Look at the history of national debt: Great Britain, Germany, and France were all once in the situation of today’s Greece, and in fact had been far more indebted. The first lesson that we can take from the history of government debt is that we are not facing a brand new problem….

After large crises that created huge debt loads, at some point people need to look toward the future. We cannot demand that new generations must pay for decades for the mistakes of their parents. The Greeks have, without a doubt, made big mistakes. Until 2009, the government in Athens forged its books. But despite this, the younger generation of Greeks carries no more responsibility for the mistakes of its elders than the younger generation of Germans did in the 1950s and 1960s. We need to look ahead. Europe was founded on debt forgiveness and investment in the future. Not on the idea of endless penance. We need to remember this.

—Thomas Piketty
Quoted in Germany Shouldn’t Be Telling Greece To Repay Debt

It’s not a question of Greek being blameless. Of course they’re blameful. But that doesn’t matter if people were giving them money. You can’t have over-borrowing without over-lending. Why is all the conversation about the terrible over-borrowers rather than the reckless over-lenders? …

Nobody gets called on their busted calls. The number of times I’ve seen, “Europe has turned the corner into growth,” and then it went straight back into recession. If you’re a bookie and you continually make bad bets, you go out of business. If you’re a doctor and you continually injure patients, they put you in jail. But if you’re a financial journalist or an institutional economist, then you can make bad call, bad bet, and bad policy time after time, and you get promoted. That’s what’s most annoying about it…

I just think that when you start to do things like replace governments, and have something called the Eurogroup, which decides that government shouldn’t be in power, that’s kind of dangerous. I don’t think that’s kind of leftist or rightist or whatever. And everything that I’ve said here is based on evidence — chapter and verse, real data, the whole thing. It’s not a set of, “I just made this up” opinions. What gets me is the faith-based reasoning on the other side, which is, “Well, the Greeks haven’t tried hard enough!” Well, I can show you evidence that they’ve actually done a heck of a lot of reform. “Yeah, that doesn’t count because they’re all lazy!” But, in fact, they work 800 hours more than the Germans. “Yeah, but they don’t pay taxes!” But neither do rich people in the United States. And you can go point after point after point, and it makes no difference. This is an article of faith.

—Mark Blyth
Interview with On the Media

Five months ago, the deal reached between the Syriza-led government and the Troika boiled down to this: the creditors could fix broad objectives, from tight fiscal policy to privatizations, but the Greek government would have the margin for maneuver to choose the policy mix with which to achieve these goals. Obviously this was a major climb-down for a party whose political purpose was opposing austerity. But lacking leverage, the Tsipras government took this medium-term deal in the hopes that it could at least consolidate its political support by making austerity less regressive and structural reforms less transparently plutocratic.

What we’ve just seen is this uneasy truce being shattered by the creditors. With a slow-motion bank run taking place in Greece, the creditors took the chance to take the hardest of lines in the most recent negotiations. And Syriza essentially folded. Their most recent proposals acceded to a severely intensified austerity, with no commitment by creditors to debt relief. The only caveat demanded was that the lowest pensions would not be cut and that the tax burden would be increased in a not-entirely-regressive manner: a mix of heavy VAT increases (with carve-outs for medicine, food, and electricity) and taxes on the middle class and corporations.

The government’s proposal for austerity with a human face was already a huge stretch: denounced by Syriza’s left and by angry pensioners in the streets, it would very likely have led to the party’s split. But even this plan was rejected by the IMF, who, without a hint of irony, suggested that taxes on business profits would be recessionary, and that the vast majority of the package should thus be spending cuts, rather than taxes.

It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that the creditors’ latest proposals were about regime change more than economics. The creditors had won a total victory, but were unsatisfied with a solution which didn’t eliminate even the fig-leaf with which the Syriza-led government would defend its political credibility. The last fragile pretense of sovereignty was repudiated: not only would its creditors set the objectives of Greek policy, but they would decide in detail the policies themselves. This was a bridge too far, and Tsipras pulled out of negotiations suddenly and declared a referendum on the Troika’s latest proposals, set for Sunday.

