economic history 
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SOURCE: New York Magazine
3/28/2022
How Economic Historian Adam Tooze Pushed the "Dirtbag Left" Off the Podcasting Throne
For a certain left-leaning online audience, Tooze's rigorous approach is beating out ironic smartassery and the shallower efforts of some self-styled "explainers" to build a potent public intellectual brand.
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SOURCE: Boston Review
3/9/2022
Bad Economics
by Simon Torracinta
A historian of science reviews three books on the history of economic thought, which support the conclusion that the ideas animating the mainstream of the discipline and enabling it to dominate discussions of policy are badly in need of reexamination.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
2/7/2022
The Economy is Good, Actually
by Zachary D. Carter
An economic historian says that the recovery from the pandemic is historically good in terms of the share of gains going to low-income workers, but the politics are not working in the Democrats' favor.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
12/2/2021
After 20 Years, Enron Still Haunts Us
by Gavin Benke
Despite Enron's bankruptcy and the resulting economic fallout, American business media is still dangerously credulous toward promises of "innovation" and "disruption" without asking whether the latest hot entrepreneur is using smoke and mirrors.
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SOURCE: NPR
11/29/2021
Lizabeth Cohen: Why Americans Buy So Much Stuff
As holiday shopping overlaps with historic supply chain disruptions, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talks with Lizabeth Cohen on the economy's reliance on spending and the culture of consumerism in the U.S.
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SOURCE: Dissent
11/10/2021
"The Ivory Tower is Dead": An Interview with Davarian Baldwin
Davarian L. Baldwin's work interrogates how universities in postindustrial cities exemplify new models of economic development and are implicated in the problems of labor exploitation, gentrification and inequality.
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SOURCE: The Nation
11/1/2021
Land of Capital: Jonathan Levy's "Ages of American Capital" Reviewed
by Steven Hahn
"Ages of Capitalism" is one of the first synthetic accounts of the relationship of capitalism and American politics and society, and provides an important vocabulary for a developing field of inquiry. It also, oddly, resonates with the older consensus history that assumed capitalism as a core part of American life.
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SOURCE: Woodrow Wilson Center and National History Center
9/17/2021
Indentured Students: Elizabeth Tandy Shermer on Student Debt (Monday, October 4)
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer shows that Democrats and Republicans intentionally wanted to create a student loan industry instead of generously funding colleges and universities, which eventually left millions of Americans drowning in student debt. Zoom, Monday, Oct. 4, 4:00 PM EDT.
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9/19/2021
Inequality Tends to Reach Political Tipping Points – Is That Happening Today?
by Richard Vague
"Proposals for a $15 minimum wage, more support for childcare and education, and even an alternative minimum income did not emerge out of nowhere as radical notions imported from Western Europe."
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SOURCE: Washington Post
9/13/2021
The History of the Debt Ceiling: How a Routine Procedure Became Routine Political Brinksmanship
It's clear that the originators of legislation establishing a debt limit for the United States did not intend for the measure to be a land mine threatening to derail the government's operations on a recurring basis.
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SOURCE: New York Times
9/1/2021
What if the Coronavirus Crisis Is Just a Trial Run?
by Adam Tooze
The disjointed and haphazard global response to the COVID pandemic bodes poorly for the world's capacity for coordinated action to face inevitable crisies in the near future. The problem isn't a lack of means but a lack of commitment to collective action.
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SOURCE: Democracy
8/31/2021
Wartime Wisdom to Combat Inflation
by David Stein
Today, monetary policy controlled by the Federal Reserve is the only tool commonly used to control inflation, pitting controlling prices against full employment and wage growth. The history of the World War II Office of Price Administration reveals other possibilities.
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SOURCE: Project Syndicate
8/31/2021
Back to the Seventies?
by Kenneth Rogoff
Problems of political economy complicate the job central bankers face in setting interest rates. From international relations to domestic politics to an aging population, an economist considers the similarities and differences between now and the 1970s.
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SOURCE: The Economist
8/28/2021
The Economist Reviews Adam Tooze's Contemporary History of the COVID Economy
"The challenge of instant history is that its judgments can be overtaken by events."
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SOURCE: Boston Review
8/19/2021
The Real Political Danger of Inflation
by Andrew Elrod
Democrats have not lost elections because of inflation, but because they have imagined austerity politics as the only solution to inflation.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
8/5/2021
Policymakers in the 1960s Laid the Groundwork for the Student Debt Crisis. Policymakers Today Can Undo It.
by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer
"Lawmakers purposefully crafted the Guaranteed Student Loan Program to jump-start a student loan industry — instead of really investing in colleges and universities to keep costs down or forcing them to provide young people with genuinely equal opportunities to enroll."
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SOURCE: Washington Center for Equitable Growth
6/24/2021
New Research Shows Slavery’s Central Role in U.S. Economic Growth Leading up to the Civil War
Historian Sven Beckert and economist Mark Stelzner's collaborative research applies new methods for quantifying how much the labor productivity of enslaved people contributed to economic output, as well as identifying the gap between white households with and without slaves as a driver of inequality.
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SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
5/25/2021
What Scaremongering About Inflation Gets Wrong
by Rebecca L. Spang
Inflation has become a subject of political dread as Americans have shifted from seeing themselves as producers to seeing themselves as consumers. But historical perspective shows that policy picks winners and losers and is dependent on choices about what to measure and how.
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SOURCE: The Atlantic
5/24/2021
How 24 Hours of Racist Violence Caused Decades of Harm
by Jeremy Cook and Jason Long
Census analysis shows how the Tulsa race massacre inaugurated a U-turn in the economic fortunes of the city's black community and gives a sense of the value of property lost.
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SOURCE: New York Times
4/24/2021
The Woman Who Shattered the Myth of the Free Market
Joan Robinson theorized the problem of monopsony as workers attempting to sell their labor are hurt by the small number of buyers.
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