economics

"Now we think not only us are going to have to review our sense of comfort. I am not very comfortable." says Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers union. Gerard himself was once a union representative at a facility that mined and refined uranium, and he represents many workers in such dangerous conditions across the country today. The USW has long been part of the Blue-Green Alliance, creating a labor-environmentalist coalition, but stopped short of calling for an end to nuclear power--but will that change after Japan? Leo joins Laura via Skype to discuss the crisis in Japan, the situation of the workers there, and why this crisis is linked to workers' protests around the US. Republicans have NPR and PBS in their sights once again, and once again progressives and media reformers have to fight for every penny that public media gets. Just how many pennies is that, though? Sally Kohn of Movement Vision puts that funding in perspective in this video. "You see this coming together of networks of educated people—I call them the graduates with no future—with the urban poor, with sometimes organized labor. This mixture is there everywhere the protests have been," says Paul Mason, Economics editor of BBC Newsnight and author of Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global. Mason notes that from student protests in London to workers in Wisconsin, revolution in Tunisia to uprising in Libya, many of the same characteristics are visible. Paul joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the global protest movement, the role of social media, what different areas have in common, and much more. You can see Paul and Laura along with Cornel West and Barbara Ehrenreich in New York on Friday night at the opening plenary of the Left Forum--more information here! Finally, the US Government paid $2.3 million to have CIA contractor Raymond Davis freed in Pakistan. But what are other lives worth--or other jobs? Distributed by Tubemogul.

"It's a very, very exciting time to be involved in politics," says the New Statesman's Laurie Penny, who has a cover story in the magazine this week on what's next for the student protesters in London now that the Liberal Democrat/Conservative government has passed the education budget cuts. Disability funding and even the National Health Service are in the sights of the government's hatchet, and the students are hard at work reaching out to broaden their coalition. Laurie joins us while on the move in London to talk student protests, the connection with activists around the globe, the Cairo and Tunisia protests, and more. "Economics has a lot to do with unhappiness," says Helena Norberg-Hodge, co-director of The Economics of Happiness. "We have an economic system that is systematically creating job scarcity worldwide," she notes, and it's time that we stopped obsessing about bottom lines, corporate growth, and income at the top and started to think about other ways of measuring positive effects in global society. Helena is also the author of Ancient Futures, and she joins us in studio to talk about the need for economic literacy, new models of measuring happiness, and finding a balance between rural and urban life. Finally, as New Yorkers dig ourselves out from another snowstorm, Laura notes that even the New York Times and a federal investigation have found no evidence that union workers caused the streets to remain unplowed back in December. That would be budget cuts and layoffs. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Last week the World Bank warned of "serious tensions and pitfalls" ahead in the global economy, and less than three percent growth for the U.S. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"People are still looking at and facing too much pain," says Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who joined Bernie Sanders for part of his eight and a half hour speech against giving tax breaks to millionaires. Brown notes that while the compromise which eventually passed gives some short-term help to American workers, but that the economy will not begin to really recover until Washington turns its focus to jobs--and not just any jobs, but reinvigorated manufacturing jobs.Senator Brown joins us from Washington via Skype to discuss what he sees as the most important priorities for a shrunken Democratic majority in the Senate in the next session of Congress, and particularly why a focus on our trade policy is ; long overdue."The American people were pioneers again, not by going west but by going into debt," says economist Rick Wolff of the last 30 years of our economy. While wages stayed low and infrastructure, education and energy investments bottomed out, Americans leveraged everything on credit cards and loans to keep afloat. And now, despite record Wall Street bonuses and holiday shopping, the economy is still built on fundamental flaws.Rick Wolff and Jeff Madrick join us in studio for a year-end conversation about the economy--looking forward to 2011, what can we expect? And more importantly, what will it take to really change the shaky foundations on which our economy rests?And finally, John Fugelsang just wants to take a moment to wish ‘happy holidays’ to all our friends angry about the ‘war on Christmas.’