Working Life

It’s in the air. And it’s global. Even The Economist noticed.

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The vastness of global poverty is almost unfathomable–but, it’s gotten a bit better, according to the good people at the International Labour Organization, which just published its 2014 World of Work Report that focuses on “Developing With Jobs”. Even more astounding is the scale of the number of people who are in what is called “vulnerable employment”, which is a fancy way of saying you just can’t make ends meet.

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This is unfortunate. A federal appeals court overturned Hudge Jed Rakoff’s attempt to derail a deal with Citibank, a deal Rakoff had ruled essentially wasn’t in the public’s interest. It’s a bit complicated.

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Of course you would. That’s really what much of bad tax policy is: offering companies tax cuts that the companies really don’t need but will be happy to take anyway because it’s free. Like the research tax credit.

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It’s nice to see a really big leap forward. That would be the vote in Seattle to hike the minimum wage to $15 per hour, though phased in over 3-7 years. But, let’s be clear this only the beginning: bold, but moderate.

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I meant to share this from last week. “Young black workers with college degrees have fared better than their less-educated peers, they have a higher unemployment rate and are more likely to find themselves in a job that does not require a degree than other recent college graduates”, says the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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It’s not “breaking news” because it’s pretty common knowledge that corporate America–or, more accurately, American-based corporations–is treated differently allowing it to rob the public, day after day. Still, worth adding to the list another absurd new tidbit in the saga of how to rip off the American public through tax dodging.

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It would be hard to really say “this guy is the worst CEO”. I mean, there is so much competition–it’s much worse than dating (so many choices, so little time)…oh, that was way 30 years ago. I digress. But, Jeff Bezos got a particular round of catcalls from a global poll.

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The corporate thieves running U.S.-based corporations are just counting the days until Carl Levin heads off to retirement at the end of this term. It was Levin, you may recall, who looked at Goldman Sachs and saw “a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing”. And he isn’t letting go: he’s now moving to try to close a loophole that will put billions of dollars in taxable corporate profits into offshore accounts, a scam that robs the people of revenue.

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Big money. Two trillion dollars. If you could touch it, it would reach…oh, I dunno, I’m not going to tell you how high that stack would go and, actually, the point is, you can’t touch it: it’s stashed overseas. In corporate bank accounts. But, here’s the beauty: if you want to know what it feels when the Fortune 500 fleece the country to the tune of $550 billion in dodged taxes on that $2 trillion hiding in foreign bank accounts, just pull out your billfold…empty…well, that’s cuz the tab for that fleecing is on YOU.

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