Working Life

   Yesterday, I wrote that we should not "insult" Rep. Paul Ryan–but we should rip his scary, fraudulent budget to shreds with facts and a competing vision of America. So, to work: not that this would surprise anyone but Ryan’s biggest contributor to his campaigns has been the insurance industry–including the health care part of […]

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    Look, it is easy to jump all over the very dangerous budget proposal put forth by  Republican Paul Ryan–dangerous in what it would mean for any semblance of a decent society. I give a lot of credit to Ryan–he, at least, is clear about the ideology he represents. It’s not hidden. We can’t change […]

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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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Every day, I get a new email from some group about a new 55-page proposal to fix the economy, or I see some expert propose a sure-fired way to get us "back" to a go-go world of "positive growth". There’s value in a whole lot of some of those ideas. But, my can’t-lose strategy boils […]

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     Forget the criminals on Wall Street. What is more telling, troubling and almost bizarre is how quickly the chattering classes and political power brokers have shaken off the stain of the financial crisis, inviting back to center stage some of the very people responsible for destroying trillions of dollars in wealth and costing millions […]

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   The "economy is recovering" voices are clearly their throats again: The nation’s employers added 192,000 jobs in February, up from a gain of 63,000 the previous month, the Labor Department reported on Friday. While February’s number represented the fastest growth in nearly a year, it was partly the result of a bounce back from […]

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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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   Let me be quite clear again about one fact that gets lost: we have plenty of money in the country. There is no debt or deficit "crisis" even if people across the political spectrum, including former labor leaders, are regurgitating complete nonsense about the "crisis". This is simple: it’s class warfare and the rich […]

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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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