Working Life

You may remember me using this before because the idea comes up again and again in the struggle of workers to get some power at work. In his ballad “Pretty Boy Floyd”, Woody Guthrie sang these words: “Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered I’ve seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with […]

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I try to mostly stay away from long monologue and ruminations, leaving the topics to be explored in conversations with my guests. Today, a little change because of the issue—I’m going to dig into a recent important study that shows what is pretty obvious to anyone looking at the numbers—Medicare for All saves money and […]

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Hypocrisy is pretty much a given when you are in politics. I’ve pointed out the particular hypocrisy of all those flag-waving politicians who shout a full-throated “I support our men and women in uniform” but, then, cut benefits for vets and cut funds for the VA. Today, I hone in on another hypocrisy: politicians who […]

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A quick “birthday” promo: you are listening to the 100th episode of the podcast. Make today the day you become one of our small financial supporters—go to workinglife.org, click on the Patreon link and sign up to be a monthly contributor. Every bite of food you take contains a lot of sweat and tears of […]

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Please, put out a red alert. Andrew Cuomo has been kidnapped. The man who occupies the governor’s office is a body double. Seriously, where has the guy gone who was a shill for big business, a guy who took pleasure attacking unions and seemed to like only tax breaks for the wealthy? The guy who […]

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It’s an ingrained fact that health care costs in the U.S. are outrageous and economically foolish — even if the drug companies and insurance industry maggots are are happy to keep raking in billions on the backs of sick or dying people…all in a day’s work. And so the way in which the media, and others, are greeting the new health care programs coming on-line should be viewed in context.

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New York state, and the city, are having a rough time of it — if we’re talking about the real people. Sure, the very wealthy are buying up all the shit they bought up before. But, workers are struggling.

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If you are one who is already bored by the 2012 elections and the rhetorical, mind-numbing repetition, here’s a little taste of what you can expect all the way into the distant future of 2016. The poodle-for-the-rich governor of New York has determined that his path to the White House in 2016–and, despite the boring […]

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   See, this is a good example of how the conventional wisdom we hear day after day warps the brain. More people are, in fact, being pushed into minimum wage jobs: The number of workers in New York state earning minimum wage has increased sharply since the start of the recession, one of the driving […]

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   I’ve written a lot about the complete immoral insanity of the obsession over the phony debt and deficit "crisis"and the rush to impose austerity on the people when we really need much more public spending to employ the masses of people who are falling, falling, falling further behind. Well, truth is austerity is not […]

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