Working Life

Well, there’s a lot of ink today about the drop in the unemployment rate: down to 4.7 percent, the lowest number in four years. And, according to the reports, the number of people who have been unemployed for a long-time (and those who dropped out of the job market) has come down, too. But, before […]

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Not a bad spread: 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms, a 164-seat theater, two bowling alleys, a restaurant-size kitchen, a 2.5 million-B.T.U. furnace, and a parking garage that could hold 200 cars. That’s for one person: Ira Rennert. But, Rennert may have to give up his palace in the Hamptons, as Mary Williams Walsh reports in today’s […]

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There’s been a lot of analysis of the state of the union show (I don’t call it an “address” because it really is just show business). As I see it, the Democrats are blowing it again. And it’s not just because of incompetence or the lack of a spine (though, yes, those are annoying qualities). […]

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I know everyone is going to focus on the president’s whoppers on Iraq (and I am right with you that the pro-war faction in the country, including too many Democrats, remains dangerously out of touch) but here’s one that is getting virtually no comment: his call to meet competition from China and India by increasing […]

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Here’s some political spin that is being pushed by the Administration and the corporate world: people are being squeezed by health care costs and that’s why wages aren’t going up. Well, I’m certainly on board about the crisis in health care–and it’s not going to be solved by either health savings accounts or a “national […]

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The spinning is already underway. Tomorrow, in the State of the Union address, the president will try to convince people that they should feel good about the economy. But, people aren’t buying and they shouldn’t. Just today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released data that showed that in December personal income and disposal personal income […]

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Ben Stein, for those not in the know, is a fairly conservative guy who loves capitalism. But, I like Stein–up to a point–because there’s a consistency in his beliefs: he advocates for capitalism but he also is disgusted by the greed and abuses that I think he believes should have no place in his beloved […]

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Well, here’s the first sign that we’re headed for some trouble with the economy. The numbers are in for economic growth and it’s not pretty: in the fourth quarter, the economy grew just 1.1 percent–the lowest in three years. Now, regular readers of this page know that I’m a critic of government statistics because they […]

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…another so-called “free trade” agreement is trying to impose itself on unsuspecting people. Every time I think of the birth of these agreements, I think of those plant-like things in “Alien” that pop out yet another terrifying monster. This new ugly brew is called the Andean Free Trade Agreement because it will cover Peru, Columbia […]

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I woke up this morning to read about two new attacks against workers. The banner headline in the Financial Times (subscription required) reads: “Delphi seeks to tear up labour deals.” You may remember that back in November the company’s CEO Steve Miller had concocted a deal that would plunge Delphi into bankruptcy, gut the living […]

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