Economy and Business
Unemployed Become a Political Football
Fifteen million Americans are currently unemployed, and nearly half of that number has been actively and fruitlessly seeking employment for longer than six months. The depth and breadth of our labor market crisis is the greatest in over 50 years.
Shovel Ready
The Million-Dollar Penny
Every summer, several financial firms competing to get the banking business of the world’s mega millionaires release what amounts to scorecards on global wealth. These data-packed reports tally the current number of our international rich and super-rich, by nation and region.
Raking it in at Walmart
Chicago alderman Ed Smith tried to fight plans for Walmart to open a new store in his city by illustrating that its CEO Michael Duke’s $35 million annual compensation, “when converted to an hourly wage, worked out to $16,826.92,” ABC News reported. “By comparison, at a Walmart store planned for the Windy City’s Pullman neighborhood, new employees to be paid $8.75 an hour would gross $13,650 a year.”
Letters to the Editor: Kaul’s $50 Bill Column
Here’s how our readers have responded to Kaul’s column back in April about conservatives attempting to replace Grant with Reagan on the $50 bill.
Who Should Pay for the Crisis?
The financial and economic crisis we’re enduring is extremely costly. America faces a critical choice: Who should pay the bill?
Corporate Social Irresponsibility
The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill gave rise to the corporate social responsibility movement. The BP oil disaster may mark its collapse.
GM Crashes Chevy
Good news, people. General Motors has turned a profit! However, there’s bad news, too: GM’s top executives are insane. By which I mean bonkers, loopy, bull-goose crazy.
Want a Job? Good Luck
“Don’t believe everything you read in the papers,” Grandma said. We all learned that as kids, but sometimes we swallow dumb stuff anyway. Like now. We want to believe the economy is improving, so we grasp at headlines or TV news leads that offer hope. But those hopes are fools’ gold. The media mostly feature reports of growth because that’s what advertisers, especially real estate and stock brokers, want to hear. Glowing reports stimulate buyers.
Rigging the Rules against Unions
There’s one direct, grassroots way that workaday folks can create more fairness in our country’s plutocratic, corporate-controlled economy: unite in unions. Indeed, some 60 million workers say they’d join a union today if they could.
