Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class

Bill Black: No, Mr. President, you did not negotiate a winning tax deal

By Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and a former senior financial regulator

This column analyses Obama’s claim that he got the better of the Republicans in the negotiations.

The administration (implicitly) argues that its claim of extraordinary negotiating success represents a miraculous accomplishment given the facts that the Republicans were holding all legislation hostage to their non-negotiable demand that the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans be extended and the administration’s irrevocable decision that it could not call the Republican’s bluff because the economy would likely sink back into recession unless tax cuts for the middle class were immediately passed…..

The third problem is that no element of the claimed miracle is true….

Town May Seize Factory to Prevent Dismantling by Vengeful Owner

This story illustrates how far some companies are willing to go to preserve their bottom lines and assert their right to operate in an unfettered manner, even when that includes breaking the law and violating contracts. Huffington Post, via its daily political newsletter Huffington Post Hill, does some additional reporting on the very peculiar case […]

PBS on Corporate Campaign Donations

As one reader noted, “Closest PBS has ever come to telling the truth about the system”. You can view the segment here. Enjoy!

Richard Alford: The Labor Market, the Trade Deficit, And The 800 Pound Gorilla

Yves here. One thing I have noticed on posts that discuss the US labor market and trade is reflexive and frankly somewhat dogmatic defeatism. The position seems to be “China and Bangladesh have such cheap labor, there is no way we can compete.” This view is simplistic. First, in capital intensive industries, direct labor is […]

Mike Konczal: The Stagnating Labor Market – What Can the Employed Tell Us About the Unemployed?

By Mike Konczal, a Roosevelt Institute fellow who posts at New Deal 2.0 Arjun Jayadev and I have another working paper out of Roosevelt Institute, this time focusing on the labor market in the current recession. The paper is: The Stagnating Labor Market (pdf). I hope you check it out; I’m going to talk about […]

Does Income Inequality Help Cause Financial Crises?

New York Times writer Louise Story recaps a bold thesis put forward by David Moss of Harvard Business School, namely, that high levels of income inequality stoke financial crises: The possible connection between economic inequality and financial crises came to Mr. Moss about a year ago… A colleague suggested that he overlay two different graphs […]

So Much for Workers in India Being Cheaper

When I was on C-SPAN the weekend before last, I got a call I didn’t quite know how to field. It was from someone who by his accent was obviously Indian. He claimed that Indians represented 35% of the managers in American companies, and that American visa restrictions meant that they were all going to […]

Guest Post: Strip Mining the U.S. Economy

By Jack Sparrow, who writes at Mercenary Trader The employment picture constitutes yet another headwind and a significant one to the already-faltering U.S. recovery. It will undermine future spending, company earnings and profitability. Indeed, the poorer the employment picture, the greater the likelihood that households will become more cautious and that the corporate sector will […]