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What Black Friday Violence Tells Us About Ourselves

With Thanksgiving come and past, the shopping season is officially in full swing, and what a kickoff it got with Black Friday violence, including near-riots over waffle-makers at a Wal-Mart in Arkansas, a 2am shooting outside another Wal-Mart in Oakland, and one sad incident in which a California shopper pepper-sprayed fellow video-game shoppers (again, [...]

Corporate Profits Up, Slow Job Growth and American Democracy

Corporate profits reached new highs this past quarter, leading many to inquire why, if American corporations are so profitable, are there no more jobs? Mother Jones recently answered this question by looking at productivity growth in connection with wealth inequality. Their below comparison shows how the rise in worker productivity over the past 30 years [...]

U.S. Job Growth and Prospects for the Economic Recovery

The month of May has released its job figures, and the press is already jumping to dire and skewed conclusions about U.S. job growth, with the AP reporting on “the brutal month of May” under the headline “To keep his job, Obama needs more jobs” and Bloomberg/Businessweek opening its piece on the jobs data [...]

The U.S. Military Budget and the Cost of War

With the budget battle in Washington taking on ever more partisan tones, there is one glaring spot which continues to drain public coffers without accountability: the military. The military budget over the past ten years has spiraled out of control and Washington continues to let it grow unchecked. This, along with generous tax cuts [...]

The Budget Battle, Abortion and Planned Parenthood

“It is my view that no American woman should be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition. I believe, therefore that we should establish as a national goal the provision of adequate family planning services within the next five years to all those who want them but cannot afford them. [...]

Why the Wisconsin Budget Needs Collective Bargaining

With state budgets hurting all over the country, Wisconsin has declared open season on organized labor, and Governor Walker has attempted to push through not only cuts to labor benefits, but severe cuts in the rights of labor unions to organize. While the Wisconsin budget problems are no doubt bad, and this is certainly [...]

The Next Bubble? Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn IPOs

These past couple of weeks have been exciting for the economy, with social networking tech companies bursting onto the public stage. LinkedIn broke news of an IPO this year, speculation was all a-tweet about a Twitter public offering, and investors are fretting over the Holy Grail of social networking: Facebook, which has been arranging [...]