February 6, 2015
The Case for Slowly Getting Out of the Empire Business
If all you witnessed late last month were the speeches of Republican presidential hopefuls at the Freedom Summit in Iowa, you could be forgiven for thinking that the main thing wrong with US foreign policy these days is that, in countries far from these shores, too few people are currently being killed by American weapons.1 […] read more »
January 21, 2015
The President’s “Queen’s Speech”- Too Little, Too Late?
The United Kingdom and the United States are divided by more than a common language. They are divided too by the different character of the political systems prevalent in each. They do however share a propensity for political theater. The UK has a major example of that theater once each year, when the Queen gives […] read more »
January 1, 2015
New Year Reflections on the US Global Role.
The first hours of a new year are always an ideal time for people across the globe to reflect on their contemporary condition. They are an ideal moment to look back, in the hope that serious reflection now can improve conditions going forward. And it is particularly vital that we in America take this moment […] read more »
December 1, 2014
Taking the Imperial out of American Imperialism
“You can do many things with a bayonet, except sit on it.” (Talleyrand) There is never a good or easy time to argue that the United States should begin to completely reset the character of its foreign policy, especially when the argument being made – as here – is that a key element in that […] read more »
October 28, 2014
The American Economy at Mid-Term
It is mid-term season in America: time for the Administration to talk up the strengths of the economy. The President did so a week ago, wanting “people to know that there are some really good things happening in America.” And since in economic terms, it is also bleak mid-winter in the Eurozone, it is additionally […] read more »
October 9, 2014
Hype & Reality: American Economic Numbers
It is mid-term season in America: time for the Administration to talk up the strengths of the economy. The President did so in Evanston a week ago, wanting “people to know that there are some really good things happening in America.”[1] The worst of the recession is at last behind us. Since in economic […] read more »
September 2, 2014
Tea Party Time on both sides of the Atlantic
There is always a complex but close relationship between economic conditions and political options, such that the understanding of one invariably requires an understanding of the other. That is particularly true in periods of sharp economic or political change of the kind we have known since 2008. The decision by the MP, Douglas […] read more »
August 5, 2014
Responding to David Brooks: The Question of Poverty and Character
David Brooks’ recent essay on “The Character Factory” would have us believe that “nearly every parent on earth operates on the assumption that character matters a lot to the life outcomes of their children” while “nearly every government anti-poverty program operates on the assumption that it doesn’t.” Assertions like that, coming in the wake […] read more »
July 19, 2014
Defending Trade Unions while the Justices are Away.
The nine justices of the Supreme Court are now in recess, leaving the rest of us the summer in which to reflect upon and digest their latest set of rulings – particularly the two handed down on the last day before they took their break. Quite properly, given its reactionary nature, their 5:4 ruling on […] read more »
July 15, 2014
Economics and the Gathering Storm
One lesson that you kind of learn the hard way in American politics is that it is always a mistake to think that, from a progressive point of view, things are so bad that they can’t get any worse. You only have to think it before the ground shifts under your feet again. I know […] read more »
July 8, 2014
Reflections on Economic Under-performance on Both Sides of the Atlantic
One of the most intriguing problems in any form of contemporary analysis – political or economic – is to judge whether contemporary trends are best read as a glass half-full or a glass half-empty. The events themselves rarely dictate which view should prevail: almost always the judgment call (and it is necessarily a matter of […] read more »
June 12, 2014
Winning in November by Defending the Affordable Care Act Now.
Lindsey Graham’s recent warning that Republicans might yet push for a presidential impeachment serves to demonstrate, if further demonstration was still required, of just how brutal Washington politics could get if his party ends up in control of both Houses of Congress after the mid-term elections in November. In progressive terms, the achievements of the […] read more »
May 13, 2014
Progressives Politics after Piketty: Making the Case for Managed Markets
It is very rare for the Left to have a best-seller but we have one now. The French economist Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is currently being both widely read and even more widely discussed. That is great news. The question it leaves us with is how to put all that reading and […] read more »
April 14, 2014
Dozing through “the Great Moving Right Show”
The greatest danger currently facing all of us in America, and particularly progressives, is one of drift. As an economy, the United States is drifting along a low-growth path that is acclimatizing all of us to levels of unemployment which only a decade ago would have been treated as an outrage. As a society, […] read more »
March 16, 2014
Paul Ryan as the Prince of Paupers
Given the scale and depth of poverty in the United States, it is not surprising that periodically debates about it should surface in Washington DC. What is more surprising is that the issue of poverty is not permanently center-stage. It did return there briefly last week because of the publication of a report on the […] read more »
March 13, 2014
The Poverty of Policy on Poverty
Earlier this month, those who govern us – and those who would govern us – each laid out their vision of how to alleviate poverty in the United States. Since there is currently a rather large amount of poverty around that ideally would be rapidly alleviated,[1] you could legitimately expect that the proposals that […] read more »
February 16, 2014
The Cost of Empire? Extracts from “America in the Shadow of Empires” (forthcoming)
Extract (1) From Chapter 1 THE U.S. GLOBAL MILITARY FOOTPRINT One thing that is definitely building up around us is the scale, extent and cost of America’s military role overseas. Historically, that scale was modest and the role was limited – mainly to the Americas and to a number of Pacific islands – but no […] read more »
February 16, 2014
The Long-Term State of the Union – Counting the Cost of Empire?
