Standing with the unions
On, Wisconsin!
Continue reading →Tag Archives: labor
Stephen Colbert speaks truth to power
I am not a religious person, but I know Colbert is, so I suspect that his study of gospel informed this profound moment in his Congressional testimony on migrant workers last week. Despite our different frames, I found this bit of his statement, when he moved out of character, emotionally deep and true.
Continue reading →More on income inequality
Annie Lowrey at the Washington Independent points us to a report on income inequality from the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee. She highlights several graphs and conclusions that show the remarkable way that the wealthy have become even more so over the past decade, while middle class and working incomes have stagnated or declined. The charts are interesting in part because they break out income and tax rates according to the various modern-day Presidential administrations. Here is one example: Even under Clinton you can see that the wealthy increased their share of total income. And in fact, Lowrey notes that according … Continue reading →
One in three workers do hard labor
And it is irresponsible to insist that those who do the hardest labor should be forced to retire later, just to make sure we don’t ask rich people to pay more taxes.
Continue reading →Economic Policies
AFSCME is right. The Democrats have better (though imperfect) economic policies. Edit to add: Krugman today explains exactly how disastrous Republican economic policies would be. Edit to add: Also see today’s post in Timothy Noah’s Slate series on Income Inequality. He shows that inequality consistently rises under Republicans and falls under Democrats, and in addition the economy grows more slowly under Republican control.
Continue reading →A Fundamental Failure
Must read: this post on the economy by Karl Smith at Modeled Behavior. …This is a failure of our basic institutions of production. The job of the market is to bring together willing buyers with willing sellers in order to produce value. This is not happening and as a result literally trillions of dollars in value are not being produced. He goes on to emphasize that it’s not misallocation, it’s not government misconduct, it’s trillions of dollars of potential wealth that is simply not being created. Period. What he doesn’t, perhaps can’t, fully add is the solution to this disconnect. … Continue reading →
Labor Day
I don’t really understand how and why it happened that working people began to fight with each other, and look at others with such disdain. Those who encourage that behavior are usually those quite free from worry about their own comfortable lives and wealth. But it is we the people who listen and allow ourselves to be pitted one again the other. It doesn’t have to be that way. It was better once. We stood together and fought for our own fair share of the wealth of this nation, for the right to work in safety and peace. It can … Continue reading →