Uploaded August 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Dean Baker tells the dirty secret of the great billionaires of the modern age: they wouldn’t exist without intellectual property (IP), that is the copyright and patent monopolies guaranteed to private actors by the government.
IP laws have been expanded and strengthened in recent years, making patent & copyright monopolies longer and stronger and enabling the vast fortunes of billionaires in computers, software, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment etc. Baker diagnoses the role of intellectual property (IP) in the accumulation of wealth for pharmaceutical companies and how that translates to excessively high drug prices, and wasteful spending on marketing and lawsuits. IP laws were intended to subsidize innovation for social benefit, but they have been transformed into tools to accumulate and protect enormous private wealth. The modern protections of IP have become excessive and may not be the most fruitful producer of research and development beneficial for society.
What's the fix? Dean’s proposals include direct public funding of open research & development, rather than rely on IP alone, which will allow the development of generics. He proposes the introduction of a Copyright Tax Credit to support innovation and creative work as a temporary alternative to copyright. Meaning creators and artists could sign for a tax credit to fund their projects but forego copyright for a set number of years.
Learn more at unf-ckamerica.com
☆ How to Unf★ck America ☆
This series is all about solutions.
Over the last four decades, the US economy has done quite well for the top 1%, but it has been stagnant for most Americans. This was not an accident, nor the natural workings of the market and certainly not an inevitability. US policies have been deliberately structured since 1980 to redistribute income upwards. In other words, the system has been rigged.
Dean Baker shows us how public policy can be deployed to #UnfckAmerica. Over six episodes, Baker illustrates how even minor changes in public policy can help change our trajectory dramatically. It just takes the political will to recognize that the current situation is not insurmountable, and that change is achievable.
Credits: Dean Baker, Matthew Kulvicki, Nick Alpha, Gonçalo Fonseca, Kurt Semm
Dean Baker tells the dirty secret of the great billionaires of the modern age: they wouldn’t exist without intellectual property (IP), that is the copyright and patent monopolies guaranteed to private actors by the government.
IP laws have been expanded and strengthened in recent years, making patent & copyright monopolies longer and stronger and enabling the vast fortunes of billionaires in computers, software, pharmaceuticals, medical equipment etc. Baker diagnoses the role of intellectual property (IP) in the accumulation of wealth for pharmaceutical companies and how that translates to excessively high drug prices, and wasteful spending on marketing and lawsuits. IP laws were intended to subsidize innovation for social benefit, but they have been transformed into tools to accumulate and protect enormous private wealth. The modern protections of IP have become excessive and may not be the most fruitful producer of research and development beneficial for society.
What's the fix? Dean’s proposals include direct public funding of open research & development, rather than rely on IP alone, which will allow the development of generics. He proposes the introduction of a Copyright Tax Credit to support innovation and creative work as a temporary alternative to copyright. Meaning creators and artists could sign for a tax credit to fund their projects but forego copyright for a set number of years.
Learn more at unf-ckamerica.com
☆ How to Unf★ck America ☆
This series is all about solutions.
Over the last four decades, the US economy has done quite well for the top 1%, but it has been stagnant for most Americans. This was not an accident, nor the natural workings of the market and certainly not an inevitability. US policies have been deliberately structured since 1980 to redistribute income upwards. In other words, the system has been rigged.
Dean Baker shows us how public policy can be deployed to #UnfckAmerica. Over six episodes, Baker illustrates how even minor changes in public policy can help change our trajectory dramatically. It just takes the political will to recognize that the current situation is not insurmountable, and that change is achievable.
Credits: Dean Baker, Matthew Kulvicki, Nick Alpha, Gonçalo Fonseca, Kurt Semm
![The Web [Axel Leijonhufvud]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/l6JLXQc-Mus/mqdefault.jpg "The Web [Axel Leijonhufvud]
What is your first association when somebody talks to you about the economy?
Axel Leijonhufvud was one of the most creative and perspicacious macroeconomists of the last century. He became famous early in his life for his contention that the Keynesian Economics being taught and understood at that time was a serious misinterpretation of Keyness ideas. Instead of the emphasis on inflexible wages and prices as being central, Keynes, he argued, was focused on the failure of intertemporal coordination. Taking that challenge into consideration required a different way of looking at the economy and theorizing disequilibrium. As a committed supporter of the history of economic thought, he was singularly aware of the problems of taking a wrong path intellectually a mistake that could lead to years of misguided work. And indeed, that wrong turn, away from the fertile ground of disequilibrium macroeconomics did occur, as the profession moved away from it to what he may have seen as an academic and theoretical dead end. His latter career was devoted to finding more meaningful and generative foundations for dealing with the deeper issues of macroeconomic and monetary stability. In the last decade of his life he was a founding member of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a key part of its academic council.
In this animation, taken from his speech at the INET plenary in Berlin in 2012, he describes the process by which macroeconomic instability is generated. We invite you to see it and to explore the many other contributions of this true intellectual giant.
Read his papers and more in our archive of his work:
http://newth.ink/axel
Professor Leijonhufvud speaking at INET Berlin 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90zLGjQr6jo
Axels Masters Series interview playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmtuEaMvhDZbnT7kpLB1ilBhhbWlenPOC
Produced by Matthew Kulvicki & Nick Alpha")
![Planetary Boundaries - [ECO]NOMICS Part 3](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nnEU3RVvsBM/mqdefault.jpg "Planetary Boundaries - [ECO]NOMICS Part 3
Mainstream economics ignores the impact of economic activity on the natural environment. Ecological economics recognizes that the human economy exists in a larger planetary system, and that destroying the natural environment will affect future well-being.
In [ECO]NOMICS part 3, Professor Schor shows how human economic activity has exceeded the reproductive or sustainable capacity of the planet over the past half-century. Ecosystems have been worn down by deforestation, destruction of species, depletion of material reserves and destabilization of the climate. Humans are destroying these ecosystems at a dizzying, unsustainable and accelerating rate. Capitalism has certain features - most notably pressure to grow - that make a change of trajectory all but impossible in this context. Conventional economic policies are lured by the hope they can still maintain economic growth while simultaneously reducing carbon emissions. But Professor Schor shows how decoupling growth from emissions is a mirage. Wealthy countries cannot grow their way to sustainability. We need to enact structural changes and consider alternative approaches that reduce climate disruption and improve well-being.
Part 4 will be available May 18, 2022
Learn more at https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/videos/eco-nomics
Credits: Juliet Schor, Matthew Kulvicki, Nick Alpha, Gonçalo Fonseca, Kurt Semm")
