Episode 219: "Not Totally Without Historical Significance"

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We are taught from childhood to save, because a penny saved can lead to a penny earned. What happens, though, when others have investments that take every penny we have? I explore this in Episode 219: "Not Totally Without Historical Significance."

In this episode, I read from: The Hipcrime Vocab's January 14th article, "The Big Housing Lie"^* (which itself quoted other sources that I also read); Chuck Collins' book, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions; an Atlantic article called "When Wall Street Is Your Landlord"; and Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Bernie Sanders opens the show backed by KMFDM; and I close with Mistle Thrush.

^*NB: Something changed between my email client's download and his blog entry's current title. Throughout the episode, I refer to the article as "The False Housing Crisis Narrative." Please don't let the discrepancy bother you.

Episode 218: Why (r > g) Matters

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Who can we trust in the “sciences”? In this episode, I offer academic research—later discounted by evidence—for years considered sacrosanct simply because it protects a hidden agenda of political economy. Hence, today's Episode 218: Why (r > g) Matters.

In this episode, I read from: a book by Chuck Collins called The Wealth Hoarders (which I will no doubt be relating more in coming episodes); Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century; and two Wikipedia pages, one on The Kuznets Curve, the other on The Gilded Age.

I play: a snippet from the television series cartoon version of the comic Dilbert, where Nobel-prize winners gathered on a bus have a disagreement on what kind of academic research does——and what does not——constitute a science. As I mentioned in Episode 20, that is still a hot but smoldering controversy. Musically, I open the show with Henry Giroux backed by KMFDM's "Attak"; I close today with Julie & Rolf & The Campfire Gang doing "Over The Rainbow".