This analysis seems extremely plausible to me.

Not even the current low rate of unemployment is forcing employers to raise wages. Contrast this with the late 1990s, the last time unemployment dipped close to where it is today, when the portion of national income going into wages was 3% points higher than it is today.

What’s going on? Simply put, the vast majority of American workers have lost just about all their bargaining power. The erosion of that bargaining power is one of the biggest economic stories of the past four decades, yet it’s less about supply and demand than about institutions and politics.

Two fundamental forces have changed the structure of the US economy, directly altering the balance of power between business and labor. The first is the increasing difficulty for workers of joining together in trade unions. The second is the growing ease by which corporations can join together in oligopolies or to form monopolies.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/29/us-economy-workers-paycheck-robert-reich

Interesting points from Scott Sumner:

Whenever I speak with non-economists, they almost always seem more enthusiastic when the discussion comes around to behavioral economics. “That’s what economists should focus on!” They all seem to think that economists assume too much rationality, and that we should switch to a more behavioral approach. But here’s the problem. Non-economists also tend to reject the central ideas of basic economics, and for reasons that are not well justified. For the economics profession, our “value added” comes not from spoon feeding behavioral theories that the public is already inclined to accept, rather it is in teaching well-established basic principles of which the public is highly skeptical. Thus we should try to discourage people from believing in the following popular myths:

1. People don’t respond very strongly to economic incentives. (I.e., the demand for life-saving drugs is very inelastic.)

2. Imported goods, immigrant labor, and automation all tend to increase the unemployment rate.

3. Most companies have a lot of control over prices. (I.e. oil companies set prices, not “the market”.)

4. Policy disputes over taxes and regulations are best thought of in terms of who gains and who loses.

5. Experts are smarter than the crowd.

6. Speculators make market prices more unstable.

7. Price gouging hurts consumers.

8. Rent controls help tenants.

These myths are all widely believed by the general public. Teaching behavioral economics is not a good way to get people to “think like an economist”, indeed it gets in the way. Our primary goal should not be to add new information, it should be to have people unlearn false ideasabout the world. I’m not knowledgeable enough to have a good overview of the utility of behavioral economics. But even if it is useful it doesn’t really belong in a principles of economics course, except as a way of briefly acknowledging that the rational choice model is a useful fiction and not a perfect description of human behavior. We first need to teach basic economic principles.

https://www.econlib.org/lets-not-emphasize-behavioral-economics/

I really love these <3

Amsterdam-based artist Diana Scherer investigates the desire for humans to control nature through her series Exercises in Root System Domestication. The project combines design, craft, and science to manipulate plants’ subterranean systems into forming mesmerizing interlocking patterns that are unlike what is found organically. To “train” the roots to grow in such complex patterns, Scherer develops underground geometric templates that the roots grow along and merge with as they grow.

This intelligent behavior of plants below ground, away from humanity’s watchful eye, is another inspiration for Scherer’s work. “Darwin discovered that plants are a lot more intelligent than everybody thought,” she explains on her website. “For contemporary botanists, this buried matter is still a wondrous land. There is a global investigation to discover this hidden world. I also want to explore it and apply the ‘intelligence’ of plants in my work.” You can view more of her root explorations on her website and on Facebook.

Domesticated Root Systems by Diana Scherer Form Twisting and Repetitive Patterns in Patches of Earth | Colossal

Worth keeping an eye on…

Instagram memers have had enough.

They generate the engagement that helps keep Instagram growing—but, they argue, the multibillion-dollar platform doesn’t pay them for their work, or give them any control. So they’re fighting back. And before you write off IG Meme Union Local 69-420 as a joke, the organizers of the collective would like you to know that they are very serious.

“Solidarity actions with memers. Memers of the world unite,” the Instagram page for the union reads, encouraging followers to “seize the memes of production.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/04/instagram-memers-are-unionizing/587308/

This is from December, but I missed it when it came out. One of my favorite contemporary writers and artists, James Bridle, on democracy by sortition, in ancient Athens and today:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/25/break-brexit-deadlock-ancient-athens-sortition

Social insects are so weird….

Each of these aphids is a white bead, just half a millimeter across. In large numbers, they can compel Japanese trees to form large, hollow spheres called galls—roomy mansions in which hundreds or thousands of them can live. Like ants, bees, and termites, aphids divide their labor: Adults reproduce, while immature nymphs act as both workers and soldiers. If moth caterpillars tunnel their way into the galls, the nymphs stab these intruders to death, using the sharp mouthparts that they normally use to suck sap from trees. That deals with the caterpillar, but what about the huge hole that it leaves in the gall?

The aphid’s solution, discovered in 2003, is dramatic. Dozens or hundreds of the young soldiers will gather around a hole and discharge fluid from a pair of tubes on their backsides. This isn’t a gentle leak but a violent eruption, which drains the nymphs so thoroughly that they shrivel down to just a third of their initial volume. As they dry and die, they also use their legs to mix the fluids over the holes. These harden within an hour, sealing the gap and sometimes entombing the suicide plasterers.

Aphids Fix Holes in Their Home by Suicidally Erupting – The Atlantic

I love these.

Los Angeles-based artist Andrew Hem paints stylized scenes of solitary figures caught in moments of motion, introspection, and reverence. While integrated into their surroundings through carefully modulated color palettes, the figures’ floating poses and distant expressions suggest a dreamlike state. In an artist statement, Hem cites an early interest in graffiti as informing his current narrative style, which he creates with a combination of gouache, oil, and acrylic paint.

https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2019/04/andrew-hem-paintings/

This 2017 article includes some terrific analysis of the past and future of global inequality, both within countries and across them.

Examining the “World Inequality Report” — published Thursday by the creators of the World Wealth and Income Database, who include the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez — it is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology. The report finds that the richest 1 percent of humanity reaped 27 percent of the world’s income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 percent, by contrast, got only 12 percent.

[…]

And yet, a careful examination of the data suggests there is nothing inevitable about untrammelled inequality. Take China and India, developing countries of billion-plus populations playing catch-up to pull themselves out of poverty. Incomes have become much more concentrated in both. But China’s economic strategy has delivered much more growth at a lower cost in terms of economic disparity. Comparing Europe with the United States and Canada offers similar contrasts.

Policy, it turns out, matters. More aggressive redistribution through taxes and transfers has spared Europe from the acute disparities that Americans have grown used to. Unequal access to education is helping reproduce inequality in the United States down the generations. On the other end of the spectrum of development, China’s strategy based on low-skill manufacturing for export, and underpinned by aggressive investment in infrastructure, has proven more effective at raising living standards for the bottom half of the population than India’s more inward-looking strategy, which has limited the benefits of globalization to the well-educated elite.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/14/business/world-inequality.html

Luminus 45-foot pyrosome, whee!! And they can get twice that long…

Surprisingly evocative.

This is a broadcast from a rat burrow in New York City’s Lower East Side.

Rats primarily speak above the threshold of human hearing (20khz), so this audio has been resampled and pitch-shifted down into a human-audible range. The broadcast is cached from the last 24-hours recorded and re-broadcast each day. Why? Who? http://brianhouse.net

http://ratradio.nyc/