Economy and Business
The Tax Scam Is Starting to Sink In
It’s no fun being scammed. I distinctly remember looking for my first big city apartment and finding an ad that looked perfect. Beautiful picture, cheap rent, great location. It sounded too good to be true and, sadly, it was. Just send a check in the mail, and don’t...
Long Live the Jersey Tomato
Food corporations and their academic cohorts keep trying to "make" an industrial tomato to rival Mother Nature’s product. And they keep failing. They might consider this instead: the Rutgers 250. It’s a revived version of the classic hybrid tomato bred in 1934 by...
Tips Are for Servers, Not CEOs
When we give someone a tip, we expect the money will go to the workers who provided us with service. We might leave a little extra because someone went above and beyond for us. Or because we want that person to have a slightly easier time getting by. Whatever the...
The White House Vs. Working Stiffs
Have you noticed that Donald Trump constantly prefaces his outlandish lies with such phrases as: “To be honest with you,” “To tell the truth,” and “Believe me”? Why? Because like a snake-oil salesman, he constantly needs to convince himself that he's speaking the...
No Love for Working Families This Valentine’s Day
Love is in the air. Or so the marketers want us to believe, as Valentine’s Day ads sweep the nation into a frenzy of buying flowers, greeting cards, and confections to communicate our affection. Washington is less forthcoming with the adoration, especially for working...
Bad Bureaucracies Are Fraying the Social Safety Net
I've always believed in government. That is, I believe there are roles in society that can be best performed by a government — to serve the people, rather than a profit motive. But I'm fed up. It's like a crisis of faith. I'm trying to believe the best about the...
Americans Hate the Tax Bill Because It Wasn’t Written for Them
It’s odd that Washington Republicans are so loudly crowing about their passage of the Trump-McConnell-Ryan tax law. Odd because the people outside of Washington hate that law. Yes, hate. With a public approval rating of only 30 percent, the GOP’s trillion-dollar...
A California Trend Worth Catching: College for All
California can be an annoyingly trendy state. Think avocado toast, In-N-Out Burger, Hollywood fashion, even legal pot. But Californians are now in the vanguard to fix the serious problem of how to pay for public higher education. Over 44 million households in the U.S....
Colleges Are Screwing Both Teachers and Students
On Friday, January 26, I was in a good mood. I was about to start teaching for the spring semester on Monday. I had set everything up online, and my syllabus was ready. I'd even emailed my students to let them know which textbook to buy. Then I got a phone call from...
No, Big Corporations Shouldn’t Get Tax Breaks to Create Jobs
Governors and mayors insist that giving our tax dollars to corporations to lure them to move to our cities is good public policy. The corporations create jobs, those workers pay taxes, and — voila! — the giveaway pays for itself! Does it really work that way?...