There is something desperate about the current quality of politics in Washington DC. It is not that our elected representatives steadily avoid any discussion of key issues. It is rather that – on far too many occasions – the way in which they choose to discuss those key issues trivializes them to the […] read more »
January 24, 2014
In Defense of the NHS
There has been a lot of talk and writing lately, by Cal Thomas and others uneasy with Obamacare, about the lessons that we can and should draw from what they characterize as the failure of socialized medicine in the U.K. In doing so, the picture they draw of health care in the U.K. […] read more »
January 11, 2014
America’s War on Poverty, America’s War on the Poor
January 2014 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the State of the Union Address in which Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty.[1] This anniversary is leading to much soul-searching here in the United States.[2] Partly that soul-searching reflects the high levels of poverty that persist in contemporary America. The US does not define the poverty […] read more »
December 30, 2013
New Year Reflections: The Character of the Task before Us
The start of a new year is always a good moment for reflection on the nature of our present condition. It is an even better moment for the adoption of resolutions designed to improve that condition. So perhaps we should try both. read more »
November 13, 2013
Negative Freedom or Positive Freedom: Time to Choose?
In the seemingly never-ending battle over the scope of government in America – on issues from gun control and climate change to federal spending and the Affordable Care Act – opponents of active government regularly mix detailed criticism of immediate policy consequences with more general arguments about the erosion of basic freedoms. read more »
October 26, 2013
Advice to Progressives in a Conservative State
The Governor of North Carolina is becoming quite a megastar in conservative circles these days. He was a welcome addition to the gubernatorial campaign of Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia last Thursday, when he was fresh back from an address to the prestigious Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. The Heritage Foundation hailed Pat McCrory as […] read more »
October 9, 2013
Placing the Affordable Care Act in the Wider Debate on Healthcare Systems
Right now, hysteria inside the Republican Party about the flaws of the Affordable Care Act is running very high indeed. So high in fact that Representative Todd Rokita (R-IN) was not treated as mentally insane by his party’s leadership last week for denouncing Obamacare as “one of the most insidious laws ever devised.”[1] […] read more »
October 3, 2013
Like father, like son? Ralph Miliband’s political legacy
In the wake of the Daily Mail furor, those of us fortunate enough to have known Ralph Miliband as both an intellectual and a political activist recognize well enough that having him as your father is not a negative for any leader of the Labour Party. It is very much a plus. read more »
October 3, 2013
The American Student Debt Crisis: The Next Financial Timebomb?
In an earlier SPERI comment, Joanne Montgomerie wrote persuasively of household debt being the silent dimension of the financial crisis afflicting both the British and the American economies, and treated that debt as the most telling consequence of the broken Anglo-liberal growth model. She is undoubtedly correct in writing in that manner. read more »
October 1, 2013
Exactly how is the Affordable Care Act an affront to freedom?
In all the understandable cacophony about the shutdown of government, the underlying trigger to that shutdown – Tea Party opposition to the Affordable Care Act – is in danger of falling out of the public spotlight. But that must not happen. The government is being shut down for a reason, and we need to examine […] read more »
September 17, 2013
The Half-Forgotten Student Debt Crisis
The debt ceiling debate is poised to return to the center-stage of American domestic politics. The Bipartisan Policy Center anticipates that the U.S. Treasury will hit the current debt ceiling sometime between October 18 and November 5, read more »
August 30, 2013
Back to Basics on the Question of Labor
As we prepare to celebrate another Labor Day, we do well to remember that celebrating labor on just one day always runs the risk of implying that every other day is not a labor day. Celebratory days can invite tokenism as equally as they can generate empathy. Celebrating the fact of labor can so easily […] read more »
August 6, 2013
Resisting Republican Excess
Very dark political forces stalk the land, and we do ourselves, and those who will come after us, no favors by pretending otherwise. read more »
July 29, 2013
Swopping Conservatives
(originally published on the Comment page of the UK’s University of Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute) read more »
June 30, 2013
Half-forgotten or Totally Forgotten – Poverty in America?
Successful progressive politics require widespread popular support for progressive programs, and there is no way in which that support can be created without those programs being fully and regularly explained. But on so many important issues, that is simply not happening right now. True, the scale of unemployment[1] is periodically decried by politicians […] read more »
June 14, 2013
European Lessons for an America in Debt
With the Senate currently preoccupied with immigration and the House of Representatives with abortion, you might be forgiven for thinking that there is nothing seriously awry in the American economy right now – nothing so awry at least that it requires determined and detailed political action. But you would be mistaken. There are lots of […] read more »
June 13, 2013
Observing British Labour Politics from Afar
Reflections on the strategic dilemmas currently facing the British Labour Party, originally published (June 13, 2013) as “Walking Forward, Looking Back” on the Political Insight/Blog webpage of the U.K. Political Studies Association read more »
May 25, 2013
The Half-forgotten Debt Crisis
The attention span in Washington DC these days is remarkably short, and multi-tasking is something at which Congress seems particularly inept. So right now the focus there is overwhelming on just one thing, scandals – some genuine, some imagined, all minor – while the real business of the American people goes largely unexamined. The […] read more »
May 6, 2013
America’s Half-forgotten Housing Crisis
On the housing front, the good news is that the President wants Mel Watt to head the FHFA. The bad news is that, precisely because the President wants him, there is no certainty that Mel Watt will be confirmed. read more »
May 2, 2013
Gridlock in Washington: Conservative Heaven!
Commentary on recent developments in American politics, written for a British audience read more »
April 19, 2013
The Forgotten Jobs Crisis
Perhaps it is the sheer size of this country that makes important problems invisible – with each problem so localized and personal as not to count in public discourse. Or perhaps it is the sheer size of the problems themselves that enables them to hide in the open –with each so large and so ubiquitous […] read more »
