| Aug 28, 2013 | Economy / BusinessAs I stepped off a bus in Mexico earlier this month, a tour guide urged my family and everyone else on the trip to go home and tell others that his country was safe. “Nobody got shot, eh?” he asked, explaining that stories about Mexico as a modern-day Wild...
| Jun 5, 2013 | Economy / Business|RoundupThis week in OtherWords, Jill Richardson puts her own brush with food stamps into a broader context, Jim Hightower lampoons a rich Tennessee lawmaker who wants to slash spending on the program but pockets plenty of farm subsidies, and Marc Morial calls for raising the...
| | Economy / BusinessIt was late, I was grumpy, and the woman in front of me was buying cigarettes. I noticed the items in her cart: brand-name snacks, colas, and frozen foods. I looked at how she dressed, considered the carton of cigarettes she requested, and made a wager to myself that...
| | Economy / BusinessThe minimum wage is $7.25. If it had kept up with inflation since 1968, minimum-wage workers would be earning $10.69 an hour today. During his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama put a face on the growing chasm between the “haves” and...
| | Food / FarmingI never paid much attention to the food stamp debate in Congress before. But I’m on food stamps myself these days, so I’m tuning in this time around. Officially called SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps are one of those...
