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Out of 6.2 billion people in the world today, 1.2 billion live on less than $1 per day. 70% of these people are women and girls. Read more One half of the world population lives on less than $2 per day. 160 million live on less than 50 cents. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. Read more The World Health Organization estimates that 1/3 of the world population is well-fed, 1/3 is under-fed, and 1/3 is starving. Read more Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read or write. A quarter of the world's population lives without electricity. Read more Approximately half the world's population lives in cities and towns. Read more By 2005, one out of three of urban dwellers was living in slum conditions, approximately 1 billion or 1/6 of the world's population. Read more There are about 14 million refugees (estimates range from 11 to 17 million) and 26 million internally displaced people (2007) in more than 50 countries. Read more The UN Development program estimates that only $13 billion is what is needed to provide for the health and nutritional needs of the world's poorest people. There are now over 1000 billionaires in the world. Read more The net worth of the richest thousand or so is about twice that of the poorest 2.5 billion people on the earth. The poorest 10% accounted for .5% and the wealthiest 10% for 59% of all consumption. Read more 12 million people die each year from the lack of water, including 3 million children from water-born disease. Read more 1.1 billion lack access to clean water; 2.6 billion live without decent sanitation; 4 billion without waste water disposal-that's approximately 1/6, 1/3 and 2/3 of the world's population respectively. Read more The poorest 10% accounted for .5% and the wealthiest 10% for 59% of all consumption. Read more In 2007 global GDP was $47 trillion. The top 250 companies in the world had combined sales of $14.87 trillion, that\'s 1/3 of global GDP and exceeds the GDP of the USA and EU. Read more The combined sales of the top 5 companies of $1.5 trillion is larger than the GDP of all but 7 countries. Read more One Measure of the Bubble: The gross amount of financial transactions amounts to two thousand trillion dollars, while the world GDP is only 44 thousand trillion. Read more 70% of these people are women and girls. Read more Out of 6.2 billion people in the world today, 1.2 billion live on less that $1 per day. Read more

Economy Watch

by Les Leopold

from AlterNet,

3/26/2013

by Kevin Ovenden

from leftunity.org, 3/18/13

by Richard Wolff

from the Guardian, 3/16/13

by Lisa Margonelli

from Pacific Standard,
1/22/13

Shoddy political theater distracts people with vague demons called debt ceiling, fiscal cliff and now, sequester. Party leaders posture for major donors, media boosters and the faithful. They claim to save us from the demons. Meanwhile, backstage they all agree on austerity as the "necessary" response to "our major problem," namely federal budget "imbalance." "We" are spending "beyond our means," accumulating "government debts." So "we" must raise taxes and cut spending - impose austerity - to regain balance.

by Richard D. Wolff

from Truthout, 3/8/13

by the editors of Monthly Review

Monthly Review, March 2013

The attempt by government to mix the public and private market response to disasters such as Sandy, or indeed to mix the two in dealing with the crisis in housing for lower-income households, will bear some strange fruit. The likely effect will be to increase segregation and inequality, based on experience with the workings of the private market in housing. Two examples illustrate the danger: Governor Cuomo’s plans to deal with units damaged by Sandy, and Mayor Bloomberg’s plans to deal with the underfunding of public housing.

by Peter Marcuse

from Peter Marcuse's
blog, 2/21/13

What is the European crisis? One answer is that it makes the privatization of public assets inevitable, delivering big profits for private individuals and organizations. As Greece, Spain and Portugal demonstrates. Europe is being sucked into a downward spiral caused by counterproductive measures, while the crisis carries on its slow, relentless work. Families, if they can, save money, and cut spending. Companies do not invest. Banks are reducing the credit. A crisis of external debt (mostly private) has been dressed up as a crisis of public debt.

by Agenor

from Sbilanciamoci.info,
2/21/13

Years ago when the countries of eastern Europe were struggling to "adjust" their political, social and economic mechanisms to those of Western capitalist economy and liberal democracy, you noted in Geopolitics and Geoculture that "False conclusions are being drawn in the (ex-)Communist world, where the magic of the market is supplanting the magic of planning, whereas the market will by and large be no more efficacious an instrument of economic welfare for these states that had been planning, since the primary economic difficulties of these states derived (and derive) not from their

Immanuel Wallerstein interviewed by Almantas Samalavicius

from Eurozine, 2/8/13

interview with Imara Jones

from Democracy Now!,
2/21/13

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Economy Watch

Socialism in North Dakota?

Cyprus: The Eurozone Crisis Re-ignites

The Capitalist Wasteland

The Power of the Gini Index

The Austerity "Mistake"

Conscious Capitalism at Whole Foods

Sandy, Housing, the Market, and the State’s Planning Response

Privatizing Europe

A New World-System?

The Cost of Sequestration