Economy and Business
The State of Our Union’s Inequality
There's no doubt that President Barack Obama will make inequality a major theme of his State of the Union address, just as Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1935. "We have not weeded out the overprivileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged," FDR...
Fast-Tracking Misery
When it comes to trade policy, President Barack Obama is mimicking the same policies he criticized when he served in the Senate. As a presidential candidate, Obama promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), recognizing the enormous loss...
From Canada, a New Gold Standard
The 32,400 employees at Goldman Sachs averaged $383,374 each last year, the Wall Street banking giant has just disclosed. Typical employees at Goldman, of course, didn't take home anything near that $383,374. Bank clerks nationally only average $24,100 a year. In...
Obama’s Taxing Problem
Does getting tipsy make it easier for you to bear President Barack Obama 's State of the Union addresses? Try taking a sip of beer, wine, or a mixed drink every time he says the words "tax" or "taxpayer" this time around. It's not as extreme as doing it when Obama...
Omnibushed
At 8 p.m. on Monday January 13, there was no $1.1 trillion spending bill for fiscal year 2014. At least not one that the public or the vast majority of lawmakers had seen. Less than 70 hours later, large majorities in the House and Senate (332 to 94, and 72 to 26,...
Dr. King’s Nightmare
As we commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s 85th birthday, we’ve all come to know his dream. Above all else, he dreamed that one day this nation would rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created...
Making Out Like Bandits
It seems like almost every week brings news about Wall Street's latest sins. "JPMorgan Is Penalized $2 Billion Over Madoff," blared one recent New York Times headline, when the paper explained that Bernie Madoff, the infamous Ponzi scheme con artist, wheeled and...
Why Beating Back Inequality Won’t Be Easy
Half a century ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty." That war would soon make a real difference. In the decade following its 1964 launch, our official poverty rate dropped from 19 to 11.2 percent. But that progress stalled in the 1970s, and a...
Tip of the Iceberg
From Nurses and Students, a New Assault on Inequality
From the White House to the Vatican, everyone these days seems to be talking about income inequality. But our politics hasn't kept up. Concrete proposals that could actually narrow the gap between the rich and the rest of us haven't yet moved onto our public policy...
