Economy and Business
Should Great Cities Roll Out the Welcome Mat for Great Fortunes?
New York has a new mayor who wants to remake his deeply unequal city into much more than a playground for the super-rich. The experts who track global wealth trends think he'll fail. A recent report from Knight Frank, a global consultancy firm, is predicting that by...
Wall Street Bonuses vs the Minimum Wage
Purveyors of Ferraris and high-end Swiss watches keep their fingers crossed toward the end of each calendar year, hoping that the big Wall Street banks will be generous with their annual cash bonuses. New figures show that the bonus bonanza of 2013 didn't disappoint....
Striking for the Public University
Earlier this year, hundreds of faculty members at the University of Illinois-Chicago canceled their classes and went on strike. In the first faculty walkout in UIC history, they picketed the campus for two days. What could professors possibly have to complain about?...
The Corporate Land of Oz
In L. Frank Baum's novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the "wizard' turns out to be a phony — just an old guy sitting behind a curtain, using his booming voice to spew nonsense in a vain effort to fool people. But now, a century after Baum's fictional Oz, a real-life...
The Rigged Housing Market
An upscale housing development in Wilton, Connecticut (all of Wilton is upscale) is having no trouble selling its 20 units for $800,000 each. On average, homes in that town now fetch more than $1 million a piece. And real estate experts only rank the region that...
Wall Street Charges Ahead
Take this Compromise with a Grain of Salt
The two cousins who run the private equity giant KKR took home an astounding total of $327 million in 2013, new regulatory filings reveal. Much of this lush windfall came via "carried interest," Wall Street-speak for the cut that private equity kingpins take on the...
Obama’s Budget Asks What’s Valuable
Obama's new budget, is it DOA? Can tax breaks for the poor really see light of day? Well, Paul Ryan's budget will cut taxes too. Granted, not for the many...just for the few. A budget expresses what a nation finds valuable: A good wage in Harlem? Or a new yacht in...
Without any Grassroots, This Austerity Group Withered
The austerity mania that plagued our political system for four years is finally subsiding. The latest sign is President Barack Obama’s decision to nix the Social Security cuts he had previously included in his budget proposal. This was a body blow to the most powerful...
Can Someone Please Cancel this Pity Party for the Rich?
The über rich are full of ideas. Not ideas to help humanity, unfortunately. They've thought up new ways to help themselves grab more money and power at our expense. Take Tom Perkins. He's one of a growing number of the put-upon rich — billionaires who grabbed a...
