Economy and Business
We’re Not Broke — We’ve Been Robbed
With the Friday the 13th December deadline for a federal budget deal, the cries of "we're broke," and "we can't afford to keep spending," are ringing again. But we're not broke and acting like we are is making us poorer. One of the biggest common misunderstandings is...
Tiny Tim Time at Walmart
Who says Walmart isn't big-hearted? Just look at the chain's outlet in Canton, Ohio, where management set up bins for food donations, asking people to give generously to the poor who otherwise would not have a Thanksgiving dinner. But the bins weren't for customers —...
Attack of the Budget Slashers
‘Tis the Season to Celebrate Mammon
Here come Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. It's a month-long season of friends and family, spiritual reflection, and time to decompress from our usual helter-skelter lives, right? Good lord, shout the corporate bosses, are you nuts? Do you think America is some...
Upgrading Our Clunker Economy
Pondering America's economic system is a bit like going to the mechanic with your old heap and being told there's nothing more he can do. It's time for a new economy, but we're going to keep our clunker economy that persists only because so many bigwigs profit...
The Swiss Take Aim at Executive Excess
Something astounding is happening in Switzerland. For the first time ever, citizens in a modern nation are voting on whether to create what essentially amounts to a "maximum wage." On November 24, the Swiss will vote on a ballot initiative that bans any Swiss...
CEOs Against Grandmas
David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, has more than $134 million in his personal retirement fund. If I were sitting on a nest egg that big, I might feel a bit sheepish about telling ordinary grandmas and grandpas to take a cut in their Social Security payments. But Cote —...
Drawing a Lesson from Colorado’s Conflicting Tax Votes
“School Tax Fails.” That was the Denver Post’s lead headline the day after two-thirds of Colorado voters defeated a ballot initiative that would have raised the state’s income tax to fund K-12 public education. In smaller type, readers found news of another state-wide...
Taking Stock of the Most Affluent Among Us
How unequal have workplaces in the United States become? Our best answer happens to come from a source you might not expect: the Social Security Administration. Social Security statisticians each year tally up how much compensation gets reported on W-2s, the forms...
Paying for Corporate Crime on the Taxpayer’s Dime
Sometimes, a news story can be so crammed with irony that it boggles the mind. Consider just the headline on one such story that ran recently in my town's daily paper: "Man gets 10 years for defrauding banks." That just screams for a rewrite, doesn't it? I yearn for a...
