Working Life

“With the economy weak and borrowing cheap, it is daft that America’s public infrastructure spending is at a 20-year low, even as the country’s roads, bridges and dams are rated D+ by the American Society of Civil Engineers.” A new free-trade lover-turned-liberal superhero? Left-wing irrelevant magazine? Progressive think-tank looking for foundation money? Nope…straight from the mouths of The Economist.

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Here’s a riddle: what large entity has the theoretical access to deploy a few trillion dollars, quickly, if given the chance? If you answered the Chinese or US governments, thank you for playing and please try again another time. The answer: labor unions.

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   Math is a pretty simple thing–except if you are an elected member of Congress engaging in misdirection, blaming the wrong people and a healthy dose of cognitive dissonance (which requires that you reconcile conflicting realities by blaming, justifying or denying the truth). Which brings us to: why do we have deficits? Well, at least […]

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   This past Friday, I was standing on the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis at a Laborers rally to push for massive infrastructure investment as a way to create jobs, and rebuild the country. In an obvious way and a less obvious way, standing on the bridge spanning the Mississippi gives one a clear understanding […]

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   A lot of pain is going to continue to wash across the country. Witness this info on the continued lag in the construction industry: Construction is a big employer and one of the better-paid sectors for men who lack a college degree. The sector has shed 2.1 million jobs from its peak in March […]

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The danger in a blip of good news is that it’s simply that: a blip. It is certainly a good thing that the data shows that 162,000 jobs were added in March. But, the truth is that this is not much to celebrate. And it actually should be a siren to move dramatically to embrace […]

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   The deficit hawks are on the march–and this is a bi-partisan din. And it is basically nonsense designed to open the door to some very draconian cuts in our basic social safety net. Here is Dean Baker: Relative to the size of the economy, the deficits that we are running are large and the […]

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   Well, welcome back to all who have been kicking back for the past few days, including yours truly. This year is going to be quite interesting–and, unfortunately, not a happy one as far as the economy goes, or so I’m guessing. I’m not going to spend much time today on prognostications–I saw a bunch […]

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