Working Life

I don’t claim to have a deep knowledge of current Egyptian politics. So, I start out by saying I’m cautious about falling in love quickly. But, heck, Hamdeen Sabahi has a big mark in his favor: he does not like the so-called “free market”.

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   I took a longer break from blogging than I thought–to think, observe a bit, rest the brain, cycle New Zealand’s spectacular South Island. But, what stirred me to break this hiatus, at the very moment that people are switching off their computers to turn to libations and debauchery, was, well, the modest observation that [...]

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     Ah, it’s Monday, and I’m walking the tip-to-tip–from upper Manhattan all the way to Wall Street–support march for #OWS. So, I feel optimistic–and here’s another little tidbit of news: the youthful economists-of-the-future are giving a big thumbs down to the teachings of the so-called "free market". They staged a walkout last week–which only got [...]

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    1.4 BILLION PEOPLE IN THE WORLD MAKE $1.25 A DAY.    That is a fact. That is a moral scandal.    Yesterday, I was at the United Nations for the unveiling of an important, if a bit boringly titled, "Social Protection Floor for a Fair and Inclusive Globalization". You should read this report but [...]

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    You want a reason for the uprisings in Greece, where workers are on strike to protest the brutal austerity measures, or OccupyWallStreet or the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia fanned by the deep unemployment? Or are you looking for a reason people don’t believe the economy is getting better even when "growth" seems to [...]

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    The anger against the president that has been rocketing around many circles of liberal/progressive politics is misplaced.     The crisis we face isn’t about what the president is doing, or failing to do.     We are under siege, fighting the greatest class warfare in perhaps 100 years. And we can expect very [...]

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Every day, I get a new email from some group about a new 55-page proposal to fix the economy, or I see some expert propose a sure-fired way to get us "back" to a go-go world of "positive growth". There’s value in a whole lot of some of those ideas. But, my can’t-lose strategy boils [...]

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Here we are living at a time of the greatest class warfare in at least half a century. It is almost impossible to form a union legally in the U.S.–corporations have all power in the workplace. We have the greatest divide between rich and poor in 100 years. And now comes some clear evidence of [...]

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Yesterday, I wrote about the disastrous state of labor in the wake of the elections. Suffering from either a lack of sleep or simple brain lock, I neglected to include one of the most dangerous coming debacles: we have lost much of the ground built opposing so-called "free trade" agreements, which have played a central [...]

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   So, it’s probably a bad sign about my own priorities that I flip on C-SPAN at night and, having stumbled on the debate in the Senate Nevada race, I stuck with it–without running for a large glass of wine. Or maybe something stronger.    Oh my god.    It was a muddle. I can’t [...]

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I get why people are angry. Not the anger espoused by the racists, birthers and anti-government people. Across the political spectrum, wherever people place themselves, there is a unifying point that keeps coming up: we’ve been robbed by corporate powers. And the foolish, failed so-called "free trade" policies–pursued by Republicans and Democrats alike–is a place [...]

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 Sure, elections do matter, at some level–it is no coincidence that, in the wake of Citizens United, a torrent of corporate money is flowing to mostly Republican candidates. But, the truth is that, whatever the results of the elections, we will not end up with a government willing to stop the global movement of jobs [...]

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Yesterday, I wrote about how the decline of U.S. wages has made workers here cheaper to hire than workers in India, at least in the call center industry. Today, the news hails from Asia where workers are rising up against poverty-level wages.   From the Financial Times (and, as a side observation, the FT gives [...]

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    If it wasn’t so tragic, I’d be laughing until my belly hurt at the hand-wringing about the shaky nature of the economy. I’ve been saying this for many months, particularly every time I’ve seen the foolish predictions of the recovery around the corner. So, now, the stock market has a deep drop and people [...]

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   It is going to take the concerted effort of a lot of voices to overcome the noise being generated by the people who would like us to think that economic salvation is at hand. So, we need to keep pointing out some harsh realities facing real people. For example: The number of Americans filing [...]

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   This guy–Allan H. Meltzer, a political economist at Carnegie Mellon University–is seriously delusional: Mr. Meltzer says the risk lies not in pulling back too soon but dithering too long. And he would scrap the stimulus program immediately and replace it with cuts in marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses. "It’s certainly not a [...]

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