Economy Archives - Page 12 of 18

Economy

Infrastructure Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

But the GOP will oppose this important jobs bill and the taxes one billionaires that could redistribute wealth to millions of Americans

April 1, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ This week, President Joe Biden unveiled a new $2 trillion infrastructure proposal titled The American Jobs Plan. The statement introducing the plan notes that the United States currently ranks 13th in the world for the quality of our infrastructure, and that our public domestic investment as a share of the ...

Infrastructure Is the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Economy

State Secrets

Let’s ban non-disclosure agreements in government economic development deals

March 23, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ Sometime later this year, the Fort Wayne, Indiana, city council will vote on whether to give a 10-year, $16 million property tax break to the builder of a new warehouse. There is an issue, however, one that goes beyond the potential loss of public money. The city council members – ...

Economy

Location, Location, Location!

Why tax breaks are such a negligible part of corporate decision-making

March 18, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

_____ Last month, Macy’s received a slew of job creation tax credits from the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to expand a warehouse in Jackson Township, a city located within easy reach of both Canton and Cleveland. One of the township trustees — which is akin to a city council member — had ...

Economy

Can Cooperatives Build Worker Power?

Give platform co-ops a seat at the policy table

March 11, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz, Doug O'Brien and Jason Spicer

If the American movement supporting Democratic Socialism gets traction, centrist Democrats are likely to push for cooperatives as a way to temper the severity of American capitalism. To that end, efforts like The Clean Slate for Worker Power project would do well to consider the potential of platform cooperatives ...

Economy

Why Adam Smith & Karl Marx Would Both Think $15 Isn’t Enough

Because the minimum wage is a subsistence wage, the left must aim higher

March 4, 2021 • by Peter J. Verovšek

_____ With the inauguration of the Biden administration, raising the federal minimum wage from its egregiously low level of $7.25 an hour is back on the political agenda in Washington, D.C. In recent years, activists across the county have convinced some cities and other jurisdictions to approve a higher minimum wage ...

Why Adam Smith & Karl Marx Would Both Think $15 Isn’t Enough

Art & Design

Broom Swept

Failure tells a tale about capitalism too

March 2, 2021 • by Mark Hage

_____ What closes and then darkness, what opens and then bright?Before the horn has risen,where hides the lord of light? —Tian Wen, A Chinese Book of Origins How you frame something is a moral decision. —Babette Mangolte On Mercer Street, on the island of Manhattan, and just before the city paused, walking in a southerly direction ...

Economy

The Truth About the Minimum Wage

How to take the word “freedom” away from the GOP

February 25, 2021 • by John Stoehr

" Bernie Sanders, still talks about it as if he can’t quite escape the economic framing conservatives established a long time ago. To be sure, he talks about fairness."...

Economy

How Banks Are Squeezing Their Staff

Banks were always difficult places to work, now conditions are even tougher

February 16, 2021 • by Anna K. Wood and Terri Friedline

_____ For the last eight years of her 30-year career in banking, Melinda worked in the compliance department of a small community bank in Florida. Yet, when we spoke to her last year, she told us she expected to soon lose her job. Her customers were struggling. Many lost their jobs ...

Activism

Black Swans No More!

When Things Fall Apart, a New Role for Community-Engaged Scholars

February 15, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz

As the pandemic has worn on, I have found myself devoting more and more of my time to conversations with researchers who have one foot in the world of alternative economies. I talked with dozens of Ph.D. students who self-identify as scholar-activists; they don’t want to stop at an analysis ...

Democracy

Expanding Democratic Ownership

The ownership model of the public corporation should no longer be the aspiration for startups in the digital economy

January 14, 2021 • by Trebor Scholz

In August 2019, a group of 200 chief executive officers of major U.S. corporations, calling themselves the Business Roundtable, issued a statement committing to invest in their employees, compensating them fairly, and providing benefits. They also committed to fostering diversity, and inclusion, dignity, and respect. And this was newsworthy given ...

Capitalism

Giving Back to the University

The scandal of “Employee-Giving” campaigns at American universities

December 17, 2020 • by Annie Bares

For many, this time of year brings a deluge of fundraising emails, letters, calls, text messages, and social media posts from non-profits asking for donations. Despite the disruptions that the pandemic has posed this year to colleges and universities, they have continued to fundraise. Many of them are using sophisticated, ...

Capitalism

How Do We Process the Loss of Our Homes?

A talk with filmmaker Swetha Regunathan

December 10, 2020 • by Jeannette Estruth

By all measures we are living in an era defined by housing crises, a flood of human habitat destruction. The losses are both economic and environmental. Over 17 million people in 2018 alone were displaced from their homes because of climate change–associated disasters, according to the United Nations. Here in ...