Working Life

The world currency markets were abuzz on Friday when China’s currency, the renminbi (“the peoples’ money,” also known as the yuan), traded for 20 minutes above the mark it has held for almost a decade. Was it a mistake, quickly corrected, or a little test by the the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, […]

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A bit of easy activism for you on a weekend—if you needed more evidence of the corruption of corporate America, just check out United Airlines. Here’s an airline in bankruptcy, it reaches a deal to jettison its pension plans and dumps those liabilities on the government, which means a lot of workers will not get […]

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Today’s Wall Street Journal has the not-surprising piece “WTO Urges CautionOn Textile Restraints.” (requires subscription). The head of the WTO, says the article, “says it would be a mistake for countries struggling with a surge in Chinese textile exports to throw up protectionist walls right away, just as Europe and the U.S. take steps in […]

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Ketih Bradesher writes in The New York Times today that deals being made by China foreshadow “what now seems to be shaping up as a broad assault on global automotive markets by Chinese companies and the Chinese divisions of multinational companies.” Obviously, this has grave implications for the already weak auto industry in the U.S.—and […]

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Just a couple of days ago, I was musing about the disconnect between wages and productivity. That is, productivity was racing ahead yet wages were pretty dismal. That’s not the way the deal is supposed to work—if workers are laboring their little tushes off in the workplace so that every hour worked is a more […]

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I’ve opened up this thread to get thoughts and comments about my column today entitled “Wal-Mart’s Free Market Fallacy.” I’m curious: can anyone give any real example of a free market? I think it’s a bogus concept, used for propoganda purposes to disarm and confuse people into believing that corporations should be able to operate […]

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I see the Consumer Price Index and the reality of workers wages are giving out more signs of the increased pressure on the average worker. My friends at the Economic Policy Institute point out that prices are rising faster than wages. For the 11th consecutive month, prices have risen faster than wages (click the image […]

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Alright, I guess I’ll do the obvious—a short rumination on taxes. I’ve always believed in taxes, though I certainly would rather my contribution to the federal treasury go to building schools or funding alternative energy than paying Halliburton to fleece us or some new, nutty version of Star Wars (isn’t it amazing how scientifically-discredited weapons […]

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Are consumers running out of steam–either because they are running out of room on their plastic or perhaps they’ve used up most of the cash pulled out of home equity? Maybe. I’ve felt for some time that there had to be a big wall along the way into which people would slam very heard. Well, […]

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On and off, I’ve been writing about the tenuous nature of the economy. The pundits keep talking about low unemployment and moderate growth. But, something doesn’t seem right to me: all I hear about are average people worried about being in debt up the wazoo, huge health care costs (and going up) and no retirement. […]

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