Economy and Business
Measuring Progress
Tent cities and shacks sprung up on empty lots across the country. Food lines at soup kitchens wrapped around city blocks. Unemployment soared to 25 percent. Farmers watched helplessly as crop prices plummeted, then lost their land. The evidence was clear, yet at the height of the Great Depression, Congress lacked the tools to accurately measure just how the economy as a whole was faring. With no commonly accepted national income data, they had no guideposts upon which to base sound economic policy.
Masters of the Universe, Unite!
Shortchanging Our Paychecks
Back in the “Happy Days” of the 1950s and 1960s, most young American couples graduated from high school or college, got married, and immediately bought the most expensive house they could afford. They bought their houses on credit, their cars on credit, their appliances on credit, their furniture on credit, and even their baby clothes on credit. They didn’t have credit cards, but they sure did have debt.
Job Destroyers Don’t Deserve a Tax Holiday
A coalition of big businesses is waging a campaign for a massive tax holiday on corporate profits stashed overseas. Its lobbyists claim that this windfall would create millions of jobs. If our lawmakers buy that, they’ve got very short memories.
Dr. National and Mr. Transnational
When IPS and the Heritage Foundation Agree that Something’s a Bad Idea, It Probably Does Stink
Sens. Kay Hagan (D-NC) and John McCain (R-AZ) have announced plans to introduce a bill tomorrow that would let U.S. companies bring home as much as $1.4 trillion of overseas profits at a steeply reduced tax rate.
Uncle Sam Should Support Built-to-Last Companies, Not Built-to-Loot Enterprises
A powerful coalition of U.S.-based global companies is lobbying hard for a “tax holiday” on offshore profits.
Free the College Football Market
The burlesque show that is college football has gone about as far as it can go. Each fall it arrives clothed in garments of academic integrity (the players are scholar-athletes, don’t you know) only to peel them off one at a time as the year goes on.
America’s Government Contracting Bonanza Bilks Taxpayers
I live nine blocks from the U.S. Capitol, so many of my neighbors depend on the government for their livelihoods. A few — a scientist, an editor, a Secret Service agent — belong to that often mocked and rapidly shrinking category known as “civil servants.” The government writes their paychecks, lets them buy into a decent health insurance plan, and runs a respectable pension system for them. Some belong to — and are protected by — powerful unions. Their generous benefit packages and job security are the stuff of legend.
It’s Class Warfare, All Right
Republicans are accusing President Obama of waging class warfare, which is a little like the Japanese complaining about the time Pearl Harbor attacked them in 1941.
