ECONOMIC NOTES

What is To Be Done about Unemployment?

A DISTINCTION is drawn in economics between demand-constrained systems and resource-constrained systems (which for simplicity and symmetry we shall call supply-constrained systems). In the former, an increase in output can occur if there is a rise in aggregate demand without causing any scarcity-induced inflation; in the latter, output is constrained either by capacity being fully used up, or by the scarcity of some critical input or of foodgrains or of the labour force, so that a rise in aggregate demand, instead of raising output, simply causes scarcity-induced inflation.

Camouflaging a Class Agenda

 AN object lesson in how fascistic outfits operate is provided by the BJP’s attitude towards an inheritance tax. The fact that there has been an immense increase in income and wealth inequality in the country during the neoliberal era is well-known. Indeed this is not a phenomenon confined to India alone; it is an international phenomenon which has been much discussed even in high-bourgeois circles for quite some time.

Chicanery versus Humanity

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable GingerRephraseRephrase with Ginger (Ctrl+Alt+E)THE current protests in US university campuses demanding “divestment” from firms linked to Israel’s military machine, are reminiscent of the protests that had swept these campuses in the late sixties and early seventies demanding an end to the Vietnam war. There is however a major difference: the US had then been directly involved in the war, while today it is not.

The Crisis of Liberalism

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEACH strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle.

Rural Labour in the Modi Years

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceBY now it is well-established by several researchers that the real wage rate in rural India, whether of agricultural labour or of rural labour in general, remained virtually stagnant between 2014-15 and 2022-23 (Das and Usami in Review of Agrarian Studies, July-December 2023; Dreze and Khera’s findings reported in The Telegraph­, April 21, 2024).

Fetishising the Growth Rate of GDP

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceJOHN Stuart Mill was among the foremost liberal thinkers of modern times who wrote extensively on economics and philosophy. Though under the influence of his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, he came closer towards socialism late in his life, it was a kind of cooperative socialism that attracted him; he continues to be regarded primarily as a pre-eminent liberal thinker.

The Anatomy of A ‘Hindu Rashtra’

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceTHE Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded with the objective of establishing a Hindu rashtra, or a Hindu State. The question immediately arises: what is a Hindu State? There are several countries in the world that give primacy to one religion above all others, or are theocratic, but that makes not an iota of difference to the class nature of their states.

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