Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate

Economic ignorance is widespread in the United States. People think they know something about the subject, but few do. My mother is convinced that China is the cause of all our economic problems. When I challenge her, she doesn’t think it matters that I have spent forty years studying and teaching the dismal science. If Lou Dobbs says it’s so, it must be true. I once taught classes for automobile workers who were employed at a General Motors plant near Pittsburgh. A man insisted that recessions were caused by the media. Newspapers and television were apparently so pessimistic and intent on presenting only bad news that the public became too demoralized to spend money. It never occurred to him to ask why the media, which depend on us spending money for their existence, would want this to happen. Read More

In December of last year, Monthly Review magazine, of which I am Associate Editor, published an article by Jim Straub titled “Braddock, Pennsylvania: Out of the Furnace and into the Fire.” In his essay, Jim told the story of one of the nation’s most devastated industrial towns. He described how this once famous steel city, home of Andrew Carnegie’s Edgar Thompson Steel Works and the first of his libraries, has hit the skids and is now one of the poorest places in the United States. The focus of the piece, however, is not on Braddock’s past but on its future. The town has a new and inspiring mayor, 6′ 8″ John Fetterman, who lives in a freight container perched on a “bunker-like” concrete building and who has the town’s zip code tattooed on his left arm. Fetterman is trying to revive Braddock, buying buildings for rehab, starting summer programs for young people, and encouraging artists looking for cheap property to move there. Read More