During the annual Robert Heilbroner Lecture, “Future of Capitalism: Towards Full Employment,” financial economist Robert Pollin proposes a post-austerity policy agenda that lays out a clear path to job creation and lowering public debt – while advancing greater equality. Robert Pollin, distinguished professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, received his PhD from The New School and studied under Robert Heilbroner. He is co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and co-author of a recent study that debunks the notion that austerity policies can promote economic growth by starving social spending. This event will celebrate the fall issue of The New School’s Social Research journal, “Austerity: Failed Economics but Persistent Policy.” It is jointly sponsored by Social Research: An International Quarterly and the Center for Public Scholarship.
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We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
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