January/February 2016

Retirement Savings in the Dark

For most of the 20th century, there was a clear wall between working people’s pension funds and the riskier corners of financial markets. This wasn’t accidental—it was the law.

The Shrinking Cushion of Unpaid Care

Many feminists urge a transition toward a dual-earner/dual-carer system in which women and men alike earn money and provide unpaid care for their families and communities. But is this possible in the current economic system?

What Would Sanders Do? Pt. 2

Gerald Friedman

How Bernie Sanders’s policies would affect wages, poverty, and inequality. | Read more »
Is a $15 Minimum Wage Economically Feasible?

Jeannette Wicks-Lim

Activism to raise the wage is pushing the envelope. But can the minimum wage be raised so high without costing jobs or hurting businesses? | Read more »
The Origins and Crisis of Neoliberalism

David Kotz

Part One: A Great Fall

Part Two: All the King’s Horses
Neoliberalism Resurgent in Argentina

Matías Vernengo

The election of businessman Mauricio Macri to the presidency in Argentina signals a rightward turn in the country and, perhaps, in South America more generally. | Read more »
The Fed Raises Rates—by Paying the Banks

Marty Wolfson

The Federal Reserve is raising its target federal funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point—using a dramatically new method. | Read more »

Available only in the print edition:

How Private Equity Works and Why It Matters

Eileen Appelbaum and Rosemary Batt

The (usually) legal ways that today’s “leveraged buyout“ artists load companies with debt, strip their assets, and make a killing. | Order this issue or subscribe.

the regulars

editors’ note Greed?
the short run
up against the Wall Street Journal “Economic Freedom” No Cure for Our Ills
in review Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, $2.00 a Day, and Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done?
ask dr. dollar Dollar Dominance Explained

Retirement Savings in the Dark

Interview: The Economics of Trump's War on Iran

The Shrinking Cushion of Unpaid Care

January/February 2016

Available only in the print edition:

the regulars