Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Disease, debt and depression

On capitalist stagnation

Whatever "growth" means nowadays amid the destruction of the environment, according to the Trade Union Congress the UK has experienced The worst decade for growth in two centuries

Edward Luce, a leading Financial Times columnist and author of Retreat of Western Liberalism : ‘It was remarkably arrogant to believe the rest of the world would passively adopt our script’ after 1989, Luce writes. ‘Those who still believe in the inevitable triumph of the Western model might ask themselves whether it is faith, rather than facts, that fuels their worldview. We must cast a sceptical eye on what we have learned never to question.’ "The basis of Western democracy’s flourishing in the Atlantic world after 1945 was not ‘Western values’, but rising living standards and economic growth. Yet unstoppable economic processes—automation; the age of convergence with China and the rest—will put relentless pressure  on  wage-earners in the years ahead. Globally, Washington’s credentials as the world’s sheriff have been badly damaged by Bush’s pre-emptive wars and are now being trashed by Trump; a declining us is at risk of insecure over-reaction to the rise of China. But i...

"An alternative from the people of the global south"

Tapia points out that  “the evolution of CO2 emissions and the economy in the past half century leaves no room to doubt that emissions are directly connected with economic growth. The only periods in which the greenhouse emissions that are destroying the stability of the Earth climate have declined have been the years in which the world economy has ceased growing and has contracted, i.e., during economic crises. From the point of view of climate change, economic crises are a blessing, while economic prosperity is a scourge.” Climate change and mitigation Related: Climate change, uneven development and poverty, obscene inequality, comsumerism, destruction of the environment, exploitation, etc. Is there a solution? Instead of inventing ways to minimize resource consumption, our smartest companies like Apple and Google work only to invent “needs” we don’t really need: drones, robots, iPhones 5-6-7, 3D printers, hoverboards, the “Internet of Things,” self-driving cars, bi...

This is a good picture of Britain's political-economic situation There is a historical background prior to 2016 and the crisis that led to Brexit. "There was now a clear division between those leaders who represented the interests of big business and the City of London wanting ‘free trade’ and a big role in the EU and rank and file Conservatives who    represented small businesses and the narrow nationalist and racist elements in small provincial towns. They wanted no truck with ‘Europe’ and harkened back to ‘good old days’ of a white imperial Britain ploughing its own furrow – something, of course, that had disappeared even before the UK joined the EU. This division was heightened by the bulk of the ‘popular’ press, whose moguls were either Australian-Americans like Rupert Murdoch, or aristocratic empire believers like the Rothermeres or the Barclay brothers." The analysis also includes the impacts of "no-deal Brexit" on business and labour. A crucial ar...

Out of Africa

Economic growth: a short history of a controversial idea

Indonesia Jokowi's challenges

The Green New Deal and changing America

"We do not want communists in Brazil" Anticommunism without communism

"we might note that for the underachieving Arab countries, which is in fact the overwhelming majority of them, the crunch on their course of development is fourfold." Development under the threat of war in the Arab World

A zombie world

Do passports restrict economic growth?

How Western civilisation could collapse   (BBC)

The writer, from the London School of Economics, is questioning the existent profit-based economic system. I wonder whether we can have capitalism without profit. I am curious to know if that is possible. Clean energy won't save us

"China has already overtaken in per capita GDP or in PPP all of the world's other largest developing economies - India, Indonesia and Brazil. By 2020 China's per capita GDP will be higher than several Eastern European countries. As China has 19 percent of the world's population, quite literally never in human history has anything approaching such a large proportion of the world's population had its conditions of life improved so rapidly. That will be the astonishing measure of China's success in achieving "moderate prosperity" - it is, without comparison, literally the greatest economic achievement in human history." What China achieving 'moderate prosperity' means

The Peculiar Modalities of Capitalism in the Arab Region Excerpts and notes from  The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising  Gilbert Achcar  2013  The 23 July 1952 coup of the Free officers led by Gamal Abdel Nasser "unquestionably led to a transformation of Egypt much more radical than anything that has so far resulted from the Revolution of 25 January 2011.  The 1952 coup led to the overthrow of a dynasty, the abolition of the monarchy and parliamentary regime, the creation of a republican military dictatorship, the nationalisation of foreign assets, the subversion of the old regime's property-holding classes (big land property, commercial and financial capital), a major drive to industrialise and far-reaching progressive social reforms. These changes certainly better deserve to be called a 'revolution' than do the results of the uprising set in motion in January 2011..." The People Want, p. 15  "The Tunisian and Egyptian political re...