stock market crash. Things are going to be very bad unless we see some serious structural reforms.
Our economy is crashing hard and fast. But with a bold set of policies, like nationalizing the banks to fund a Green New Deal, we can save millions of workers from untold suffering — and transform the country in the process.
There’s lots of breathless talk these days about robots replacing all of our jobs. But if you look at the data, there’s little indication that’s actually going to happen.
Getting rid of Trump would be great, but Congress isn’t going to do it — we actually have to vote him out. And impeachment, a therapeutic ritual for MSNBC hosts and an act of score-settling by the national security state, isn’t helping.
Paul Volcker, who died yesterday, won’t be mourned by this publication. As Federal Reserve chair under Reagan and Carter, he destroyed millions of working-class jobs and pushed a radical neoliberal program.
On November 30, 1999, activists shut down the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle. The protests were a thrilling moment during bleak times for the socialist left. Now, years of resistance are finally paying off.
Is Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-for-All phase-in plan a shrewd, realistic tactical move to win a public health system — or a bait and switch to play to M4A’s popularity without actually fighting for it? Wall Street thinks it’s the latter.
We should be clear about what it will take to fund a decent welfare state: not just soaking the rich, but raising taxes across the board — so everyone can have the basics for the good life.
A glance at the company’s recently released prospectus reveals the truth about Uber: it’s a scam.
An internationalist, anti-imperialist vision has been all but abandoned by the Left. We need to rebuild that vision.
Elizabeth Warren is no socialist — but unlike most of the candidates beating her in the polls, she’s a tough-minded liberal who makes the right kind of enemies.
The original New Deal was a bold, visionary effort that transformed the economic and political life of the country. The Green New Deal could do even more.
MMT is billed by its advocates as a radical new way to understand money and debt. But it’ll take more than a few keystrokes to change the economy.
The Los Angeles teachers strike showed that bottom-up organizing can overcome extraordinary odds. We can do the same throughout the health and education sectors — and at Amazon.
Despite a string of encouraging strikes and labor victories, the latest numbers show that union density fell to a new low last year.
“Post-work” Marxism aims to liberate us from the coercion of wage labor. But without a program for reorganizing production, it can only return us to the tyranny of the market.