Economy Archives - Page 8 of 18

Corporations

Amazon Extracts Billions from Communities Globally

March 21, 2022 • by Kenneth Thomas

Last month, UNI Global Union and my organization Good Jobs First released a report detailing the subsidies Amazon.com, Inc. has gotten around the world. I was the lead author of the study. Months of research by our multi-lingual team found that the company has received at least $4.7 billion....

Amazon Extracts Billions from Communities Globally

Corporations

Walmart Kills Wages

State and federal lawmakers are focusing more on corporate power in labor markets

March 18, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

The U.S. Treasury Department released a report last week looking at the power dominant firms have over labor markets, or, in layperson’s terms, the power employers have over how much you are paid and what your work conditions are like. And the findings were grim: “As this report highlights, a ...

Economy

New York’s Anti-Monopoly State of Mind

How and why the Empire State took center stage in the fight against corporate power

March 9, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

I traveled up to Albany, New York, this week to help out with the unveiling of a bill in the state legislature there that would prevent New York officials from subsidizing Amazon’s warehouse network. According to Good Jobs First, New York taxpayers have gifted Amazon with nearly $400 million in ...

Economy

Piercing Amazon’s Veil of Secrecy

A community took on a secret Amazon deal — and won

February 22, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Usually I write about a lot of doom and gloom here, but today, it’s time for a happy story: A community in Frederick County, Maryland, caught wind of a secret agreement that was being negotiated between local leadership and Amazon to build some Amazon Web Services data centers, and made ...

Economy

A Year of Wasted Opportunity

How America’s largest corporations profited from the American Rescue Plan Act

February 8, 2022 • by Kasia Tarczynska

In 2021, when small businesses were still closing en masse and many were unable to afford even rent, large corporations across the country got billions of dollars in tax breaks and other public support. It was a year defined by massive economic development subsidy packages. ...

Economy

The Rural Tax Credit Hustle

Beware investment firms pitching themselves as the saviors of rural America

February 2, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

The Kentucky proposal would give credits against insurance premium taxes to corporations who provide funds to investment firms that then turn around and invest money in smaller businesses in rural Kentucky. If it seems like that’s needlessly complicated, well, it is. ...

Socialism

The Socialist Revival

Can the Democratic Socialists of America claim to be a vanguard? Not yet

January 26, 2022 • by Max B. Sawicky

Could socialism be in the cards for the United States? Recall Senator John Edwards’s joke from 2008, “Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.” Socialism has become more familiar to Americans, thanks to the politician who has done more than anyone to render obsolete its traditional meaning. That would ...

Economy

2022 State Legislative Preview

Nine things I’m watching at the statehouse level this year

January 24, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Legislative sessions in most states either started recently or will start soon, so it seems like a good time to take stock of what’s happening at the state level and what I’ll be paying attention to in the coming year when it comes to corporate subsidies and the larger effort to ...

Economy

Dollar Store Doom Loop

The dollar store economy is a failed economy

January 14, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

In my recent piece on how to save local retail, I mentioned taking action to rein in the power of the two dominant dollar store corporations: Dollar General and Dollar Tree, the latter of which also owns Family Dollar. But I want to drill down on the subject a bit more, ...

Corporations

Let the People Decide What Counts as Public Goods

Why government spending should be defined by our democratic process, not by market forces

January 7, 2022 • by Donald Cohen and Allen Mikaelian

Public health is a public good, but the Trump administration handed it over to corporations. Shocking as this was, the Trump administration’s stance was simply an extension of what it had been doing since it came into office, and what politicians of all stripes have been doing for some fifty ...

Let the People Decide What Counts as Public Goods

Economy

Cents and Non-Cents about Inflation

No, it isn’t Biden’s fault.

December 6, 2021 • by Steve Max

Yes, inflation is back—only 6 percent as of October, which is nothing like the 13.5 percent that brought down Jimmy Carter in the election of 1980. The exact numbers don’t really matter. Rising prices, especially gasoline prices, are always bad news for the party in power. We must remember, and keep ...

Economy

Corporate Handouts Are Leverage

States and cities can make free money less free, if they try.

November 22, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, as part of an ongoing fight he has with the Republican-controlled state legislature over the minimum wage, released an executive order requiring corporations that receive tax incentives or grants from the state to pay the same minimum wage that state contractors must pay ($13.50 an hour, increasing to ...