Economy Archives - Page 15 of 18

Capitalism

Tesla’s Latest Rip-Off

June 8, 2020 • by Pat Garofalo

That’s how one resident of Tulsa, Oklahoma, reacted to the city repainting a seventy-five-foot statue of an oil driller, erected in 1966, to look like Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Tulsa is reportedly on the short list—along with Austin, Texas—for a new Tesla Cybertruck factory, so local leaders are pulling out ...

Labor

I, Face Mask

A reconsideration of the classic essay, “I, Pencil”

May 27, 2020 • by Fred Block

“I, Pencil” uses a genealogy of an ordinary lead pencil to explain that nobody knows how to make one. It is, rather, the genius of the market system that coordinates the efforts of people around the world to manufacture the final product. They include loggers in Northern California, graphite miners ...

Finance

#Unis4all: An Open Letter to the U.S. Higher Education Community

Universities can immediately bypass feckless state and federal legislatures and finance themselves directly with “Unis” supported by the Federal Reserve.

May 22, 2020 • by Scott Ferguson, William Saas, Maxximilian Seijo and Benjamin Wilson

In truth, however, the collapse of the American university is far from inevitable. As the present health emergency suggests, moreover, it will take more than business-as-usual to remediate its long-standing structural inequalities and injustices, according to an emerging minority of educators, staff, and students. In our capacity as a 501(c)(3) dedicated to bringing accurate and ...

#Unis4all: An Open Letter to the U.S. Higher Education Community

Capitalism

Job Market Astrology

When they were kicked to the curb, jobless workers mostly blamed themselves: Enter career coaches

May 21, 2020 • by Patrick Sheehan

Roberta is not a Tarot card reader. She is a professional “career coach” who specializes in guiding the white-collar unemployed through hard times. Roberta is manning a vendor booth at the 2019 National Career Development Association (NCDA) and she is taking me through the first step she takes with clients ...

Labor

Why the Pandemic Paves the Way for Labor Reform

COVID-19 is a natural disaster, but the plight of American workers is man-made.

May 21, 2020 • by Sharon Block and Benjamin Sachs

Every worker in America has been affected by the coronavirus. Since the stay-at-home orders went into place, more than 30 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits. Millions more, deemed “essential” workers, are taking life-threatening risks by simply continuing to do their jobs. Others are sudden telecommuters, putting in three hours a day extra on ...

Why the Pandemic Paves the Way for Labor Reform

Economy

Beyond #CancelRent

Coronavirus and the “visible” hand

May 21, 2020 • by Theo Almeida

#CancelRent is hardly confronting a new problem. Wages are stagnant for many, but the cost of housing is not. Rents in many United States cities are “too damn high,” as Jimmy McMillin, a failed candidate for New York City mayor, famously proclaimed. The #CancelRent movement addresses an issue-driven by our ...

Labor

Meatpacking Plants and the Defense Production Act

Past Present, Episode 227

May 5, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: President Trump has used the Defense Production Act to order meatpacking plants to stay open, even as these factories have become hotspots for coronavirus infection. Niki commented on how Upton Sinclair’s classic novel, The Jungle, exposed the horrible ...

Labor

May Day, 2020

The United States doesn’t celebrate this workers’ holiday — but maybe we should

May 1, 2020 • by Peter Dreier

This year, the global Covid-19 pandemic will keep most workers around the world in their homes on May Day. But Americans are more aware of the plight of workers than at any time in decades. Despite the Trump administration’s incompetence and indifference in handling the virus crisis and the economic ...

Corporations

Is the Covid-19 Small Business Loan Program a Boondoggle?

Yes…and no

April 28, 2020 • by Pat Garofalo

Some of the criticisms are totally legit. Others, though, are a bit overblown or end up misplacing the true blame for what went wrong. I’m going to try to untangle it all in seven points below: 1. What are we talking about? The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), as the major small business ...

Is the Covid-19 Small Business Loan Program a Boondoggle?

Capitalism

The Financial Literacy Delusion

We need honest narratives about the distribution of wealth

April 27, 2020 • by Agata Soroko

But it’s already happening. The old financial literacy refrains are already here. “The monetary fallout of COVID-19 — business closures, job losses, declines in tax revenue — still is being determined. To recover, we need financial literacy more than ever,” the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorialized earlier this month. Others are already ...

Capitalism

Of Viruses, Distressed Sales, and Stocks’ “Rightful Owners”

Why the current US retirement system and safety net need dynamite

April 23, 2020 • by William Bernstein

As legendary investor Benjamin Graham put it less than a year later in the pages of Forbes, "Those with enterprise haven't the money, and those with money haven't the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap." In other words, those with the will to invest—the “plungers”—had long since run ...