Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Samuelson (no relation to Robert) has an op-ed in the international herald tribune today advocating increased government intervention in the financial sector.

People may be realizing that the brave new economy may need a manager after all. As described in Robert Reich's intriguing new book Supercapitalism, this is the economy of unlimited consumer choice and great deals and contaminated products, of a skyrocketing stock market, of low wages and eroding benefits and extreme inequality, of intense competition and the winner-take-all games and CEOs with "golden parachutes" and salaries worth a small country's GDP, and particularly, of a political process typified by corporate domination and citizen disengagement.

Reich's book is better on describing this new state of affairs than, I think, explaining how it came about and what we need to do about it. Filling in these gaps are Robert Kuttner's new book, which is particularly good on what's happened to the financial sector, and Paul Krugman's book, which tells a compelling though shallow story about the conservative transformation of American politics.

I'm still making my way through them, but they are all very impressive and seem like important reads.

An provocative article in this Sunday's post about food banking, a subject I got to be familiar with while doing a fellowship on hunger issues. The author's main point is that food banking is a distraction from the real problem of ending poverty with public policy. Point well taken, but I had a few objections.

I felt like he generalized a bit too much about food banks. For example, the Oregon Food Bank, where I used to work, has a vibrant public policy department and sees policy work as part of its mission. Many other food banks do the same.

The author is also a bit off when he confines the problem to hunger and food banking. OMB Watch's Gary Bass and Kay Guinane co-wrote a book on the topic that was just released last month, and they found that most nonprofits- including food banks- don't see affecting policy as a part of their mission. They do service, and maybe advocacy when its absolutely necessary.

But many of the op-ed author's points resonate. Donors and volunteers don't always want the same thing as the clients of nonprofits and may be a force against nonprofit advocacy. Too many food banks and nonprofits at large just don't get involved in advocacy, or don't do it on a regular basis. And while I believe most nonprofits understand that the root cause of hunger is poverty, they don't see it as their role to address it.

It is encouraging to read this article in the Post, though. The more people talk about it, the better things should get. Silence, denial and indifference are probably the biggest obstacles to change in nonprofits, because my gut tells me people know they could be doing more advocacy.

This is kind of random, but check out this exchange between Paul Krugman and Robert Kuttner (with a little bit of Robert Reich's ideas mixed in there) from 1996. Krugman's ideas sound, shall we say, Hamiltonian. He's changed his outlook quite a bit since then. Why have the other Hamiltonians stayed the same?

Update: Whoops, forgot the link- it's here.

Posted by Matt Lewis, 03:07:40 PM