Labor/Economics

Dr Thomas Palley reflects on the debate over tenure following The New School’s dismissal of several tenured professors amid financial distress and institutional reorganization. He argues that the controversy should prompt a broader examination of how higher education is governed. Palley proposes replacing tenure with academic unions, strengthening faculty governance, limiting administrator pay, and requiring senior university officers to come from the faculty. He questions whether tenure adequately protects academic freedom and argues that it creates divisions between tenured and precarious academic workers. He also calls for legal remedies for individuals affected while urging discussion of the wider structure of universities.

Empirical inquiry has its place in economics, but economists must not let the pursuit of causality displace the pursuit of explanation.

Skand Priya examines why sections of the working class support right-wing authoritarian regimes despite their pro-capitalist policies. Drawing on Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Francoist Spain, Imperial Japan and Pinochet’s Chile, the article argues that authoritarian regimes reorganise rather than simply suppress working classes. They combine selective material benefits with a psychological wage of belonging, dignity and national or religious identity, while fragmenting workers and creating a permanent Other. Applying this framework to contemporary India, the article examines informalisation, caste divisions, welfare schemes and Hindutva. It also traces forms of resistance, from workers’ protests to farmers’ mobilisation and cross-community organising.

Germany’s statutory minimum wage was introduced only in 2015, but legal protections have not prevented widespread wage theft. The article examines how employers evade minimum-wage obligations through unpaid overtime, off-the-clock work, inaccurate time records, illegal deductions, worker misclassification and other practices. Drawing on German trade union estimates, it reports that workers may have lost up to €64 billion between 2015 and 2024, with part-time workers, contract workers, women and workers in eastern Germany particularly affected. The article also examines weak enforcement, staffing shortages in inspection agencies, and the need for stronger collective bargaining, inspections, sanctions and whistleblower protections.

Tension between American control and Venezuelan sovereignty lies at the heart of a broader geopolitical struggle over who will shape the country’s economic and strategic future.

Bolivia’s new era has also produced a powerful image: the exile of Morales in the Chapare, the subtropical region of the Cochabamba Department known for its coca leaf crops. Coca-growing peasant unions, which function like militias, are protecting the former president from arrest stemming from several ongoing judicial proceedings—including one involving the alleged abuse of a minor, a partner said to be underage when the relationship began.

So far in 2026, Cuba has received a single shipment of oil: some 100,000 metric tons of crude donated by Russia—and nothing else.

Brazil holds around 23 percent of the world’s known rare-earth reserves but produces only a small share and lacks the industrial capacity to process these minerals into high-value products. As foreign companies move to secure Brazilian deposits, the country risks repeating a familiar pattern of exporting raw materials while retaining environmental costs and limited economic value. Vijay Prashad examines the growing rare-earth rush, its impact on rural and quilombola communities, and the technological choices shaping extraction. He argues for stronger public oversight, domestic processing, technology transfer, environmental safeguards, and investment in Brazilian research and manufacturing capacity.

Bolivia’s persistent fuel shortages are exposing the limits of an economy built on hydrocarbon extraction. Long queues for gasoline, diesel and propane are affecting households, farmers and rural communities, while preferential access for agro-industrial businesses highlights unequal distribution. At the center of the debate is the Tariquía Flora and Fauna Reserve, where the government is promoting gas exploration despite opposition from communities that depend on the forest and its ecosystems. Claudia López Pardo examines the links between fuel scarcity, extractivism, energy policy and social reproduction, arguing for an energy transition that reduces Bolivia’s dependence on fossil-fuel revenues and protects territories andcommunities.