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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I have always thought there is a huge gap between economists and numbers’ crunchers versus the reality-based world of workers. But, in the midst of the current economic crisis, it seems to me that the entire way we talk about "recessions" needs to be thrown out the window. It simply does not measure, and obscures, […]

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   This is the news today: U.S. consumer spending was flat in June as incomes stopped growing and prices remained subdued, pointing to a weaker economy.    But, that should not be a surprise. Which makes this very curious:    Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said rising wages would probably spur household spending in […]

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    If it wasn’t so tragic, I’d be laughing until my belly hurt at the hand-wringing about the shaky nature of the economy. I’ve been saying this for many months, particularly every time I’ve seen the foolish predictions of the recovery around the corner. So, now, the stock market has a deep drop and people […]

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   Conventional wisdom–along with a great dose of greed and blind faith in a failed economic model–caused the immediate economic crisis we are still deeply mired in. Every day, brings another does of conventional wisdom. Here is one from The Wall Street Journal: U.S. household wealth fell by $14 trillion during the recession, sapping confidence […]

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   A quick post today since yours truly is in transit. Along the same theme of "don’t pay any attention to the person behind the screen who is promising recovery," today’s version has retail sales having gone up. But, as this points out: Of course, the industry’s 1 to 2 percent increase is not an […]

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   This is how fragile–and foolish–the talk of recovery is. Yesterday, you may recall that I pointed out the record level of personal bankruptcies recorded in 2009–at the same time that some "analysts" were heralding a recovery based on some uptick in manufacturing (one would venture to guess that those same "analysts" were among those […]

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   It is going to take the concerted effort of a lot of voices to overcome the noise being generated by the people who would like us to think that economic salvation is at hand. So, we need to keep pointing out some harsh realities facing real people. For example: The number of Americans filing […]

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   I believe that we can fix the economy–but it will take a focused and entirely different approach. For a long time, I’ve maintained that the government statistics on economic growth often don’t match the reality regular people face. Today, we learn: Spending by Americans took a big tumble in September, as they lost a […]

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   If you read this blog regularly, you know that I have been a skeptic about the talk about the "green shoots" in the economy–the signs that somehow the economy is getting "better". I based most of my skeptical argument about the "green shoots" on a simple fact: until working people see that they have […]

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