Economy and Business
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...
Worth More: One Man or an Entire City?
A population of 100,000 is substantial. Five states don't even have one metropolis that large. Some cities that size, like Fargo, North Dakota, are their state's biggest. Others, like Lansing, Michigan, are state capitals. About 100,000 people live in Rochester,...
Walgreen Writes its Own Sick Prescription
How would you react if one of your neighbors announced that while he obviously benefits from having clean water, highways, Medicare, police protection, parks, schools, and other public services, he was no longer going to pay his share of the taxes that make them...
The State of Runaway CEO Pay Resistance
Fed up with the do-nothing Congress, people around the country are no longer waiting for Washington to lead on some of the most pressing economic fairness issues of our time. Take the minimum wage debate. States and cities are rising above the partisan swamp in the...
