Working Life

Sometimes, I wonder whether we all live in a grand farce. But, actually, it’s a real-life story about a robbery of the people that continues every day–and today is no different. The robbers grow richer.   From The Wall Street Journal a story headlined: "On Street, Pay Vaults to Record Altitude": When it comes to […]

Read the full story

If Jeffrey Immelt, the White House’s just-appointed head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, has anything to say about corporate taxes, you can bet the message will be simple: corporations should pay lower taxes. How do we know that? Because in his job, as CEO of General Electric, he excelled at fleecing the […]

Read the full story

   Well, who said you can’t count on stability anymore? That things are changing too rapidly. Not to worry:    It was a tough year for Bank of America what with the foreclosure mess and a sagging stock price. Its chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, nonetheless received $10 million in his first year on the […]

Read the full story

When you cut through the chase about the economic debate of the future, it really boils down to this: What is the standard we should use in setting the  standard for a decent living? Apparently, The New York Times has decided: don’t count on decent pensions, don’t count on health care, and forget decent wages. […]

Read the full story

Got crabs? Cut corporate taxes. Can’t get your kid to eat spinach? Cut corporate taxes. Worried your skin it too dry? Cut corporate taxes. And, then, of course, want the economy to be more "competitive" and "grow"? Cut corporate taxes. None of the above will be helped by cutting corporate taxes–but the reasons given for […]

Read the full story

   I have not had time to read the full report of the Congressional commission on the financla crisis. But, here is one thing in the preface worth reading: The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone wild. The captains of finance and the public […]

Read the full story

I think it is important that we point out the obscenities that we see every day in life. The danger is that too many people begin to accept, out of resignation and a feeling of helplessness, stupendously immoral standards. Today it’s this one: insurance companies profit because Americans are too poor to go to the […]

Read the full story

I think we are making a mistake, both economically and politically, by confining our defense of Social Security to an argument about simply preserving current benefits. We should be pushing for an INCREASE in Social Security benefits as both a social and economic necessity.   Let me start with the hardest challenge facing people who […]

Read the full story

In the lore of political budgetary rhetoric, Sen Everett Dirksen’s observation is often useful: “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon it adds up to real money” he is rumored to have said–rumored because there is some debate about whether he actually used that whole phrase. But, whatever–it’s useful to our current discussion. Where […]

Read the full story

  Each day brings a stupefying new chapter in the class warfare underway in America. Today, it’s the unfathomable idea that regular people who had worked their entire lives serving the public should now be effectively cast out into the cold, their pensions ripped up. But, what we need to connect is this: there is […]

Read the full story