In the spirit of the Must Read section of my Weekly Digests, I looked through my posts and reading list from 2013 and found what I thought were the most important reads. My main selection criterion was that the piece motivated thinking about bigger issues. With that in mind, there was one important subject where I didn’t note an exemplar article: domestic surveillance by the NSA. Recently there’s been a fair amount of reporting on the NSA being slapped down in the courts – see, e.g., this – but nothing I’ve read has struck me as a “must read” piece which captures the significance of the whole. That noted, here’s my list of most important reads and listens from 2013 (in no particular order):
Category Archives: Weekly Digests
Weekly Digest – December 29, 2013
Must Read
- Jared Bernstein, Guideposts on the Road Back to Factville, 2013 Edition
- Paul Krugman, Why Corporations Might Not Mind Moderate Depression
- Jesse Eisinger, The 0.03% Solution to Washington’s Budget Problems (Related: Harkin and DeFazio’s bill, S.410, died in committee but it was an excellent idea.)
Should Read
- Dean Baker, Bill Keller’s Center-Left Is the Reason We Are Growing Less Rapidly
- Economic Policy Institute, The 13 Most Important Charts of 2013
- Mike Konczal, It’s still too early for Congress to stop worrying about unemployment
- David Kocieniewski, Academics Who Defend Wall St. Reap Reward
MA politics
Weekly Digest – December 22, 2013
Must Read
- WBUR, Soaring Rents And Stagnant Incomes Leave Record Number Of Mass. Families Homeless
- Slawomir Sierakowski, Vaclav Havel’s Fairy Tale
- David Firestone, Weak-Kneed on the Health Care Mandate
Should Read
- Alex Pareene, Why Elizabeth Warren baffles pundits: “Economic populism” isn’t just a campaign slogan
- Gordon Brown, Stumbling Toward the Next Crash
- NY Times, Federal Judge Rules Against N.S.A. Phone Data Program
- Noah Smith, The real most important chart of 2013?
Media Criticism
Weekly Digest – December 15, 2013
Must Read/Listen
- Dean Baker, A Budget Deal that Does Nothing to Boost the Economy
- Eric Hodges on the implications of the military-civilian divide
Should Read
- Paul Krugman, The Biggest Losers
- David Cay Johnston, Is service work today worse than being a household servant?
- Dean Baker, Ezra Klein Misses the Mark: Inequality and Unemployment Are the Same Problem (“…unemployment is a main cause of inequality. This is because when more people get hired it disproportionately benefits those in the bottom half and especially the bottom fifth of the income distribution.”)
- Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, Rethinking Capital and Wealth Taxation
Economics
- John Cassidy, By George, Britain’s Austerity Experiment Didn’t Work!
- Charlie Pierce, Rick Scott’s Broken Promises
- Paul Krugman, The Punishment Cure
Trans Pacific Pact
- Joseph Stiglitz, An open letter to Trans Pacific Pact negotiators
- Joseph Stiglitz, The Free-Trade Charade
Politics
Weekly Digest – December 8, 2013
Must read
- Brad DeLong, Is Growth Getting Harder? If so, Why, and What Can We Do About It?
- IEEE Spectrum Magazine, Are STEM Workers Overpaid?
Should read
- Robert Gordon, Is US Economic Growth Over? (or Thomas Edsall, No More Industrial Revolutions? for a summary of Gordon’s paper)
- IEEE Spectrum Magazine, The STEM Crisis is a Myth: An Ongoing Discussion
Economics
- Boston.com, Mass., Conn., RI senators want more jobless help
- Rob Valletta and Katherine Kuang, Extended Unemployment and UI Benefits
- Henry Farber and Rob Valletta, Do Extended Unemployment Benefits Lengthen Unemployment Spells? Evidence from Recent Cycles in the U.S. Labor Market
- Tim Egan, Dystopia by the Bay
- Income Percentile Calculator – Find Your Percent With WhatsMyPercent.com
Environment
- NY Times, In New Jersey Pines, Trouble Arrives on Six Legs
- Providence Journal, R.I. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s 50th climate-change warning
- NY Times, Panel Says Global Warming Carries Risk of Deep Changes
- US EPA, Carbon Dioxide Emissions
- The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media, What’s Behind the ‘Good News’ Declines in U.S. CO2 Emissions?
- RealClimate, Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated by Half
- RealClimate, What ocean heating reveals about global warming
Weekly Digest – December 1, 2013
Must read
- Evangelii Gaudium, Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Francis, 2013 (No, I haven’t read all of it but Sections 52-60 got my attention. )
- NY Times, The Year the Monarch Didn’t Appear (Several months ago my father commented “The suburbs are at war with nature.” I concur. Unfortunately, it’s not just the suburbs.)
