Economy and Business
Trump’s First Test on Taxes
Donald Trump's voters have high hopes that he'll boost the economy and protect jobs for those who've been left behind after three decades of flat or shrinking paychecks. They didn’t vote to make the super-wealthy even wealthier. Even Steve Mnuchin, the Goldman Sachs...
A Special Loophole for Trump’s Millionaire Cabinet
The wealth of Donald Trump's proposed cabinet is unprecedented. According to the Boston Globe, Trump and his top nominees are together worth over $13 billion. With that unprecedented wealth comes unprecedented potential for conflicts of interest. Before ExxonMobil CEO...
Health Care Repeal Is a Stealth Tax Break for Millionaires
Great magicians are masters of diversion. They attract our attention with one hand while using the other to trick us into thinking a supernatural act is taking place. But even the best street performers could learn a lesson from the folks in Congress who are trying to...
Just Another Swindle
Good news, folks — our new president says he's planning a "tax holiday" for you. Well, not directly for you. Trump's trillion-dollar whopper of a tax break will only go to such multinational corporations as Apple, GE, Johnson & Johnson, and Microsoft. However,...
Great News for People Who Get Sick
Getting time off when you’re sick, or need to care for a new child or ailing parent, shouldn’t be a luxury enjoyed only by those who are financially well off. Yet low-wage workers in the United States — the workers who need paid leave the most — typically have this...
Would Donald Tax a Fellow Trump?
Bring those jobs back home, Donald Trump bellowed to those greedy corporate executives who've shipped middle-class jobs out of country, or I'll slap you with a big tariff when you try to sell your foreign-made products here. Great stuff, Donnie — and to prove you mean...
Reducing Inequality in the Trump Era
In a lot of ways, 2016 was a big year for reducing inequality. Five states raised their minimum wage through citizen-led ballot initiatives. A job-killing free trade agreement, the TPP, was blocked as a result of massive public demonstrations against it. More...
The Sharing Economy
Calling Working People of All Colors
A little over 80 years ago, NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois wrote "Black Reconstruction in America," a groundbreaking essay that looked at the racial politics of the post-Civil War years. The major failure of those years, Du Bois insisted, was that poor whites and poor...
The Dangers of Big Philanthropy
It's the season of giving. When you hear about a billionaire "giving back" — like Nike founder Phil Knight's $400 million gift to Stanford, or hedge funder John Paulsen's $400 million donation to Harvard — do you feel a warm glow? They could've kept their money and...
