ES EN
Menu Menú

Publications

Publicaciones

Search Publications

Buscar publicaciones

Filters Filtro de búsqueda

to a

clear selection Quitar los filtros

none

Article Artículo

Latin America and the Caribbean

Venezuela

World

Tracing the Threads in Venezuela: “Playing a Game of Chicken”

On January 23, the United States recognized Juan Guaidó as president of Venezuela. As CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot has pointed out in The Nation, this is not a merely diplomatic maneuver:

On January 23, the Trump administration announced that it was recognizing Juan Guaidó, currently head of the Venezuelan National Assembly, as “interim president” of the country. By doing so (together with politically allied countries), Washington basically imposed a trade embargo against Venezuela. This is because any revenue from oil sales to about three-quarters of Venezuela’s export markets?the United States and its allies?would no longer go to the government but to the “interim president.”

On Tuesday, the International Crisis Group’s Ivan Briscoe wrote in Foreign Affairs that around 90 percent of the Venezuelan population receives food aid from Maduro’s government, a crucial lifeline currently endangered by US policy:

The state now provides citizens with monthly boxes of subsidized rations that offer high-carb sustenance—pasta, rice, and flour—along with a few tins of tuna. According to a recent independent social survey, these boxes are now provided to more than seven million households, or around 90 percent of the population; a high-level government source estimates the cost at more than $400 million a month.

But the state’s food supply is now in peril. At the end of January, the United States sanctioned Venezuela’s state-run oil firm, PDVSA, which until then had been the Maduro government’s single largest source of hard currency. By freezing the proceeds on its purchases of Venezuelan oil, the United States hoped to starve the regime and convince factions within the government to abandon Maduro, making way for Guaidó and free elections.

In the Financial Times, noted Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez wrote that humanitarian aid was inadequate to make up the shortfall resulting from Venezuela’s economic collapse:

CEPR and Alexander Campbell / March 03, 2019

Article Artículo

Bill Niskanen and a Collectible Corporate Income Tax

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.)

Bill Niskanen was the rarest of all creatures, an honest libertarian. He actually believed in libertarian ideas, rather than just using them as an excuse for policies to redistribute income upward.

He headed the Cato Institute for more than two decades, from 1985 until 2008. While CATO generally took conservative views, it also followed Niskanen’s principled libertarianism. This meant the institute was anti-imperialist. Niskanen argued that we needed a defense budget to protect the United States, not to police the world. Cato regularly called for sharper declines in military spending than almost all the liberal think tanks in DC.

He also was a strong opponent of the Iraq War. I remember in the months leading up to the war, bumping into him at various events. Bill would point to the various Republican foreign policy experts (not those in the Bush administration) who had publicly warned of the dangers of the war.

He would ask me “where are the Democrats?” While I could point to then fringe figures, like Bernie Sanders, the fact was that most of the Democratic leadership had fallen in line in support of the war. (Nancy Pelosi was a notable exception.) Bill’s opposition to the war angered many prominent Republicans, including Cato donors.

Anyhow, when I was on a panel with him, it was usually to discuss economic issues. I always appreciated his honesty. I remember, back in the 1990s, debating replacing the progressive income tax with a flat tax, which was a popular idea among Republicans at the time. Most of the flat tax proponents would come up with absurd stories about everyone would pay less, and we would end up with just as much revenue.

Once with Bill, I got to go first, and said something to the effect of “a flat tax is about having the middle class pay more so that the rich can pay less.” Bill responded by saying that this is essentially right, but went on to explain how this would be a good thing, because it would lead to a more efficient tax system, and therefore more growth, and make everyone better off. Bill believed this, so he didn’t have to lie.

CEPR / March 01, 2019

Article Artículo

United States

Workers

We’re Not All Going to Be Gig Economy Workers After All

Social networks and the development of platform technologies have drastically transformed the way people live, work, and spend their money. The use of information and communication technologies has become an important aspect of jobs in occupations ranging from medical assistants to fast food operators, lawyers, steel workers, and others employed in traditional employment relations. The growth and popularity of online and app-based platforms like Uber, GrubHub, and TaskRabbit have raised the profile of the gig economy* and created the impression that employer-less work and gig jobs are a pervasive aspect of modern employment. A lack of consistent, rigorous data on twenty-first-century employment relations allowed speculation about the role of independent contractors, and especially gig workers, to dominate conversations about the future of work.

CEPR and Adewale Maye / February 28, 2019

Article Artículo

Workers

Labor Market Policy Research Reports, February 2019

CEPR regularly publishes a curated collection of original research from academic institutions and nonprofits on the state of the US labor market. The compilation is part of our ongoing effort to promote informed debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives.


Center for American Progress (CAP)

Trump’s Trade Deal and the Road Not Taken

In November 2018, the Trump administration prioritized and signed a revision to the Northern American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that was rebranded as the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). Unfortunately, President Trump’s agreement fails to deliver on strong labor and environmental standards that workers need. Specifically, the revised agreement fails to address climate change in trade and expands monopoly protections for pharmaceutical companies that would keep US drug prices rising. This report describes what a meaningful alternative to NAFTA requires by discussing NAFTA’s economic effects on US workers and proposing recommendations that could be used to rewrite NAFTA that supports the middle class, the environment, and cooperative relationships in all three countries.

CEPR and Adewale Maye / February 27, 2019