Economy and Business
Companies Can Either Make Things or Make CEOs Rich
Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric since 2001, is retiring. The 61-year-old will be making a well-compensated exit. Fortune magazine estimates that Immelt will walk off with nearly $211 million, on top of his regular annual pay. Immelt’s annual pay hasn’t been...
Honor Juneteenth by Closing the Racial Wealth Divide
On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas. They carried some historic news: Slavery had finally and completely ended, they declared. All of America’s enslaved people were now free, some two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation...
The Unpleasant Impact of an Unserious Budget
Federal budgets, while boring and wonky, can have a serious impact on our lives. They dictate our collective priorities for how we choose to spend our public resources in support of the common good. That is, good budgets do that. But you’d be hard-pressed to call the...
Making NAFTA Worse
Like rose blossoms, a politician's promises can be beautiful when they burst into full, glorious bloom — only to fade over time and, petal by petal, fall away. Take Donald Trump's glorious pledge last year to renegotiate the NAFTA trade deal and provide a "much...
Pain as a Policy Choice
On average, our economy tanks every seven years or so. By now we should have a pretty good idea of why that tanking happens, how we can protect ourselves, and what the impact will be. Unfortunately, we don’t. Recessions remain a bit like death, inevitable yet near...
If Washington Won’t Rein in Corporate Greed, Your State Might
Josh Elliott is fed up with overpaid CEOs. As the owner of a Connecticut natural foods market with 40 employees, he says he could never justify pocketing hundreds of times more pay than his employees. "I’m very much a capitalist," Elliott told me in an interview. "But...
How Mexican Farmers Got the Better of Trump
Often, when world powers pick fights with seemingly powerless countries, they learn that even small dogs have sharp teeth — as President Trump is finding out in his ill-fated war with Mexico. His scheme to wall off Mexico is collapsing because most people here in the...
How Trump Could Actually Stop Offshoring
The New York Times recently ran a front-page story about 700 United Technologies Corp. workers who are seeing their jobs shipped off to Mexico. Along with their UTC Carrier counterparts in Indianapolis — who are losing 550 of their jobs to Mexico — this shift leaves...
Remembering the Insider Who Blew the Whistle on Corporate Greed
If you work in a corrupt system, you have two basic options. First, you could rationalize away your role in the corruption. If you ever left, you tell yourself, they'd just get someone else to do your job. Might as well shut your mouth and collect your paycheck. But...
Concerned About Climate Change? Change Where You Bank!
At the end of April, hundreds of thousands of people will take part in the People’s Climate March in DC and around the country. The march will send a clear message that the majority of Americans understand that climate change is all too real — and they'll continue to...
