Two old men are in a retirement home. The first one complains, "The food here is poison." His friend agrees with him and then adds, "And the portions are so small." We have been getting this story for the last several years in assessments of the labor market. Read More...
Paul Krugman: "It wasn’t always about the hot dogs. Originally, believe it or not, Labor Day actually had something to do with showing respect for labor. Here’s how it happened: In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike — and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked. So Congress, in a lame attempt at appeasement, unanimously passed legislation symbolically honoring the nation’s workers." Read More...
President Obama's economic team think they are doing a great job, hence the desire to bring back former teammate Larry Summers as Fed chair. This is terrifying because the economy this Labor Day is described by a set of statistics that can only be described as horrible. Read More...
Income Gap Grows Wider (and Faster) - Income inequality in the United States has been growing for decades, but the trend appears to have accelerated during the Obama administration. Read More...
The financial challenges that low- and middle-income Americans face are daunting. But the poor and middle class are in an equally serious, if less well recognized, political predicament: the government has become almost entirely unresponsive to them. This a profound political failure. A democracy in which government policy responds to the rich and not to the poor or the middle class is a democracy unworthy of the name. Read More...
The Economy: From Dollar Stores to Bombs - In interviews and court documents, former and current store managers claim major dollar store companies classify some employees as "managers" merely to evade overtime obligations --- and to pay them less money. Read More...
If fast-food and retail employees (and others in the service industry) were working full-time and earning $15 an hour, maybe THEN some of them could work a second job, save some money, and one day open their own fast-food franchise or small business --- rather than being trapped in poverty all their lives.
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