Working Life

   With the backdrop of the collapse of the global trade talks (a good thing), here’s something to consider: the great, wonderful benefits of so-called "free trade" or "liberalization" have cost 2.3 million U.S. workers their jobs between 2001 and 2007, according to a very, detailed fact-based (as opposed to rhetorical promises from pro so-called […]

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   To the long list of examples of how business rips off the average person–from paying CEOs huge salaries while workers get pay and benefits cuts, to making people work harder and more productive than ever before yet refusing to pass on the fruits of that labor to workers, to lobbying against raising the scandalously […]

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   The world of the Beast of Bentonville is all abuzz with news of various kinds–not the kind of news that is fuzzy and warm to living creatures everywhere (a friend of mine says I should write more positive things…okay, I’ll try…he obviously didn’t read my recent baseball riff). So, where do we start? How […]

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   I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the ability of government statistics, economists and prognosticators–pretending to be in the last cateogry myself sometimes–to accurately portray what is actually happening to people. Government stats like Gross Domestic Product don’t tell you much other than stuff is being made–it doesn’t really give you a good picture […]

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   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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