Economy and Business
Clamping Down on the Labor Extortion Racket
This Labor Day, you can mull some good news about American jobs for a change. Take the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour — please! That poverty pay is a shameful stain on our extremely rich nation. But don't count on Washington, D.C. to lift our wage floor....
Extreme Makeover: Canal Edition
Panama! Panama-ah-ah-ah! The lyrics from the eponymous Van Halen song could just as easily be the nation's port policy — if the country had one. Panama is nearing completion of retrofitting the Panama Canal to accommodate much larger ships. The prospect of these ships...
Is Wal-Mart Treating Workers Like Pop-Tarts?
Wal-Mart loves keeping track of data. For instance, the retail giant's researchers know that before and after major storms, customers buy strawberry Pop-Tarts at a rate that's seven times faster than normal. How does Wal-Mart use this data? To stock its shelves with...
The Class War Goes Retail
For the first time since 1997, the U.S. economy just added at least 200,000 jobs per month for six months running. GDP grew at a 4 percent annual clip between April and June. The percentage of Americans who describe the economy as "good" has climbed to the highest...
Making the World Safe for Trust Fund Babies
Real wages have stagnated for decades. Homeownership rates are down. College debt is weighing down young people entering the workforce. Millions of low-wage workers eke by on a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. As the American Dream slips away for millions of people in...
Hard Times Too Pervasive for Republicans to Ignore
Must formerly rich people shed all their status symbols? It's a widely held presumption, Darlena Cunha explained. "I had so internalized the message of what poor people should or should not have that I felt ashamed to be there, with that car," she wrote in a...
Take Your Loot with You
Astoundingly Legal Corporate Tax Thievery
Did you scramble to get your taxes done this year at the last minute? Yeah, me too. I really didn't mind paying what I owe — but I hate having to pay the taxes owed by the likes of JPMorgan Chase, ExxonMobil, and Amazon. They're just a few of the astonishingly...
Narcissists Gone Wild!
Narcissists don't happen to be particularly nice people. They preen. They grab. And they never ever really feel our pain. Extremely self-centered people, some fascinating new business school research shows, also don't make for particularly effective corporate CEOs....
Citigroup’s $7 Billion Wrist Slap
When Citigroup accepted what the media hailed as a whopping $7 billion penalty for defrauding its own investors and wrecking our economy, the bank just shrugged. "We believe that this settlement is in the best interest of our shareholders and allows us to move forward...
