Economy and Business
Close the Paris Hilton Loophole
If our leaders want to balance the budget, here's a suggestion: Congress can scrap a new "Paris Hilton" giveaway that's draining billions of federal tax dollars. This giveaway takes the form of a complex tax loophole designed to circumvent the federal estate tax, one...
Hiding Profits in Slimy Offshore Wormholes
The dictionary defines the caterpillar as a "wormlike larva" and a "crawler." Also, that "pillar" part of the word is derived from a French verb that means to "pillage, abuse, mistreat." Good to know. Now, meet Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest maker of...
Tax-Cheating Butterfly
3 Freaky April Fools’ Day Stories
On a recent morning, after checking news reports, I thought: What a freaky news day. Freaky Story No. 1: The Governor of Texas rarely has any ideas. But apparently one unexpectedly erupted from the usually dormant cluster of low-voltage brain cells in Rick Perry's...
Lobbying to Sustain Inequality
Congress will soon vote on a measure that would raise the national minimum wage to $10.10 and bring the tipped wage to 70 percent of the full minimum. The Fair Minimum Wage Act would give millions of American workers a long-overdue raise. Today's $7.25-per-hour...
The Power Politics behind a Long, Gilded Life
Let us pause now to pay our respects to Bunny Mellon. She died in mid-March on her Virginia horse-country estate. But no tears, please. Bunny — nobody called her by her given name Rachel — lived a long and rich life. Very long. Very rich. One hundred and three at her...
Wall Street’s Bonus Inflation
Not too many years ago, any news story about bonus money would've been about some 20-year-old baseball player — an up-and-coming superstar getting $100,000 or so on top of his salary as an extra incentive to join the Yankees, Giants, or whatever team. Sportswriters...
Highway Robbery
No matter how hard lawmakers try to close their eyes, click their heels, and hope for the best, they can't make highway funding magically appear. But that doesn't stop them fiddling and flailing as they burn through the Highway Trust Fund. The Highway Trust Fund was...
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....
