Working Life

Ideology is a powerful factor in the way people see things — or don’t see things, either intentionally or because they just can’t. So, when Bruce Bartlett recently wrote about the risks of retiring without a decent pension, it was both comical and bizarre that he chose to ignore the main reason for the destruction of a comfortable retirement.

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So, Wall Street got to really fuck workers once — when the greedy bastards who cratered the economy with their foolish games, they put millions of people into the streets, people who lost their jobs because of the greed. While not a single high-ranking financial leader is in jail, the greedy bastards are coming back for a second time to fuck workers — this time trying to screw them out of pensions.

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I’ve always chuckled a bit at the annual baseball debate over the rich teams versus the “poor” teams. Face it: it’s not your family business anymore. It’s big business running these teams. And, lo and behold, the vise of greed is tightening around the national past time.

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Detroit is about to be savaged — not by the industrial woes that have plagued the city for too many years. Nope, now riding into the city with an axe is an “emergency manager.” And let’s be clear: workers are the target.

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Every decade or so, we get a new “gap”. You remember the “missile gap”? Now, we have the “pension gap” — the difference between what sits in pensions funds and what is owed to retirees. But, who caused that gap?

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    Really. When I read The New York Times editorials about the economy, or the truly shallow reporting from most of the paper’s reporters, often I think: the people at The New York Times actually are dolts. They don’t understand economics–at all. But, more often, it’s worth considering–they actually believe what they write, even if [...]

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   If you are one who is already bored by the 2012 elections and the rhetorical, mind-numbing repetition, here’s a little taste of what you can expect all the way into the distant future of 2016. The poodle-for-the-rich governor of New York has determined that his path to the White House in 2016–and, despite the [...]

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Gupta. Rajaratnam. Blaring headlines are a potentially dangerous distraction from the truth: the bankers responsible for the economic catastrophe that wiped out millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in wealth are still free and clear, reaping tens of millions of dollars more and laughing all the way to next purchase of a yacht or [...]

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   In one important respect, the poodle-for-the-rich governor of New York brings to mind another bullying, immoral politician, George W. Bush. Back when one of the most corrupt and dangerous Administrations in our nation’s history had sky-high approval ratings, thanks to igniting a gusher of misguided and illegal revenge and retribution in the wake of [...]

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    I’ve maintained for a long time that the civil fines levied against Goldman Sachs ($550 million) and J.P. Morgan ($153 million) for their roles in the financial crisis scam amounted to peanuts–costs that will be ultimately passed on to consumers and shareholders. If a financial executive could aid and abet a massive fraud and [...]

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   Yesterday, I wrote about an appalling but typical example of how bi-partisan "debate" is really an argument taking place on one side, in this case King Cuomo’s immoral decision to attack workers’ pensions by regurgitating Republican talking points that the economic crisis we face is the fault of the middle-class, workers, unions, and a [...]

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   It really is no surprise, unfortunately, that the country is spinning out of control, the middle-class is dying and we are trapped in some of the dumbest debates imaginable–chief among them the entirely phony argument over a non-existent debt and deficit "crisis". Not surprising because many of these debates have political leaders essentially taking [...]

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   I don’t write this to convince the people who are intentionally lying or have some ideological end-game here (as in, destroy unions and the middle class). I write this for those people who are still living on the planet Earth of reality. So, here it is: Wisconsin has a great, financially-sound public pension system. [...]

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    We have a real problem in the debate about pensions that is very closely connected to the financial implosion we’re still trying to dig our way out of: the criminals and fools on Wall Street are hiding and avoiding prosecution, or at the very least, they are managing to keep their jobs despite their [...]

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  I think the hardest part of being immersed in a battle–even one that is energizing and inspiring–is to see where we stand in the overall war (with apologies to those who don’t like the military imagery). No doubt, the people in Wisconsin–and hundreds of thousands of supporters nationwide–have given the anti-union forces something to [...]

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   You’ve heard (and, in some cases, unfortunately, been persuaded) that "generous" pensions given to public employees has caused great deficits in pensions and state budgets. It’s nonsense. And here are the facts to prove it.    The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a very important study out. It must be given wide [...]

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