Working Life

Here’s a stark contrast: think of the gap between a minimum wage worker and a guy like Jerald Fishman, chief executive of Analog Device who just picked up a payday worth $144.7 million (that’s not a typo). While the greed of a few executives is continuing unabated, here’s what’s happening to millions of minimum wage […]

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Over the past few years, here and in other places, I’ve repeatedly argued that we are being fooled and mislead. Okay, that’s true in many arenas but today I’m referring to the mantra that we’ve heard from Republicans and Democrats alike that the solution to competing in the “global economy” is for people to get […]

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A few days ago, I spotlighted Ira Rennert’s shenanigans: playing around in his $185 million estate while his bankrupt company leaves 2,000 steelworkers without a pension. Over the weekend, there was more to report (from The New York Times): U.S. Moves to Seize Bankrupt Steel Maker’s Pension Plan By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH The federal government […]

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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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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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