Working Life

   I am continually amazed at the way people–or at least the brain-dead traditional media–express surprise when this happens: In the one-two punch many had long been fearing, hiring by businesses has slowed significantly while government jobs are disappearing at a record pace. Companies added 64,000 jobs last month, after having added 93,000 jobs in […]

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     This caught my eye: More than 20 years ago, congressional Democrats pushed for an increase in the minimum wage, only to have the first President Bush veto the legislation. There were fights over the minimum wage again during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and more battles under George W. Bush. Now, Democrats are once again […]

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We are being distracted by numbers that are a sideshow. The new Gross Domestic Product numbers and the obsession about the fiscal deficits are obscuring the real problem in America–wages.   Yes, we have a massive jobs crisis. I have been pretty clearly supporting the idea that we need far bigger stimulus and that the […]

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Today, the minimum wage rises to $7.25 an hour. We should all be glad that millions of people are going to get a bit more money in their pockets. But, this hike masks a very grim fact: the “recovery” is not going to happen anytime soon, if the measure we use for “recovery” is that […]

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The minimum wage is a scandal. It masks poverty. It must be dramatically raised.   On July 24th, the minimum wage will rise to $7.25 an hour. I applaud people who worked hard to pass the three-step hike. The new level will put some extra money in the pockets of millions of Americans and, modestly, […]

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Every day, there is another example of the conspiracy of silence that pervades the traditional media’s description of the current economic crisis. Sure, de-regulation, greed and pure stupidity has a lot to do with it. But, in truth, the underlying reason for the collapse has been a persistent war on the wages of American workers. […]

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   As I said yesterday, the crazy-assed rise in the stock market on Monday was all about one-time profit-taking. And today look for things to begin to come down to earth because, as The Wall Street Journal reports just now on its website: U.S. retail sales took the sharpest drop in three years during September […]

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   I feel like I’m in the middle of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier movie. You know, when the entity masquerading as God talks a good game and is trying to seduce his listeners into believing that a wonderful future awaits–if only he can hitch a ride on the Enterprise. To which Capt. Kirk […]

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   Sounds like one of those spam emails you get, huh? Well, it feels like the members of Congress operate that way. People keep talking about stimulus as a way of stemming the financial global meltdown (um, it might be rough again today–foreign markets all plunged deeply and the Dow futures is showing a huge […]

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There is a great economic emergency looming in our country. But, it seems to me that we—or at least our elected leaders—have only looked at one side of the crisis, that of the housing bubble-inspired financial credit crunch. By doing so, we’ve missed the bigger picture and the solutions needed. So, here is one person’s […]

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