Should read
- Dan Drezner, Why Opponents to the Iran Deal Need a Keymaster (Follow this link if you don’t have a subscription to Foreign Policy)
- Dean Baker, Dead Filipinos and Housing Bubbles Are Not Good News
- Dean Baker, Long-Tern Unemployed Suffer from Discrimination, not Lack of Skills
- Daron Acemoglu on “Extractive” Politics and Us on Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon in April 2012
Economics
- Middle Class Political Economist, Median Wealth Increases, but U.S. Still Stuck at 27th in World (We’re right behind Slovenia. Yes, Slovenia.)
- Room for Debate (NY Times), What We’ve Learned From NAFTA
- Jared Bernstein, Why Labor’s Share of Income Is Falling
Politics
Weekly Digest – November 24, 2013
Must Read
- Harold Meyerson, The 40-Year Slump
- Michael Moore (Aug. 2011), 30 Years Ago Today: The Day the Middle Class Died
- Whiskey Fire, Injured the Kid
Should Read
- Jason Kass, Bill Gates Can’t Build A Toilet
- Lydia DePillis, The real loser of the recession is rural America
- Brad Plumer, The D.C. Circuit is the court at the center of the filibuster fight. Here’s why it matters.
Climate Change
- Charlie Pierce, The Important Climate Conference You’re Hearing Nothing About
- NY Times, Deals at Climate Meeting Advance Global Effort
Health Care and the Politics Thereof
Weekly Digest – November 17, 2013
Must read
- Tim Egan, Under My Thumb
- truthout, Pivotal Trans-Pacific Partnership Section Revealed (see here for the govt’s summary page on the TPP)
Should read/listen
- NPR, Lessons In Leadership: It’s Not About You. (It’s About Them)
- Matt Taibbi, Campaign 2016: The Dumb Season Starts Early
- Dan Kervick, Three Pillars of Democratic Empowerment
Other things worth reading if you can make the time…
Politics
- Boston Globe, Elizabeth Warren says growth of Wall Street banks poses threat of another economic meltdown
- Brad DeLong, “Senator Mitch McConnell: I Knew Samson, Samson Was a Friend of Mine, and You Are No Samson!”
- Dan Drezner, The Conservative Side of the Idea Industry is Broken (look here if you don’t have a subscription)
- Noam Chomsky on political disillusionment (video from 2010 but points still relevant)
Trans-Pacific Partnership
Weekly Digest – November 10, 2013
Must Reads
- Neil Irwin, The Great Recession may have crushed America’s economic potential
- Paul Krugman, The Mutilated Economy
- FRONTLINE, Sick Around The World (“Can the U.S. learn anything from the rest of the world about how to run a health care system?” The show is 5+ years old but still very relevant.)
Politics
- Ryan Crocker, Talk to Iran, It Works
- Charlie Pierce had the pulse of things last week:
- Please Explain Democracy To Me
- How is Washington Still Not Talking About Poverty?
- Organized Labor Was The Real Winner This Election (Cincinnati pension “overhaul” voted down.)
- Big Chicken In Excelsis (Chris Christie re-election)
- Paul Krugman, Ideological Ratings (S&P’s recent downgrade of France’s credit rating appears more ideologically motivated than based on substance.)
- Democracy Now!, “We Are Living in the World Occupy Made”: New York City Voters Elect Mayor Who Vows to Tax the Rich
- Harold Meyerson, What Divides Democrats
- Kevin Drum, Ron Paul Basically Called for Armed Revolution This Week
Health Care and the Politics Thereof
Weekly Digest – November 3, 2013
Politics
- Doug Muder, A State-by-State Update on Voter Suppression
- Brad DeLong, Halloween on the Prairie: Congressman Tim Huelskamp Is the Most Frightening Thing I Will See All Day
- Thomas Edsall, When Class Trumps Identity
- NY Times, Lhota as Manager – Swift Decisions and Long Weeks
- Charlie Pierce, Jon Chait Keystone Pipeline – Not Everything Is A Tactic
- Mike Konczal, Making government simpler is complicated
Health Care and the Politics Thereof
- Kevin Drum, Small Businesses Plan to Add Health Coverage For First Time in a Decade
- Austin Frakt, More on Senator Cruz’s health insurance
- Aaron Carroll, Government health care for all?!?!!
- Paul Waldman, Another Phony Obamacare Victim Story
Journalism
- Bill Keller, Is Glenn Greenwald the Future of News? (NY Times Former Editor Keller’s interview – via correspondence – with Greenwald)
Economics