70% of Jobs “Created” Don’t Require a College Education
No wonder the collision of the higher education bubble and the job market is proving to be so painful.
Read more...Category Archives: Social values
9 Greedy CEOs Trying to Shred the Safety Net While Pigging Out on Corporate Welfare
By Lynn Parramore, a senior editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
A gang of brazen CEOs has joined forces to promote economically disastrous and socially irresponsible austerity policies. Many of those same CEOs were bailed out by the American taxpayer after a Wall Street-driven financial crash. Instead of a thank-you, they are showing their appreciation in the form of a coordinated effort to rob Americans of hard-earned retirements, decent medical care and relief for the poorest.
Read more...The Expanding Surveillance Society: Getting You to Buy Into Being Monitored
Like it or not, you in the not too distant future are going to have to submit to personal surveillance to get many types of insurance and certain financial products. And that future is closer than you probably realize.
Read more...Stop Using “Obama for America” Against the People!
Yves here. Team Obama is fast out of the box with its plan to redeploy its campaign ops to sell Americans on why they should lie back and think of England why they should embrace a future with more income disparity and more catfood for old people. The media got wind of the plan the evening before the messaging barrage started. Joe Firestone does a able job of taking it apart.
A Foreign Supply Chain Threat Opening on Walmart Labor Protests?
It’s too early to tell how effective the Black Friday against Walmart’s low pay and abusive working conditions were. The early reports from management and the organizers are wildly at odds with each other.
However, a new front may open up in the Walmart disputes: that of disruption to its international shipments.
Read more...Obama to Deploy Campaign Apparatus to Persuade Americans to Look Forward to More and Better Catfood
Our Fearless Great Betrayer is about to repurpose his campaign sales machine to persuasion of the American public of the necessity of making do with less to appease the Bond Gods. The bizarre part, as many have noted, is the Bond Gods actually don’t seem to want the human sacrifice involved (old people dying faster) but their Wall Street soothsayers would have you believe otherwise.
Read more...An Inconvenient Truth About Lincoln (That You Won’t Hear from Hollywood)
By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
There’s a side of Lincoln that no Hollywood film shows clearly: He was extremely close to the railway barons, the most powerful corporate titans of the era.
Read more...The Giant Lie Trotted Out by Fiscal Conservatives Trying to Shred Social Security
By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
Trying to convince the public to cut America’s best-loved and most successful program requires a lot of creativity and persistence.
Read more...Homeless in New Jersey
Yves here. This article points out what others have noted: that Hurricane Sandy has given much more visibility to the dangers of climate change. It’s an environmental version of the old economists’ joke: A recession occurs when your neighbor loses his job. A depression takes place you lose your job. The media and policymakers in large measure live in a bubble centered on New York and Washington DC, and it has taken an event that hit their sheltered world hard to get them to wake up and take notice.
Read more...Occupy Wall Street’s Debt Jubilee: A Gimmick with Tax Risk
If you stand far enough away, the OWS Strike Debt debt cancellation initiative, called Rolling Jubilee, looks like a simple and clever way to beat banks at their own game. So it’s not surprising that it has attracted a roster of celebrity supporters. But like most things in finance, the devil lies in the details, and the Rolling Jubilee plan, on closer inspection, is wanting.
Read more...Bill Black: Wall Street Uses the Third Way to Lead its Assault on Social Security
By Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City
Third Way, lobbyists for and from Wall Street who are leading the effort to enrich Wall Street by privatizing Social Security, was created by Wall Street to fool some of the people all of the time.
Read more...Naked Capitalism Fundraiser: Another World Is Possible
By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at https://twitter.com/matthewstoller and he can be reached at stoller at gmail.com.
First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then they can actually just keep cycling through those, turns out. – James Adomian
This is a somewhat unusual post, because I’m going to explain why I think you should put a few dollars towards this site and Yves Smith. I’m plunking down $100 myself, just as Neil Barofsky has donated, because what this site, its readers, and this community mean to me and to the possibility of social change in this country. You can give here, or you can read on.
Read more...Yes, Virginia, There are Poorhouses, and Scrooge Would be Proud of Them
Societies have a funny way of walling off undesirables.
Read more...Relaunching the NC 2012 Fundraiser!
Regular readers may recall we suspended our 2012 fundraiser, which started right before Hurricane Sandy. We want to express our deep appreciation to those of you who have donated thus far.
Many of the things we talked about when we launched our first fundraiser last year are still true: the elites, who have shown little regard for how their misrule has hurt ordinary citizens, still have a firm grasp on the reins of power. The global financial crisis imposed tremendous costs on investors and society at large, via unemployment, a housing bust, plunging tax revenues, cuts in government services and increasing political discord. No one in a position of influence before the crisis has been punished or even suffered much. In fact, as Matt Stoller has pointed out, the rich became even richer, with 93% of the gains in income under Obama going to the top 1%.
So it isn’t surprising that what passes for leadership in the US is gearing up to provide us with more of the same, since it has worked out so well for them.
Read more...Drums Beating to Privatize Social Security
This Real News Network interview with Bill Black provides an overview of why Wall Street and the Administration are so keen to gut well loved and socially valuable safety nets for the elderly, in particular, Social Security. This talk is a good introduction for people who may not understand how high the stakes in the budget fight are and why the economic arguments used to justify it are bogus.
Read more...