Category Archives: Economy

What’s really going on

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From a comment in the NYTimes: Letter to the Peasants of America from the Top 2%, You asked, Where did all the money and jobs go? We took the money. We can never have enough. We shipped the jobs overseas. We started international corporations where we seek out the cheapest labor and the least stringent regulations. We Invested in scams which produced nothing but debt for you. We crashed the economy. Now Americans are just as desperate to have a low paying job as anywhere else in the world. We arranged the largest theft in history and stuck you with … Continue reading →

What Gets Paid? You Choose

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I’m very fond of little gadgets like this one at the Washington Post. It gives you the amount we’ll have if the debt limit isn’t paid, and then let’s you decide which programs get cut or not. It’s clunky in that you have to keep or defund entire programs—there’s no partial option. But it gives you a good overview of what is at stake if we default, and how much we can actually afford without borrowing.

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What has happened with jobs

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Austin Goolsbee takes to the White House White Board to explain job losses and gains every month for the past three years. Note the small drop off over this past summer, when the stimulus began to fade somewhat. It’s my own belief that if the stimulus had been stronger growth would be stronger now, but it’s just as clear that the stimulus did good for the economy, and provided many jobs, if not as many as we need. Also note in his explanation: the stimulus contained a lot of tax cuts. Taxes are lower now than when President Obama took … Continue reading →

Watch them burn

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The most shocking story of the day is up at Think Progress: Tennessee County’s Subscription-Based Firefighters Watch As Family Home Burns Down . Seriously, Obion County has a subscription-based fire department that only covers those who subscribe, rather than the normal sort that is paid out of taxes and covers everyone. So firefighters came to the fire and watched as that family’s home burned to the ground. They hadn’t been paid, so they refused to help. It’s the perfect example of life under a libertarian, big business conservative vision of life, where we have no mutual responsibilities to our community … Continue reading →

Tax Cut fight

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I like this very much. It’s the clearest presentation I’ve seen of what’s at stake in the fight over the Bush-era tax cuts. I wish the White House had put this out weeks ago. Maybe then I wouldn’t have heard so much misinformation in the discussions on this subject on the news channels.

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Unions and the Tea Party are united on trade

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When it comes to free trade treaties, workers in this country are very skeptical. In fact a new NBC/WSJ poll finds that 65% of union members and 61% of Tea Party sympathizers say that free trade has hurt the U.S. I think there are some sectors in the U.S. that have benefited from free trade treaties. Certainly stockholders and CEOs have become fabulously wealthy as they chased cheap labor and poor environmental standards around the globe. But the race to the bottom has hurt U.S. workers, who are now consistently being told that they need to accept the “new reality” … Continue reading →

If you only had $4.33 a day for food…

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What would you eat? What would you do without? And how would you feel if that extravagant sum was suddenly decreased to only $3.75? That’s the amount food stamp recipients will receive if Congress lowers food stamp benefits. In order to boost state Medicaid and education funds Congress has proposed to cut $26 billion from food stamp programs, sort of taking from the poor and working class in order to help the poor and working class. It’s a very odd decision, to say the least. The New York Coalition Against Hunger has a post that illustrates how much food you … Continue reading →