Working Life

   Were you wondering whether the title refers to the cost to build 413 high-speed railway lines? Or perhaps 413 wind turbines to address global warming? Or maybe for $1.5 trillion you were thinking we could construct 413 new factories for businesses to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs? Nah. Here it is: we […]

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I feel almost like this will be a full-time job for many of us: trying to undo the stupidity racing throughout the political leadership when it comes to the foolish belief that we have some deficit or debt crisis. WE DON’T. It’s phony. And the belief in the phony "crisis" is literally going to kill […]

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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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     Forget the criminals on Wall Street. What is more telling, troubling and almost bizarre is how quickly the chattering classes and political power brokers have shaken off the stain of the financial crisis, inviting back to center stage some of the very people responsible for destroying trillions of dollars in wealth and costing millions […]

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   The "economy is recovering" voices are clearly their throats again: The nation’s employers added 192,000 jobs in February, up from a gain of 63,000 the previous month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. While February’s number represented the fastest growth in nearly a year, it was partly the result of a bounce back from […]

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   I’ve been following this from a far–not because I like the sport (I don’t)–but it is a fight that is a tough one for the workers. At the brink of an all-out labor war Thursday, the NFL players union weighed an 11th hour-proposal by National Football League owners designed to keep the two sides […]

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   This may not seem like an earth-shaking moment but it is a telling truth about where money flows, who controls it and how little ability we have to oversee the shadow banking done at the margins of our economy.     From the Financial Times: The top 10 hedge funds made $28bn for clients […]

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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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   The tide is with us: As labor battles erupt in state capitals around the nation, a majority of Americans say they oppose efforts to weaken the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions and are also against cutting the pay or benefits of public workers to reduce state budget deficits, according to the latest […]

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