Working Life

Sometimes, I wonder whether we all live in a grand farce. But, actually, it’s a real-life story about a robbery of the people that continues every day–and today is no different. The robbers grow richer.   From The Wall Street Journal a story headlined: "On Street, Pay Vaults to Record Altitude": When it comes to […]

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   Well, who said you can’t count on stability anymore? That things are changing too rapidly. Not to worry:    It was a tough year for Bank of America what with the foreclosure mess and a sagging stock price. Its chief executive, Brian T. Moynihan, nonetheless received $10 million in his first year on the […]

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Got crabs? Cut corporate taxes. Can’t get your kid to eat spinach? Cut corporate taxes. Worried your skin it too dry? Cut corporate taxes. And, then, of course, want the economy to be more "competitive" and "grow"? Cut corporate taxes. None of the above will be helped by cutting corporate taxes–but the reasons given for […]

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   I have not had time to read the full report of the Congressional commission on the financla crisis. But, here is one thing in the preface worth reading: The crisis was the result of human action and inaction, not of Mother Nature or computer models gone wild. The captains of finance and the public […]

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I think it is important that we point out the obscenities that we see every day in life. The danger is that too many people begin to accept, out of resignation and a feeling of helplessness, stupendously immoral standards. Today it’s this one: insurance companies profit because Americans are too poor to go to the […]

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  Each day brings a stupefying new chapter in the class warfare underway in America. Today, it’s the unfathomable idea that regular people who had worked their entire lives serving the public should now be effectively cast out into the cold, their pensions ripped up. But, what we need to connect is this: there is […]

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We have an affliction that really undermines a decent society. It’s a tendency to want to ignore inconvenient facts, either explicitly or because we are encouraged to look quite narrowly and myopically at a problem. Which brings me to Wal-Mart’s new attempt to whitewash its practices, using the First Lady as a prop.   We […]

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You can’t find a better contrast between the vision for our country than those offered by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Goldman Sachs. One vision sees America as the land of equality and fairness. The other vision sees an America where greed is good.   Here is some of what Trumka will say today at […]

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The political adage is correct: elections have consequences. We know about the takeover of the House by Republicans and the hit Democrats will take in the reapportionment process. But, the greatest threat to the American Dream is going to come from a determined assault on the labor movement.   The New York Times has this […]

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We hear an enduring myth: the "free market" decides who gets what in an efficient dance of allocation of resources through competition. Garbage. Especially when it comes to CEO pay–though apparently there are some who want to continue the myth of competition.   Over the weekend, I caught this in the NYTimes business section–an excerpt […]

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