Working Life

   Those of us who have lived in the reality-based universe have known, for a long time, that the ideologues who permeated our government in the 1980s so they could cripple government were actually killing people and creating havoc in our economic lives. So, now that we have lived with the cost of de-regulation and […]

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    There will be a lot of chatter about today’s hike in the minimum wage. We should be happy for the people who will get another seventy cents an hour in their gross pay. But, we should keep in mind that, at the grand new sum of $6.55 an hour, the minimum wage is a […]

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    I don’t want to be negative all the time but, folks, I just don’t see a way out of the economic mess without some more serious pain being inflicted. And this pain might last a long, long time. Note that I say MORE serious pain because, unlike the talking heads and the economists who […]

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   I suppose if you like going to Geneva–which strikes me as a pretty boring city–there is no harm going there to take in the sites and kick back. But, if you are a trade minister or official using public money to attend the Doha round trade meetings as an actual cover to go to […]

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Do you have a good story to illustrate the problems of the current, insane trade policy? When I mean “good”, I obviously don’t mean “positive” but, rather, one that shows how pathetic the so-called “free trade” policy is? Well, post it here and I’ll get those stories to the right person who is working directly […]

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   Yours truly is on a plane here early in the morning so this is a quick post. But, it’s a weighty and worthwhile promo for a great statement by Dean Baker from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Readers will probably know that I think highly of the CEPR people–partly because they are […]

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   Well, the press (or, at least, The Los Angeles Times) is finally catching up with the public: For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets. And whatever combination of goods, services and jobs the market cooked up was presumed […]

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   My other obsession besides the triumph of workers over the running dog employers is baseball. Let’s see if we can do this with the following rules: talk about what you see your team doing WITHOUT trashing another team.  If you want to say something about another team, it’s got to be nice. This is […]

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   At least, for the foreseeable future. So says an article in yesterday’s New York Times: In recent months, nearly 100 newspapers in the United States have endorsed the Colombia trade agreement. So have many top Democrats, including Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago. And Mr. Uribe, who was already popular in Congress, was widely […]

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  There seems to be an emerging consensus that so-called "free trade" is dead. Even the business press is beginning to accept the inevitable. So, maybe we can now begin a rationale debate about trade, without meaningless marketing phrases like "free trade".   Yesterday, Bloomberg ran this piece: The liberalization of global trade has come […]

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