Economy Archives - Page 15 of 18

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 ...

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

Labor

Sick From Work

COVID-19 and the crisis of occupational safety and health in meatpacking

April 14, 2020 • by Paul Apostolidis

“The guy at the plant said they had to work to feed America.” That’s what The New York Times reported Willie Martin said about his mother, Annie Grant. She had been one of the latest of a growing number of meatpacking workers to contract the coronavirus: in her case, it ...

Capitalism

CARES Will Care for Wall Street and Big Business

For macroeconomic balance maybe not so much

April 13, 2020 • by Lance Taylor

Support from INET and help from Thomas Ferguson and Özlem Ömer are gratefully acknowledged. To recap from a previous post (Taylor, 2020): The recently approved $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security “stimulus” (or better, disaster relief) package amounts to ten percent of GDP. This amount is probably well less than the ...

CARES Will Care for Wall Street and Big Business

Capitalism

Time for a Rethink on the Worth of Work

Economists undervalue what we need most now: care workers

April 7, 2020 • by Paulo L. dos Santos

The pandemic poses new and unique economic challenges. It compromises our ability to engage in productive and commercial activities requiring close contact between groups of people—that includes most of the things sustaining a modern economy. Epidemiologists tell us this is needed for several months. Responding in a way that minimizes ...