July 14, 2023

June Jobs Report Sends Confusing Message

Chart from Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov(

There was not much excitement in the June  unemployment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percentage point to 3.6%. For 15 months the rate has stayed in a range of 3.4 to 3.7%. From a conventional point of view, that is full employment, but it is…


July 10, 2023

Repackaging a “New” Perspective on Climate Change

Rethinking Our World: an invitation to rescue our future By Maja Göpel (trans. David Shaw) Scribe US, 2023

Rethinking Our World: an invitation to rescue our future By Maja Göpel (trans. David Shaw) Scribe US, 2023 Climate anxiety is real. As news outlets deliver more images of burning forests, unbreathable air, and sinking coastlines, a deep sense of hopelessness only grows. Addressing climate change itself is just as anxiety-inducing, and debates ensue as to…


July 5, 2023

In Plain Sight: The Power of the Black Working Class

Blair LM Kelley's Facebook had this photo of a dozen roses surrounding her book, BLACK FOLK https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631496554

Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class (Liveright, 2023) By Blair LM Kelley Perhaps more than in any other period in living memory, we are witness to a wide-scale assault on the humanities. Funding has been slashed; admissions and enrollments are down; positions are being eliminated; and, most alarming of all, Republican-led state…


June 22, 2023

Major Work Stoppages, 1993-2022

Stagnant wage growth and suppressed working class power since the 1980s has coincided with a historic ebb in the use of the strike weapon to secure concessions.


June 18, 2023

Juneteenth: The Slave’s Cause, the Socialists’ Cause

Celebration at Emancipation Park 1880 touched up. A group photograph of thirty-one people at a Juneteenth Celebration in Emancipation Park in Houston's Fourth Ward. Reverend Jack Yates is pictured on the left and Sallie Yates is pictured in the center toward the front in a black outfit.

“After emancipation there would come questions of labor, wage and political power. But now, first, must be demanded that ordinary human freedom and recognition of essential manhood which slavery blasphemously denied. This philosophy of freedom was a logical continuation of the freedom philosophy of the eighteenth century which insisted that Freedom was not an End…


June 15, 2023

The Jobs Report for May: A Mixed Bag

There was mixed news in the latest government job reports. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) household survey of workers in May brought the bad news. For one thing the official unemployment rate rose by .3 to 3.7%. That is still pretty low by conventional standards, but it is moving in the wrong direction. And…