Left Anchor

The WGA won their strike against the Hollywood studios, President Biden is on the UAW picket line, Trump is talking with scab parts workers, and New York City was flooded briefly. We talk about it.

Note: we discuss the possibility of replacing Dianne Feinstein at the beginning, before it was known that California Governor Newsom would nominate former labor organizer and Uber lobbyist Laphonza Butler to serve out the remainder of her term.

Today we've got economics professor Rob Larson back on the pod (see his previous episode here) to talk about the bizarre state of the economy. The labor market is red hot, inflation is higher than in almost 40 years, and there are calls from the capitalist class to strangle the boom. We discuss whether Jerome Powell is going to pull a Paul Volcker on the labor market and what might be done to ease price pressure. Then we discuss Facebook's hilarious "metaverse" faceplant in the context of Rob's great recent book Bit Tyrants. Enjoy!

We're reposting our episode from last year discussing It's a Wonderful Life, one of our favorite films of all time, and one that has only grown in relevance compared to when we grew up watching it decades past. Enjoy, and we hope everyone has a nice holiday season!

Today we've got political science Professor Neil Kraus on to talk about his book The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism, Inequality, and the Education Reform Movement. We discuss how all the promises that increasing educational attainment would cut poverty and inequality failed, how that can actually be accomplished with unions and the welfare state, and how a proper higher education system should work. Enjoy!

Friend of the pod David Kaib has been conducting multiple reading groups of the classic book Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed and How They Fail, by Francis Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, over the past year. The book has perhaps never been more relevant given the the historic protests over police brutality, the coronavirus pandemic, and economic inequality of late. We talk about what lessons might be drawn from the successes and failures of these protests, and how we should think about movement strategy going forward. Enjoy!