R is for Rentier by Michael Hudson

by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
April 5, 2014

Image by duncan c via Flickr

Part R in the Insider’s Economic Dictionary.

Race to the bottom: A term for dog-eat-dog competition by which countries compete by cutting wage levels so as to produce in the cheapest market, not by raising wages and labor productivity. The effect is to shrink the circular flow between producers and employee-consumers, leading to declining living standards. Under these circumstances productivity is increased only by working the existing labor force more intensively and cutting back medical insurance, old-age pensions and other social welfare expenditures. (See Free Market.)

Hemp Versus the Status Quo by Rand Clifford

by Rand Clifford
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
October 16, 2011

Image via Wikipedia

The US rose to eminence by producing value, and by a fair percentage of citizens sharing the wealth. The further the nation has been corrupted from the stability of fairness, the faster our rate of decline. Runaway greed, lust for power, and raw capitalism have reversed our national trajectory so insidiously that not just we, but even Earth’s biosphere, are in free fall. Is it more than simple coincidence that such comprehensive decline so closely parallels our prohibition of hemp?