Working Life

   I know there is an obvious answer to this question: does the Chamber of Commerce ever stop lying? Since you’ve answered that yourself, let’s consider for a moment the most immediate lie–and the truth about the economic reality facing most working people.   There is, as we know, a concerted effort by Republicans and […]

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   We’re all the same–us and the billionaires. Right? Wouldn’t you do this: A Russian investor has bought a French chateau-style mansion in Silicon Valley for $100 million, marking the highest known price paid for a single family home in the U.S. and underscoring the strength of luxury properties in an otherwise hammered housing market. […]

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   No one should be surprised that the rich are doing quite well. We’ve lived through at least a thirty-year robbery of the wealth of the nation. But, it’s worth digging into some of the numbers to get to this point: the divide between the rich and the rest of us has never been this […]

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   This is a story that cannot be retold enough and updated enough because it highlights, as much as any trend, how nothing has changed. The people suffer–while CEO pay continues to go up. The robbery continues unabated.     Let’s start with the hospital sector. In New York, and I would suspect everywhere else […]

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   Were you wondering whether the title refers to the cost to build 413 high-speed railway lines? Or perhaps 413 wind turbines to address global warming? Or maybe for $1.5 trillion you were thinking we could construct 413 new factories for businesses to create hundreds of thousands of new jobs? Nah. Here it is: we […]

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    We have a real problem in the debate about pensions that is very closely connected to the financial implosion we’re still trying to dig our way out of: the criminals and fools on Wall Street are hiding and avoiding prosecution, or at the very least, they are managing to keep their jobs despite their […]

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   The revolt is spreading to other states. And here is one reason we must fight: Wal-Mart’s earnings rose sharply.    Indiana : On Monday, thousands of steelworkers, autoworkers and other labor activists surrounded the Indiana state capitol to protest a bill before the legislature to dramatically weaken the clout of private-sector unions.   Ohio […]

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    I am struck every day by the incredibly bizarre world we live in, where "up" is "down" and "down" is "up". I think many people are angry and confused because what they see in their daily lives–upheaval, struggle, fear–does not match much of the rhetoric coming from the people who have their hands on […]

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   You’ve heard (and, in some cases, unfortunately, been persuaded) that "generous" pensions given to public employees has caused great deficits in pensions and state budgets. It’s nonsense. And here are the facts to prove it.    The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a very important study out. It must be given wide […]

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Yes, to get back to some sane, healthy economic strategy we have to confront the Wall Street/Robert Rubins of the world, the corruption of the electoral system and a whole set of adversaries. But, I would put at the top of the list the false framing of the choices before us as a nation, and […]

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