Working Life

   We keep avoiding the elephant in the room. It’s fine for the president to do this: President Obama on Monday called for curbing offshore tax havens and corporate tax breaks to collect billions of dollars more from multinational companies and wealthy individuals. The move would appeal to growing populist anger among taxpayers but is […]

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   I imagine that I risk the ire of at least the most die-hard fringe Northern Ireland para-military forces or perhaps people who still revel in the Revolutionary War-era spanking of the redcoats but I’ve been carrying around this article from about a week ago that got a little attention and, then, floated out of […]

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   To start off, I don’t mind paying taxes. Taxes are my dues to live in a country where we get clean water, decent roads, communications systems, you name it. The fact that many of the things we enjoy aren’t always working right has more to do with people evading taxes and, more important, a […]

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  Let’s deal with some facts. The richest one percent of Americans are paying taxes that are too low–and Republicans are pushing budget proposals that would shovel even more money into the hands of the wealthiest Americans. Here are the facts.   Citizens for Tax Justice has released a series of studies in the past […]

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   Here are some poll questions that I’d like you to consider: 1. If you knew that taking a deep breathe would kill you, would you inhale? 2. If picking your nose caused cancer, would you allow you child to ever go digging for that gold? 3. If George Steinbrenner was a left-wing Democrat, would […]

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Now, c’mon, this is entirely absurd. We already have the widest gap between rich and poor in many generations. Republicans (and some Democrats) are trying to cut the Administration’s proper and wise investments in infrastructure and wise energy efficiency programs. And, in the midst of all that, the Senate does what? Votes to cut the […]

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Probably the toughest mountain to climb in this country is reversing the three-decade Reagan-era damage to the notion that paying taxes is part of what we do to live in a decent society. One of the cornerstones of the anti-responsibility meme is rich people will flee a state that raises taxes. The problem is that […]

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  I have to say this would all make for a great movie–thriller, farce, comedy?–if the plot lines didn’t actually mean that millions of people have been screwed by crooks, greedy elites and incompetent CEOs. Today, there is just a plethora of news on the "free market" scam front, all courtesy of The Wall Street […]

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   Yes, as the president said, the bonuses taken by Wall Street bankers are shameful. But, there is an even larger shame happening in the country: the plundering of America by the richest Americans and our unwillingness to call for significantly higher taxes on the elite.   Buried in the business section of The New […]

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   There is a truly incredible chart this morning in the Financial Times headlined "The rapidly shrinking banking industry". When you look at the chart you understand: the banking sector will either implode dramatically, even further than before, or we will nationalize large chunks of the banking sector. And, unless ths Administration and Congress significantly […]

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