—David Attewell
Putting the Greek Referendum in Context

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is a constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes that would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! Had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

—Frederick Douglass
What to the Slave is 4th of July?

The first national poll out there measuring reactions to last week’s two big SCOTUS landmark cases is out, from CNN/ORC. Unsurprisingly, it showed a majority of Americans agreeing with Oberkefell v Hodges, though the percentage was higher than one might have guessed, at 59%. But surprisingly, an even higher percentage — 63% — said they agreed with the finding in King v Burwell that “government assistance for lower-income Americans buying health insurance through both state-operated and federally-operated health insurance exchanges is legal…”

Now earlier polling had shown big majorities of the public having no clue that this constitutional challenge to Obamacare was coming. So the numbers CNN/ORC is showing represent another confirmation that the ideas incorporated in Obamacare are a lot more popular than the name, especially among those who are not necessarily responding to partisan cues. This is something Republicans better pay attention to when designing their replace/repeal agenda.

—Ed Kilgore
Obamacare Subsidies More Popular Than Same-Sex Marriage?

A few years ago, when Greece was still at the start of its slide into an economic depression, the Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz remembers discussing the crisis with Greek officials. What they wanted was a stimulus package to boost growth and create jobs, and Stiglitz, who had just produced an influential report for the United Nations on how to deal with the global financial crisis, agreed that this would be the best way forward. Instead, Greece’s foreign creditors imposed a strict program of austerity. The Greek economy has shrunk by about 25% since 2010. The cost-cutting was an enormous mistake, Stiglitz says, and it’s time for the creditors to admit it.

“They have criminal responsibility,” he says of the so-called troika of financial institutions that bailed out the Greek economy in 2010, namely the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank. “It’s a kind of criminal responsibility for causing a major recession,” Stiglitz tells TIME in a phone interview…

Over the weekend the prospect of Greece abandoning the euro drew closer than ever, as talks between the Greek government and its creditors broke down. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who was elected in January on a promise to end austerity, announced on Saturday that he could not accept the troika’s “insulting” demands for more tax hikes and pension cuts, and he called a referendum for July 5 to let voters decide how the government should handle the negotiations going forward. If a majority of Greeks vote to reject the troika’s terms for continued assistance, Greece could be forced to default on its debt and pull out of the currency union.

Stiglitz sees two possible outcomes to that scenario — neither of them pleasant for the European Union. If the Greek economy recovers after abandoning the euro, it would “certainly increase the impetus for anti-euro politics,” encouraging other struggling economies to drop the common currency and go it alone. If the Greek economy collapses without the euro, “you have on the edge of Europe a failed state,” Stiglitz says. “That’s when the geopolitics become very ugly.”

—Simon Shuster
Joseph Stiglitz to Greece’s Creditors: Abandon Austerity Or Face Global Fallout

Clinton’s election in November marked the ascendance of the New Democrats and the ideological exile of progressives. But Sanders apparently concluded he could still curry influence with one key member of the Clinton team: the first lady.

One of Bill Clinton’s first acts in office in January of 1993 was to appoint his wife to chair the administration’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform. Sanders had convened his own, much-smaller task force pushing single-payer health care for Vermont, and he began trying to pull Hillary Clinton in that direction.

In February, Sanders requested a meeting with Hillary, “to bring in two Harvard Medical School physicians who have written on the Canadian system,” according to the records of the administration’s task force. Those physicians were Stephanie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein, leading advocates for single-payer health care.

They got their meeting at the White House that month, and the two doctors laid out the case for single-payer to the first lady. “She said, ‘You make a convincing case, but is there any force on the face of the earth that could counter the hundreds of millions of the dollars the insurance industry would spend fighting that?'” recalled Himmelstein. “And I said, ‘How about the president of the United States actually leading the American people?’ and she said, ‘Tell me something real.'”

—Ben Schreckinger
When Bernie met Hillary

Three days later, on March 28, 1873, white Democratic leaders began plotting to retake the courthouse by force. When word of these plans reached the Republicans, armed black men started mustering at the courthouse to defend it against the white aggressors.

