Hoover Prosperity Program (Hoover Institution)

The opportunities, social mobility, and high living standards enjoyed by Americans today are a consequence of two centuries of economic growth driven by a market economy and the legal and political institutions that underpin it. In recent years, however, increasing numbers of academics and public officials have argued that changes in technology and demographics make an …

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How to Reclaim America’s ‘Democracy’ From the Big Finance Oligarchy (Lynn Parramore)

For many, American democracy seems increasingly empty. What drained it? In The Master’s Tools: How Finance Wrecked Democracy (And a Radical Plan to Rebuild It), sociologist Michael A. McCarthy, professor at UC Santa Cruz and economic activist, points to finance capital as the main culprit. Big Finance, of course, is a particular form of Big Money—not the …

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Conceptualizing the Individual | Economics for People (Ha-Joon Chang)

Mainstream economics is rooted in the idea that individual self-interest drives society. In this fourth lecture in INET’s “Economics For People” series, Ha-Joon Chang explores other, more complicated theories of the individual in the economy. About “Economics for People”: “It is extremely important for our democracy to function that ordinary citizens understand the key issues …

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World Report 2025: Events of 2024 (Human Rights Watch)

This has been a year of elections, resistance, and conflict, testing the integrity of democratic institutions and the principles of international human rights and humanitarian law. Whether in response to heightened repression in Russia, India, and Venezuela, or catastrophic armed conflicts in Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine, governments around the world are being called upon to …

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