Jonathan Sas has worked in senior policy and political roles in government, think tanks, and the labor movement. He is an honorary witness to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. His writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, National Post, the Tyee, and Maisonneuve.
The dreaded wage-price spiral, the price hikes thought to be the result of wage increases, is the explanation for inflation preferred by bosses. The logic behind the idea is simple: bosses’ rights to profits can never, ever be infringed on.
With the Fed’s recent turn to brutally tight money, it’s easy to forget that its post–Great Recession policy of “quantitative easing” was an unprecedented experiment with loose money — whose distorting effects still shape the economy today.
The new series Fire Country revolves around an incarcerated California firefighter. Based on a real program, the drama is made possible by California’s budget priorities: few resources for climate protection or fire services and abundant investment in prisons.
The Right’s claims about the country aren’t just wrong, they’re often downright goofy. But conservatives’ complete disconnect from reality is nowhere near enough to dislodge them from power.
This week, French writer Annie Ernaux was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. In an interview, she explains how her class background and the reality of class divides shape her writing.
The pandemic pushed University of Michigan nurses to the breaking point, as supervisors forced overtime work to account for understaffing. So nurses organized through their union, winning a contract that should inspire nurses everywhere.
The last big energy crisis in the 1970s helped trigger a drastic shift from Keynesianism to neoliberalism. Today, we need to move in the opposite direction, away from the carbon-fueled neoliberal order responsible for another outbreak of economic chaos.
For a generation, academics have described a virtuous circle of democracy, free trade, and the empowerment of workers in developing countries. That’s simply not what neoliberalism has meant in practice.
Economic orthodoxy blames inflation on everyone except corporations and their windfall profits. It’s time to think about responding to inflation and recessions with policies that make corporations pay, not average workers.
In recent years, European coastguards have illegally pushed tens of thousands of people back across the EU’s sea borders. Now, a court challenge is exposing EU border agency Frontex’s conduct — and an immigration regime that deliberately drowns people.
Anjali Appadurai, democratic socialist leadership candidate for British Columbia’s New Democratic Party, is rattling the party establishment. Her bold left-wing politics have provoked what appears to be a smear campaign by operators within the party itself.
CEO pay has jumped nearly 1,500 percent since 1978. It had nothing to do with hard work or greater productivity. Corporate bosses simply grabbed what they could.
The “YIMBY” movement, which advocates expanded housing supply, includes many free-market boosters. But many YIMBYs have moved left in recent years.
The risk of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine is low but rising. It’s deeply concerning. But we should also resist the kind of alarmism that is counterproductive to both principled internationalism and winning a world free of nuclear weapons.
Celebrity chef José Andrés, owner of 31 restaurants, has made a name for himself as a philanthropic restaurateur. But while he generates headlines with displays of generosity, his company is quietly trying to block restaurant workers from receiving better pay.
France’s liberal president, Emmanuel Macron, spent his first term attacking key planks of the French welfare model. Now, he’s launching another war on pensions.
In June, police killed at least 37 people at the Moroccan-Spanish border at Melilla. Spain’s main parties have voted against an official inquest into the massacre — exposing the hollowness of the center-left government’s “progressive” credentials.
Chan Davis, who died last month at the age of 96, faced down McCarthyite blacklists and imprisonment to pursue a brilliant academic career. Davis knew how to change and learn from political experience, but he always remained loyal to his socialist principles.
The promise of US federalism is that states will be “laboratories of democracy,” more responsive and more innovative than the federal government. The reality is that states are more often laboratories of authoritarianism, dominated by the rich and powerful.
Citizen lawmaking through ballot initiatives is becoming an increasingly critical tool to counter minority rule and pass progressive policies. But Republican-led states are moving aggressively to make the ballot initiative process harder to use.