Rising food prices affect the poor disproportionately because they must spend a larger portion of their income on food than do higher-income families. Rising food prices also hurt the poor in another way: poor families in the United States are much more likely than higher-income families to have an inadequate diet...
Tag - union for radical political economy
Many people feel that the solution to our food problems is to put the Del Montes in moth balls and bring back the Mom and Pop stores and family farms. We think the problem is much deeper. Because the Golden Rule in our economy is Seek Profits, new Del Montes would eventually spring up to replace the old. But we would...
This year I have been growing vegetables in my backyard, and when I can, baking my own bread. While a sense of back-to-the-earth may be a part of my motivations, my vegetable garden is also, in a way, my personal protest against capitalism. I have come to realize that foods are corporate products, not grown to feed...
When the energy crisis hit with full force last fall and winter it took the form of an absolute shortage of oil and oil products. Gas became very scarce. There were rumors about not enough heating oil to last the winter. And hundreds of factories cut back on production and laid workers off. A lot of people felt at the...
The Northeast Regional Committee of Science for the People undertook a survey of the membership, activities and political perspectives of SESPA chapters around the country. This is a first step in the direction of assessing the need and support for a national conference which would work toward a national organization...
Weather is often used as a catch-all explanation by government and business to explain rising food prices. For example, last spring it was said that meat prices rose because of monsoons, floods, droughts, hurricanes... not a word about the profit rate of agribusiness or collusion of the government with big-time grain...
At the American Economics Association (AEA) Convention in New Orleans the Union for Radical Political Economy (URPE) found many economists receptive to progressive ideas. On Monday we put out a leaflet challenging Paul Samuelson's economics [see insert] and distributed it at a luncheon which was honoring him for...