Update: Brad DeLong has replied, and I have replied to him. Dean Baker quite rightly takes Robert Samuelson to task for his op-ed on the causes of secular stagnation. Samuelson: The problem might not be a dearth of investments so much as a surplus of risk aversion. For that, candidates abound: the traumatic impact of the Great Recession […]
Based on this report from the Economic Policy Institute Federal minimum wage increase comes this EPI info graphic pointing to some useful comparisons for general readers: The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage is lower today than it was in 1968. If the value of the minimum wage had kept pace with average wages since […]
Via Reuter’s Scot J. Paltrow Part 1 Defense Finance and Accounting Service, or DFAS (pronounced “DEE-fass”). This agency, with headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, has roughly 12,000 employees and, after cuts under the federal sequester, a $1.36 billion budget. It is responsible for accurately paying America’s 2.7 million active-duty and Reserve soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. […]
Obstructionism has been the modus operandi by Republicans in Congress to oppose President Obama with special emphasis in the Senate. Through the use of the filibuster, the Senate Republican minority has been able to block presidential appointments or sway them to less likely candidates, block the appointment of Federal Judges to the bench, and obstruct […]
Mike Sankowski has been banging his spoon on the high chair about this forever. And rightly so. Repeat after Mike. And keep repeating it to anyone who will listen. The “higher-corporate-profits = jobs” meme is perhaps the most pernicious falsehood in political economics. How Business Owners Think For almost ten years I was co-founder and […]
HENRY GIROUX: Oh, I mean, I think that’s the biggest lie of all actually. The biggest lie of all is that capitalism is democracy. We have no way of understanding democracy outside of the market, just as we have no understanding of how to understand freedom outside of market values. I learned about two maps […]
Religious liberty, [Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals] Judge Tymkovich wrote, cannot turn on whether money changes hands. “Would an incorporated kosher butcher really have no claim to challenge a regulation mandating non-kosher butchering practices?” he asked. — Court Confronts Religious Rights of Corporations, Adam Liptak, New York Times, today Why, yes, Judge Tymkovich, of course […]
Lambert Strether and Bob Goodwinn via Naked Capitalism offer a point of view on how law is being implemented through large system programming, as it played out in the MERS system of property ownership fait accompli, and other systems.
Via Digsby Oh, my goodness. Can it be that Fix the Debt is using patented right wing astroturf tactics?Say it ain’t so! Our friend Jon Romano, press secretary for the inside-the-beltway PR campaign “Fix the Debt” and its pet youth group, The Can Kicks Back, have been caught writing op-eds for college students and placing […]
I have written before about the gross waste of taxpayer monies on retail in the St. Louis region. According to the East-West Gateway Council of Governments (p. 18), governments in the bi-state metropolitan area pumped about $2 billion worth of subsidies into retail projects from 1990 to 2007, but only saw a net increase of […]