Current Economic Issues (29th edition)

Edited by Robert Larson, Bryan Snyder, Chris Sturr, and the Dollars & Sense collective

Edition: 29th

Date of publication: October 2025

ISBN: 978-1-939402-53-0

Pages: 290

Price: $51.50

The second Trump administration has upended the U.S. and global economies, with a massive deportation regime, on-again-off-again tariffs, federal layoffs, tax cuts, and austerity measures. The 29th edition of Current Economic Issues offers progressive perspectives on the the macroeconomic situation and other major economic issues of the day, in the United States and around the world. 

This edition, revised even more thoroughly than usual, covers key areas of controversy—the state of the macroeconomy, fiscal policy and taxation, banking and finance, the social-welfare state, environmental protection, labor and unions, economic inequality, corporations, and the changing global economy. This new edition also covers Trump’s turbulent tariffs, how deportations impede growth, Zohran Mamdani’s program for an affordable New York City, the cost of parenting, and developments with cryptocurrency. Readings draw on D&S’s new Left Hook Economics blog so as to cover a fast-changing economic landscape. A dozen of the articles in this edition are keyed to online audio content, with “The D&S Debrief” author interviews.

Current Economic Issues’s distinguished contributors include Frank Ackerman, James K. Boyce, Lynn Duggan, Marie Christine Duggan, Nancy Folbre, John Miller, Arthur MacEwan, Débora Nunes, Robert Pollin, Richard D. Wolff, and many others. This book is an invaluable tool for understanding the main economic problems of today and contending policy proposals to address them.

The well-researched, clearly written articles in Current Economic Issues are drawn from Dollars & Sense, the leading magazine of popular economics. Dollars & Sense also publishes Real World Macro, Real World Micro, The Economics of the Environment, Labor and the Global Economy, Introduction to Political Economy, Real World Banking and Finance,  Real World Globalization, Real World Labor, Real World Latin America, Unlevel Playing Fields: Understanding Wage Inequality and Discrimination, The Political Economy of California, and The Wealth Inequality Reader.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note: This is the table of contents for the latest (29th) edition of Current Economic Issues. If you are ordering a pdf of an earlier edition of this title, please ask your instructor for that edition's table of contents, and make sure you order your pdf using the URL your instructor gave you.

• Chapter 1 · The New Trump Economy
  1.1 From Nixonomics to Trumponomics
  Nick French     
  1.2 No Matter How You Look at It, the Big Beautiful Bill Is a Monstrosity
  John Miller     
  1.3 The Opening Moves in the New War on Workers
  Nick French     
  1.4 Trump Tariffs and Stagflation: Why “TACO” Is the Least Bad Option
  Robert Pollin     
  1.5 Mass Deportations Drain Economic Growth
  John Miller     
  
  
  Chapter 2 · Fiscal Policy 
  2.1 Military Keynesianism, Then and Now
  Richard D. Wolff     
  2.2 What’s  Different About Today’s  Government Deficit and Debt?
  Robert Pollin     
  2.3 A Trillion Dollars a Year and No New Taxes
  John Miller     
  2.4 Mamdani Needs to Catch the Value-Capture Bus
  Polly Cleveland   
  2.5 The Myth of Millionaire Tax Migration
  John Miller 
      
  
  
  Chapter 3 · Money, Banking, and Finance
  3.1 The Fed vs. Trump: How Much Does It Matter for Interest Rates Overall?
  Robert Pollin    
  3.2 What’s Crypto Good For? 
  Gerald Epstein     
  3.3 Is “MMT” an Answer for the United States? For Greece?     
  Arthur MacEwan     
  3.4 The Other Debt Crisis    
  Kendall Stephenson     
  3.5 Discredited: The Ham-Fisted Tyranny of the Credit Rating Oligopoly
  Rob Larson   
  
  
  Chapter 4 · Social Policy
  4.1  The Heavy, Unequal Burden of Student Debt
  Nick French     
  4.2 Something Is Wonderful in the State of Denmark   
  John Miller    
  4.3 Zohran Mamdani’s Bold Program for an Affordable New York City
  Nick French    
  4.4 The Stealthy Strategy to Strangle Medicaid
  Nancy Folbre     
  4.5 Climate Change Disasters and the Housing Crisis
  Ed Ford     
  
  
  Chapter 5 · The Environment
  5.1 Can We Afford a Stable Climate?     
  Frank Ackerman     
  5.2 Climate Change and Inequality
  Arthur MacEwan    
  5.3 The Disastrous Climate Impacts of Trump’s Budget Bill: 
  How to Fight Back
  Robert Pollin      
  5.4 Making America Poisoned Again
  James K. Boyce     
  5.5 A Battle Over Copper in Colombia
  Austin Landis   
  
  
  Chapter 6 · Corporations  
  6.1 Monopoly Power Everywhere     
  Armağan Gezici     
  6.2 Corporate Taxes: Less, Less, and Less   
  Arthur MacEwan     
  6.3 The Landlord Lobby Fights Dirty
  Sam Knight     
  6.4 The U.S. Corporations Profiting from the Israeli Occupation
  Nick French     
  6.5 The Monster That Government Made
  Marie Christine Duggan   
   
  Chapter 7 · Labor, Unions, and Working Conditions
  7.1 What Is the State of Organized Labor?
  Arthur MacEwan     
  7.2 Short Staffing
  Mike Prokosch     
  7.3 A Night in the Life of an Amazon Warehouse Worker     
  Rose Baker     
  7.4 Putting Children to Work
  John Miller     
  7.5 AI and the Future of Work
  Robert Ovetz     
  
  
  Chapter 8 ·  Inequality
  8.1 Power, Wages, and Inequality
  Arthur MacEwan     
  8.2 The American Dream, We Hardly Knew You
  John Miller     
  8.3 A Country of Mini-Millionaires?
  John Miller     
  8.4 Death and Inequality
  Arthur MacEwan     
  8.5 Economic Inequality and Homelessness
  Arthur MacEwan     
  
  
  Chapter 9 · Gender, Race, and Class
  9.1 The Underestimated “Price of Parenting”
  Nancy Folbre     
  9.2 Who Can Afford to Have Kids, Anyway?
  Débora Nunes     
  9.3 Is the Gender Pay Gap by Choice?     
  Lynn Duggan     
  9.4 The Economic Conditions of Black People in the United States
  Arthur MacEwan       
  9.5 Race Inequality, Class Inequality
  Arthur MacEwan      
  
  
  Chapter 10 · The Global Economy
  10.1 Globalization in Crisis
  John Miller      
  10.2 Trump’s Dumb and Dumber Tariffs
  John Miller    
  10.3 Credit Squeeze
  Justin Villamil     
  10.4 Why Is the World Bank Attacking Land Reform in the Philippines?
  David Bacon     
  10.5 Dangerous Inflection Point: Is China’s Growth Model Exhausted?
  Bill Barclay     
  
  
  Chapter 11 · Resistance and Alternatives
  11.1 “Migration Is a Form of Fighting Back”
  David Bacon          
  11.2 Some Elements of a Progressive International Trade Policy
  Arthur MacEwan     
  11.3 Is the World Cup Worth It?   
  Saurav Sarkar     
  11.4 Worker Power Comes from Workers
  Amanda Page-Hoongrajok     
  11.5 The Richmond Progressive Alliance Has Won Elections and Made City Hall Better for 20 Years
  Steve Early