Working Life

   Some people are not suffering (via The Wall Street Journal): As financial firms rebounded last year, Wall Street bonuses for employees in the New York City securities industry rose almost 17% to $20.3 billion in 2009, according to a report released Tuesday by the New York State comptroller.  

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   For many months, I have argued that the greatest crisis we face is the lack of good-paying jobs–not the deficit. Unfortunately, the conventional wisdom took hold in Washington and stymied the president from taking the action that was needed during the debate over the stimulus bill, which came in at $787 billion–and too small […]

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   There is a rhetorical firefight going on in Britain that is worth reading. It’s carrying on in the letters section of the Financial Times. It started with a call this past Sunday from 20 conservative economists that the British government immediately begin cutting back the fiscal budget–an echo to what we are hearing in […]

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   If states won’t crack down on businesses breaking the law as a moral imperative, I suppose at least something can work: Federal and state officials, many facing record budget deficits, are starting to aggressively pursue companies that try to pass off regular employees as independent contractors   And another good reason to have former […]

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    I understand why many people do not expect much from most of the traditional media–particularly The New York Times. People don’t get the sense that the traditional media can get out of its own insular thinking to do hard, independent reporting about the facts.    The newest drumbeat being pushed by the traditional media […]

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Wall Street loves a disaster. The more chaos, the better–because, no matter what happens to regular people, chaos can mean lots of profits. That is why the deep reform we need in the way the financial world works is so important–and why Wall Street is fighting so hard to stop it.   This past Friday, […]

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   Words to remember on President’s Day from James Madison: Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the […]

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This is a fact of life: a large number of people in the world enjoy all sorts of luxuries because of the horrendous conditions that tens of millions of workers endure–slave wages, dangerous workplaces and physically-abusive employers. This is a small slice of that fact–and you can do something about it.   The National Labor […]

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   It’s old news by now that the nomination of Craig Becker to be a member of the National Labor Relations Board has been blocked–or, as the British like to say in a more interesting way, scuppered. Understand that Becker actually got 52 votes–FIFTY-TWO–in favor of his appointment. In my long-ago civics class, I was […]

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Among the most troubling retreats, in my view, in the public discourse has been the adoption of the false idea that deep government involvement in the economy is a bad thing. It’s a retreat that too many Democrats have taken part in. The problem is the FACTS say otherwise. And the known left-wing organ, The […]

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