July/August 2019

The Plutonomy—AI Edition—and the Coming Crisis

Driven by speculative finance, stagnant wages, and AI hype, today’s tech-heavy economy mirrors the fragile plutonomy that collapsed into the Great Crash of 1929.

Why the Climate Crisis Is Also the Crisis of Capitalism

Ying Chen and Güney Işikara

The people in charge of our economic surplus—capitalists—seem unwilling to deploy that surplus for social purposes like a Green New Deal. | Read more »
U.S. Agriculture Needs a 21st-Century New Deal

Maywa Montenegro, Joshua Sbicca, and Annie Shattuck

A just transition requires a system-wide shift that cuts carbon emissions, reduces vulnerability to climate chaos, and prioritizes economic justice | Read more »
Dangerous Talk on Education
and Economic Mobility

John Miller

Beyond the College Admissions Bribery Scandal. | Read more »
With Foreign Trade, Are Progressives and Trump on the Same Page?

Arthur MacEwan

Dear Dr. Dollar: Given Trump's positions on issues like tariffs and trade agreements, are Trump and progressives on the same page on foreign trade? | Read more »

Available only in the print edition:

What I Learned (and Didn't Learn) in Econ 100

Tim Koechlin

Introductory economics courses celebrate the "efficiency" of the "market system" and smugly dismiss important questions.

the regulars

editor’s note Resource Hoarding and Downward Spirals
the short run
in review Joseph Stiglitz, People, Power, and Profits, and Richard Vague, A Brief History of Doom
45th anniversary reprints From November 1988: Public Capital, Private Profits

The Plutonomy—AI Edition—and the Coming Crisis

Metal of the Past, Metal of the Future

The Latest Job Calamity—Mostly Home-Made

July/August 2019

Available only in the print edition:

the regulars