Letter from the Editor

Abstract

Is it over, asks Tom Petterson. As Donald Trump blackened Washington on his way out of town, pundits lauded the end of Trumpism’s hold on the Republican Party. What they failed to see is that Trumpism is merely a reckless version of what Republicanism has been for some time. In the twenty-first century, the goals of mankind are evolving from raising near-term prosperity to unlimited term sustainable survival of mankind in an acceptable state. This is bound to lead to a scientific revolution—a paradigm shift. A return to the generalized ideas of Keynes must be an integral part of that shift. Vladmir Masch proposes that the Keynes’s approach to economics must be complemented by imposing (Pigovian) taxes on negative externalities. The resulting “Balanced Keynesianism” (BK) in international trade is “Compensated Free Trade” (CFT), which should be unilaterally imposed by the US government on each of its mercantilist trading partners. It easily wins in comparison with other proposed methods of cutting the trade deficit. Under CFT, a limit is imposed on export revenues of each trading partner. As we shall see, it is the only methodology that allows large-scale and fast US deficits cutting, while automatically preventing trade wars and repercussions. CFT allows having the nation-state, democracy, and globalization at the same time. Recent studies show that inadequate knowledge and understanding about the SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19 by many people has contributed significantly to fueling the conspiracy theories and misinformation about the pandemic. This challenge further impacts people’s behavior against public health guidelines in observing social distancing, wearing a facial mask, or self-isolation if exposed to imminent threats. Our authors, use visual presentation and theoretical narratives to explain the science and conceptual structure of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. The paper also shows a visualization of the connections between the ongoing pandemic and previous coronavirus outbreaks and epidemics. Cooperatively operated businesses, where worker-owners vote democratically on the direction of the enterprise, represents an alternative to the prevailing capitalist model of employer ownership. Mondragon, one of the most famous cooperative businesses, was incubated from a technical college. Despite this precedent, trade education seems to be underappreciated in the national movement for cooperative enterprise. Our authors sketch an institutional design for teacher-owned technical colleges that foster student engagement in cooperative enterprise. Practical challenges to the cooperative technical college are also briefly addressed. Cleomar Gomes da Silva and Albert Fishlow investigate the policies adopted by Brazil after the 2008 financial crisis. It was called the New Macroeconomic Matrix (NMM). They to detail the main measures related to NMM; analyze what causes the Great Brazilian Recession was caused by internal factors (NMM actions) or by external factors; and whether the decade that followed was indeed a lost decade for Brazil. We conclude that NMM measures played an important role in the Great Brazilian Recession and that the 2010s can be characterized as a lost decade for the Brazilian economy.