Working Life

For many months, I’ve been very skeptical about the regular jobs reports that are fairly upbeat in the way they describe the economy. I still feel that way, though the direction is certainly better than say right during the post-financial crisis months.

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Once again, the elites are confounded. They don’t understand why the economy isn’t performing very well. And it leads them to pay attention to the wrong things.

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Yipee, it’s up, the economy is “rebounding”, smile, celebrate…uh, well, not so fast.

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    The answer to this question would appear to be obvious. But, it needs constant reinforcing–as you will see from the debate (if you can call it that) last night between yours truly and Larry Kudlow and a stooge from the right wing. It’s almost laughable and entertaining–if the consequences weren’t so dire. The subject […]

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  The tragedy in Japan is real and the loss of life truly sad. But, there is one other piece of knowledge to glean today that is a long-term keeper: how disasters are GOOD for the Gross Domestic Product, and what that tells us about how we think about "recovery" and "economic growth".     […]

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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 […]

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While a bunch of elected "leaders" engage in a childish game of theater (reading the Constitution), while we flush down the toilet trillions of dollars in wealth on immoral wars, while one half of the working class is being turned against the other half and unions are being blamed for ills created by the incompetent, […]

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   What does it mean when corporate profits are up–but people aren’t buying enough to sustain those profits? As in this report today via The Wall Street Journal: A record number of U.S. companies beat earnings expectations in the third quarter, but a big portion of their profits came from cost-cutting, disappointing investors who were […]

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Our problem in the country is not the lack of money or the lack of resources. It is how we set our priorities, whether we choose, for example, to value our communities over corporate special interests (the health care fight is one clear example of that struggle). Today, we see priorities pitted against each other […]

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   I feel like I’m in the middle of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier movie. You know, when the entity masquerading as God talks a good game and is trying to seduce his listeners into believing that a wonderful future awaits–if only he can hitch a ride on the Enterprise. To which Capt. Kirk […]

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