Economy and Business
America’s Grand Fortunes Go Overboard
Imagine yourself part of the typical American family. Your household would have, the Federal Reserve reported in September, a net worth of $81,200. That's not a whole lot of money. But half of America's households would actually have less wealth than you do. Now...
Olive Garden Execs Parachute Away
Imagine the Three Stooges as waiters. Curly's pouring hot soup in laps, Moe's sneezing in the spaghetti, and Larry's lighting a well-coiffed woman's hair on fire with the bananas flambé. When their boss finally gives them the boot, the customers cheer. And if the...
Try to Buy a Baloney Sandwich with That
As an old popular song asks: What do you get if you "work your fingers right down to the bone?" Boney fingers. As housekeepers in the sprawling Marriott hotel chains know, that's more than a cute lyric. It's the truth. These "room attendants," as they're called, are...
Let Them Eat Tips
Just when you thought the plutocratic profiteers running America's exploitative, low-wage economy couldn't get any more clueless, self-serving, pious, and mingy — along comes Lady Maria of Marriott, magnanimously saying: "Let them eat tips." Marriott International...
Make Your Investments Fuel Change
People around the world are pressing their leaders to act on climate change and fueling change on their own. With U.S. political leadership on climate policy in a shambles, many Americans are taking matters into their own hands. Nearly 400,000 people marched in New...
The Scourge of Siphon-Up Economics
When the Census released the latest data on inequality, most mainstream media outlets shrugged it off. That's quite a contrast from earlier this year when inequality was all the rage. Reporters were scrambling to write about it. In January, President Barack Obama made...
The Little Train That Won’t
I love groups with the gumption to take on big tasks and do what needs to be done — can-do groups that can, and do. But, uh-oh, here comes The Little Train That Couldn't. I'm talking about Congress. Since the earliest days of our US of A, the most basic task of this...
Destroying a Bridge to Somewhere
Taxing the #RichKids
It doesn't take long for viewers of #RichKids of Beverly Hills to realize the show is deliberately trying to make you feel poor. Watching heiresses in their mid-twenties drop more on a day of shopping than the average American spends buying a home makes the point...
Rich Man Hails Middle Class Job Creators
Here's an unusual super-rich guy with a strange message for his fellow 1-percent-of-the-1-percenters. Nick Hanauer, who made billions as an Internet entrepreneur, recently wrote an open letter to his fellow über-richies. "The true job creators are middle-class...
