There is a surprising paradox in the political life of post-communist societies. Surprising to traditional political values. The totalitarian communist parties in our countries have become socialist by name and conservative by stand. In the revolutionary process of transformation from a one-party state to a multi-party system, from a state-owned economy to a market economy, [...]
How was it before? With the Berlin Wall, at the end of a war whose bureaucratic and technological disgraces showed us a variety of the worst horrors of the century, politicians put their fingers to the wind and wondered whether history was at an end or not. They were burdened by the need to remake [...]
In the 1960's, the Federal government entered the health care industry with the development of Medicare (insurance for the elderly and disabled) and Medicaid, a federal-state collaboration to help insure the needy. Initially rejected by physicians, the steady revenue stream from the federally insured patients helped support the rise of American physician incomes to the [...]
The issue of tax, then, and Corbyn’s promise to tax the rich, was high on the agenda. Alluding to Labour’s decision to seek the advice of various economists like Thomas Piketty, Joseph Stiglitz and others, Cameron ridiculed the choice of Richard Murphy, author of the book The Joy of Tax. The Prime Minister gleefully claimed [...]
In one of his rare direct comments on the politics of left and right in Seminar VII, Lacan has recourse to terms from the Elizabethan theatre.3 The left wing intellectual is characterized as a fool and the right wing intellectual a knave. The fool – for example from King Lear – was someone who might [...]
