Amazon Requires Badly-Paid Warehouse Temps to Sign 18-Month Non-Competes
Time to boycott Amazon. The Verge has broken an important story on how far Amazon has gone in its relentless efforts to crush workers.
Read more...Category Archives: Social values
Rajiv Sethi: Store Stickers and Indiana’s Law – A Separating Equilibrium
The intent of the “open for everyone” stickers is presumably to signal protest against the law. It’s telling that they appear to be springing up quickly in the face of a barrage of negative national press coverage as well as social media criticism. Most retailers have thin margins, which means all things being equal, their margins are best served by not annoying possible shoppers. So one would assume rectitude on this issue would be the wisest commercial decision. Thus, aside from those owners who favor gay rights, the reaction also appears to signal where many store owners think their community’s opinion lies, as in fence sitting is more costly than saying they aren’t on the side of the new law (or what it might mean in a worst-case scenario). In other words, are we seeing that the heartlands are more liberal than the religious bloc (which punches above its weight politically due to its effectiveness in getting out the vote) would have the public believe?
Read more...Mathew D. Rose: Greece – Plus ça change
Whether the Greek government’s protests are substantive or mere grandstanding, any show of opposition is more that the Eurocrats are prepared to accept. And a successful left-leaning government is also seen as a threat in quite a few quarters.
Read more...The Retirement Crisis
This interview, with Teresa Ghilarducci, who the Wall Street Journal called “the most dangerous woman in America,” discusses how and why pensions are under stress, and what can be done to fix them. While she agrees that the retirement crisis is real, she also argues that it is eminently fixable, particularly since there really is no free lunch. The alternative, of widespread poverty among the aged, also imposes costs on government and society.
Read more...Tom Engelhardt: The New American Order: 1% Elections, The Privatization of the State, a Fourth Branch of Government, and the Demobilization of “We the People”
Based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.
Read more...Who Owns the Post Office?
This article describes how the creation of a misguided corporatized governance structure and undermining of public-interest-related objectives undermined the Post Office. The very fact that offices are being shuttered in rural areas that depend on the Post Office as a local anchor, leading to the death of communities, shows how far the modern Post Office deviates from its founders’ objectives.
Read more...Bill Black: What Does it Take to Get Fired from the SEC?
Why the SEC should demand the resignation of examination chief Andrew Bowden after he fawned over private equity, an industry he oversees.
Read more...The Big Dick School of American Patriotism, and What We Make of It
How America’s patriotism has been converted, or perhaps more accurately, perverted, into a war culture.
Read more...Obama Gives Another Greatest Speech Ever, This Time In Selma
Omissions and evasions in Obama’s Selma speech.
Read more...Are Pilots Deserting Washington’s Drone War?
A potential fatal flaw arises in the Pentagon’s plans to create a killing force that didn’t involve messy, unpopular casualties and deaths. Drone operators are quitting faster than new ones can be trained. Killing is apparently not cost free; many drone pilots appear to suffer from a new form of mental disorder.
Read more...Bill Black: Question to Our Bank CEOs Who Are Criminals: “Have You No Sense of Decency”?
Lambert here: I couldn’t make up my mind whether there was any redundancy in the headline or not.
Read more...Matt Stoller: The Broader Net Neutrality Narrative
How the net neutrality fight created a new coalition of industrial interests and a new, sophisticated political consciousness.
Read more...New York’s Benjamin Lawksy and the SEC’s Kara Stein and Luis Aguilar Push for Tougher Sanctions Against Bank Executives
More regulators are getting serious about finding ways to hold individual bank executives responsible for misconduct.
Read more...Austerity Kills: Economic Distress Seen as Culprit in Sharp Rise in Suicide Rate Among Middle Aged
I’m surprised, but perhaps I shouldn’t be, that a recent study hasn’t gotten the attention it warrants. It points to a direct connection between the impact of the crisis and a marked increase in suicide rates among the middle aged.
Read more...Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Forced Into Historic Runoff
This Real News Network interview describes why the coming mayoral runoff in Chicago is in many ways a referendum on failed neoliberal policies, such as privatizing schools. The very fact that this race is taking place at all reveals an unexpectedly large degree of popular discontent with misrule by what passes for our elites
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