I had no idea.

Drum nails this one; thinking that this tells us anything about the effects of the over-all level of union strength (or pro-union laws) is a simple fallacy of composition.  Which economists  are shockingly ready to commit whenever they see a "natural experiment".

Observation: the longer Krugman keeps writing about political economy, the more he sounds like an angrier John Kenneth Galbraith.  Here he's calling for counterveiling power.

"Relative to, say, Kentucky, Europe is a continent full of countries featuring better educated, healthier, longer-lived people, with lower poverty rates and dramatically fewer poor children. It isn’t, however, as friendly to the interests of rich people or business managers."

Krugman's long-form take on what Obama should do, domestically, in year 1. Where do I sign up to help pressure Obama to do all this?

(And, in a "why oh why can't have a better press" moment, why does our leading public intellectual have to publish this in Rolling Stone, of all places?)

Inequality has risen in America because of political and institutional shifts. (Can you say "class struggle"? I knew you could.) Attempts to pretend that it is due to exogenous economic forces (patterns of trade, returns on education a.k.a. "skill-biased technological change") are at best underinformed, and in the case of people who should know better, such as economists, more likely disingenuous.

Good piece on links between manufacturing, education, urban revitalization & social capital. Stupid title.

Hooray for the dock workers!

Yay for the UAW! (Also: I now feel somewhat spineless about _my_ loyalty oath to the great state of Michigan.)

Nov. 2007 lecture

"A new generation with new economic stresses rediscovers the benefits of an old idea -- trade unionism." Let us pray.

No, graduate student unions do not destroy the collegiality of doctoral programs.

Thomas Geoghegan's truly excellent book about the labor movement and its travails, on sale cheap. Extremely strongly recommended.

Some of us learned this point at our parents' knees, but it bears repeating...

Strikes, that is, not felines.