Economy Archives - Page 9 of 18

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 ...

Labor

The Orchids That Bloom in the Dark

The migrant domestic workers of the U.K. organization Waling Waling are fighting for their dignity and human rights

November 17, 2021 • by Annelise Orleck

On a warm, wet London Saturday, a group of Filipina women meet in Regent’s Park. They are joined by a few friends from North and West Africa, several small children, and a couple of men recording the event on camera. They spread blankets on the grass which they quickly cover ...

Economy

Five Years of Silence

How states and corporations use public records exemptions to cover up deal details

November 1, 2021 • by Pat Garofalo

The Tennessee legislature last week approved a massive new deal for a Ford electric vehicle and battery plant at a site about 50 miles east of Memphis. The legislation creates a “megasite” authority that will dole out $884 million in state funds: $500 million in corporate handouts to Ford and ...

Capitalism

A World Beyond Capitalism

As workers contemplate the post-pandemic world, they know one thing: they need the big changes that mutual aid organizing has already imagined

October 27, 2021 • by Molly Ragan

It has been such a long time since American workers have pressured employers in such large numbers that some are calling this month “Striketober.” More than 10,000 John Deere United Automobile Workers (UAW) are on strike across the country after rejecting a tentative agreement that failed to adequately increase wages, ...

Capitalism

How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

Sociologist Rachel Sherman talks to Guillermina Altomonte about “class traitors” challenging how we think about wealth

October 27, 2021 • by Guillermina Altomonte and Rachel Sherman

By all measures we live in an era defined by profound inequality. Most recently, while millions of Americans lost their jobs and became poorer during the pandemic, U.S. billionaires became $1.8 trillion richer. Rachel Sherman, Professor of Sociology at The New School, has long been interested in how the wealthy ...

How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

Economy

“Opportunity Zones” Are a Game Only the Rich Can Play

Too often they bring storage facilities and upscale college housing, but not economic prosperity

October 20, 2021 • by Arlene Martínez

On SW Taylor Street in Portland, Oregon, there is a shiny new glass-and-steel building with a fireplace in its grand lobby. Developers got approval for the posh retail and office project in 2016 and, a year later, a local gas utility inked a 20-year lease to house its headquarters there. As it ...

“Opportunity Zones” Are a Game Only the Rich Can Play

Capitalism

A Displaced Worker in a World of Goods

What Winslow Homer’s Old Mill teaches us about the world industrialization made

September 28, 2021 • by Steven Stoll

A woman in a red jacket, lunch pail in hand and eyes forward, travels to work. She ascends a ramp leading from a meadow of wildflowers, over a millpond to a small water-powered textile factory. Winslow Homer painted Old Mill in 1871, but its subject looks back fifty years to the first ...

Capitalism

China’s Thirty-Year War between State and Capital Has Taken a Decisive Turn

If the financial complexities and implications of the Evergrande case could be boiled down to a tabloid headline, it would read: “XI TO BUILDER: DROP DEAD.”

September 28, 2021 • by Mark Frazier

As part of its recent campaign to regulate capital and to rein in capitalists, Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has set their sights on the China Evergrande Group. Last week, Asian and global markets sank quickly on the news that Evergrande was unable to ...

China’s Thirty-Year War between State and Capital Has Taken a Decisive Turn

Capitalism

The “K” in the Economy

Private equity and the rise of permanent capital

September 20, 2021 • by Andrew Moon and Janet Roitman

The consensus is that the road to economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is K-shaped: certain sectors and populations will thrive while others stagnate or decline. Outsized online retailers and digital infrastructure providers, like Amazon, have experienced boom times, while many Main Street small businesses have gone bust. Those with a stake ...

Economy

Dollar Store Doom Loop

The dollar store economy is a failed economy

Let the People Decide What Counts as Public Goods

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

Cents and Non-Cents about Inflation

No, it isn’t Biden’s fault.

Corporate Handouts Are Leverage

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

The Orchids That Bloom in the Dark

The migrant domestic workers of the U.K. organization Waling Waling are fighting for their dignity and human rights

Five Years of Silence

How states and corporations use public records exemptions to cover up deal details

A World Beyond Capitalism

As workers contemplate the post-pandemic world, they know one thing: they need the big changes that mutual aid organizing has already imagined

How (Some) Rich People Work Toward Redistribution

Sociologist Rachel Sherman talks to Guillermina Altomonte about “class traitors” challenging how we think about wealth

“Opportunity Zones” Are a Game Only the Rich Can Play

Too often they bring storage facilities and upscale college housing, but not economic prosperity

A Displaced Worker in a World of Goods

What Winslow Homer’s Old Mill teaches us about the world industrialization made

China’s Thirty-Year War between State and Capital Has Taken a Decisive Turn

If the financial complexities and implications of the Evergrande case could be boiled down to a tabloid headline, it would read: “XI TO BUILDER: DROP DEAD.”

The “K” in the Economy

Private equity and the rise of permanent capital

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