Led by Christopher Columbus Nash, an ex-Confederate army lieutenant who was also the Democratic candidate for Grant Parish sheriff, Democratic forces marched on Colfax on April 13. Though the approximately 150 black men defending the courthouse slightly outnumbered Nash’s men, the Republican forces were massively outgunned. About half of Nash’s men were Confederate veterans, including four officers. Each of them was well armed, many of them with multiple guns, and they had even brought a small cannon to Colfax on a two-horse wagon.

Meanwhile, as many as half of the black men protecting the courthouse had no guns whatsoever, and those with guns had only enough powder and ammunition to allow each man to fire about two rounds. The closest thing the freedmen had to artillery were three makeshift guns rigged from old steam pipes. When they attempted to fire one of these would-be cannons, the entire gun exploded.

The result was a rout. White forces outflanked the freedmen, positioning their cannon behind the black army’s trench line. Not long after the cannon started spewing buckshot at the exposed men around the courthouse, black combatants began to flee — only to be hunted down and captured or killed by white men on horseback. Though dozens of freedmen continued to fight from within the courthouse, Nash ordered the courthouse to be set ablaze. When the black Republicans laid down their arms and fled the burning building, many of them waving white flags of surrender, Nash’s men opened fire.

Nor did the killing stop there. Nash eventually ordered his men to cease fire, and the remaining freedmen were taken prisoner. Two hours before midnight, however, Nash left the prisoners under the control of a group of men led by Bill Cruikshank, a white supremacist cotton planter. Not long thereafter, Cruikshank ordered the captured freedmen to march away from the courthouse under armed guard. The column did not get far before Cruikshank’s men drew their pistols and began executing their prisoners. A black man named Levi Nelson, who later served as a star witness against Cruikshank at his criminal trial, survived this death march only because Cruikshank tried to make sport out of murder by lining up Nelson and another man close enough together that they could both be shot with a single bullet, rather than spending two shots to ensure that both men would die.

—Ian Millhiser
Injustices

Although the result was expected on a rational level, today’s ruling is still viscerally shocking for any LGBT citizen who grew up in the US, or their family members and close friends. It’s almost hard to believe that same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. Just consider how embedded, pervasive and recent anti-gay sentiment has been in the fabric of American life…

It’s breathtaking to consider the amount of courage and human suffering that led to today’s decision. In the late 1940s, Harry Hay created the Mattachine Society, which combined highly progressive politics with a campaign for gay rights in an indescribably hostile and oppressive climate. The Stonewall Riot of 1968, driven by outrage over endless police harassment, was led by the most marginalized members of the community, and sparked the modern LGBT movement. In the late 1980s and 1990s, ACT UP — driven primarily by sick gay men and their lesbian allies — pioneered political activism with a union of defiance, dissent, and shrewd expertise and strategizing that unquestionably saved countless lives around the world and emboldened an entire generation of gay people (passively attending ACT UP meetings at Cooper Union during my law schools years was incredibly formative).

The experience of being gay in the US has long been one of intense stigma, condemnation and exclusion; for many, it was worse than that. The tragically conclusive empirical data on the highly disproportionate suicide rates for gay adolescents, by itself, tells much of that story. To witness the arrival of full-scale legal equality is something many never expected to see in their lifetime, and now that it has happened, still seems surreal.

—Glenn Greenwald
Today’s Court Ruling, Though Expected, is Still Shocking – Especially for Those Who Grew Up LGBT in the US

Earlier IMF work has shown that income inequality is bad for growth and its sustainability. Our new research shows that income distribution itself — not just the level of income inequality — matters for growth.

Specifically, we find that making the rich richer by one percentage point lowers GDP growth in a country over the next five years by 0.08 percentage points — whereas making the poor and the middle class one percentage point richer can raise GDP growth by as much as 0.38 percentage points… Put simply, boosting the incomes of the poor and the middle class can help raise growth prospects for all.

One possible explanation is that the poor and the middle class tend to consume a higher fraction of their income than the rich… What this means is that the poor and the middle class are key engines of growth. But with inequality on the rise, those engines are stalling.

—Era Dabla-Norris et al
Growth’s Secret Weapon: The Poor and the Middle Class