As the nation prepares for a second Trump administration, the mood among many Democratic Party officials has been one of bafflement and astonishment. How could voters have failed to rise to the defense of the democracy and “institutions” that Democrats…

Healthcare and education are two of the most important sectors of the US economy. Together they comprise over $8.44 trillion in annual expenditure. When including the $1 trillion-plus health insurance industry, these three industries of private education and healthcare, public…

The Biden administration first embraced the slogan of “modern supply-side economics” six months before anyone uttered the phrase “Inflation Reduction Act.” Speaking before the World Economic Forum in January 2022, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained that what distinguished the Biden…

Behind the retail grocery industry’s image of public routine churns an incredible and evolving feat of collective enterprise. The companies that own and operate grocery stores serve as the primary source of food for the country’s 130 million households. Employing…

Prior to October 2023, about a seventh  of global maritime trade passed through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea to and from the Suez Canal. As a result of attacks by Houthi fighters on commercial ocean freight traveling…

The Politics of the Price Level

May 19, 2022

Analysis

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In 1959, the leaders of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC, now the OECD) appointed a Group of Independent Experts “to study the experience of rising prices” in the recent history of the advanced capitalist countries. Between the end…

In the decades after the Civil War, Andrew Carnegie captured the American steel industry by pushing down prices. So effective was the Scottish-born telegraph operator at reducing costs, breaking cartels, and driving competition into bankruptcy during the downturns of the…

As the American economy reopened in the first half of 2021, reports of a “labor shortage” spread throughout US industries. But there was one sector where employer panic about hiring was old news: the massive and decentralized US construction industry.

Concerns over a generalized “inflation” loom in the recovery. Yet the prices that most heavily factor into the cost of living for US workers—housing, health, and education—have already been rising for decades. The question we should be asking is whether…