Economy and Business
The 10 Greediest Americans of 2011
You don’t have to make millions to rate as an all-star greedster. You do have to be ruthless, self-absorbed, and insensitive to others. Here’s my top 10 greediest of 2011.
Wealth is the Gift that Keeps on Giving
The holiday season exerts a lot of pressure to spend what you don’t have and go deeper into debt in the name of “giving.” This year, let us all support each other to be financially responsible and engage in building wealth instead of destroying it.
The Other 99 Percent: How the U.S. Compares
Occupy movements have now sprung up in at least 20 countries, and probably more. They all speak, in one way or another, for the other 99 percent. But the other 99 percent means different things in different places. In some countries, the other 99 percent are truly oppressed. In others, they manage reasonably well.
The Rich Don’t Need a Free Ride
Despite popular fascination with the rich and famous, most working people have little understanding of the finances of the wealthy. And the rich use that unfamiliarity to their advantage as they wield their outsized influence over public policy.
Hardly Working
Many people know that some 14 million Americans, officially about 9 percent of the nation’s work force, are unemployed. Another 12 million are under-employed. That means they’d like full-time work but can’t get it, or maybe they’re working two or three jobs without benefits in a desperate struggle to make ends meet.
How the 1 Percent Can Camp Out with the 99 Percent
Perhaps you’re part of Wall Street’s richest 1 percent, yet, deep in the deepest part of your hedge-fund heart, you secretly support the “We Are the 99 Percent” people.
A Main Street Jobs Agenda
Most Americans are now waking up from the Thanksgiving holiday and the bruising Washington battles of a failed congressional “supercommittee” with a giant hangover. The hangover results from the lack of clear answers to the most important question facing most of us: Where are the jobs that our children, our communities, and our nation so desperately need?
Chump U
The colleges, especially the for-profit variety, are there waiting with open arms and elaborate lures.
Occupy the Budget
Some lawmakers are trying to give America the cartoon image of a penniless hobo, circa 1932, with holes in his pants and nothing but a cold can of beans for dinner. We’re broke, they say, with no choice but to slash spending on public services.
Occupy Your Bank
The First Amendment guarantees the right to “peaceably” assemble. Unfortunately, that right seems to be in some type of Orwellian limbo at the moment. Eighteen cities participated in a conference call about the Occupy movement before they simultaneously cracked down on occupations in their cities, according Oakland Mayor Jean Quan.
