Lifted from Robert Walmann’s… Paul Krugman wrote: The answer all the deficit-panic types offer is basically that we must cut future benefits. But why, exactly, is that something that must be done immediately? If you state the supposed logic, it seems to be that to avoid future benefit cuts, we must cut future benefits. I’ve […]
Vis the NYT comes this look at the economics of small scale farming: Don’t let your children grow up to be farmers AT a farm-to-table dinner recently, I sat huddled in a corner with some other farmers, out of earshot of the foodies happily eating kale and freshly shucked oysters. We were comparing business models […]
The shooting death by police of Ferguson, MO teenager Michael Brown, and what has happened in the aftermath, has been blanketing the news for the past few days. It’s a story about race, but it’s also become a story about the power of the state and how it’s wielded, and against whom. So my question […]
by Dale Coberly FINANCING SOCIAL SECURITY A BOB BALL APPROACH Bob Ball proposed in 2007 (www.robertmball.org quoted in NASI “Fixing Social Security” Reno and Lavery, 2009, p 14) a “balancing rate increase.” This is the way his idea was described in the NASI publication: Acknowledging the uncertainty of 75 year projections, former Social Security Commissioner […]
Leigh McIlvaine (@Leigh M.) of Good Jobs First alerted me to this article on what Tesla Motors wants in incentives to land its $5 billion Gigafactory: $500 million. This massive 6500 worker facility will produce the next generation of batteries in order to introduce a less expensive line of cars in 2017, the Tesla Model […]
For the last 79 years, Social Security has paid out every benefit owed to every eligible American, making it one of the most successful programs in American history. 67 percent of Americans are opposed to any cuts to Social Security.
Kenneth Thomas has covered how many state level deals to entice private companies are bad deals, including sports stadiums, as ‘job creators’ extol their own virtues. Run has covered the defunding of state unviversities and also the rise in tuition and student debt. Robert Waldmann writes about the constant ballance of reporting. Yves Smith has […]
Via Truthout comes this post on the US Post Office: The post office makes a profit — expected to be more than a billion dollars this year. Yet, the media keeps reporting that the USPS is losing billions of dollars each year. What they fail to mention is that those are phony paper losses manufactured […]
Does the name Bruce Rauner ring a bell? No, me neither. It turns out he’s the Republican nominee for governor in Illinois, which under normal circumstances would mean he’s a nobody. But he’s been leading incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn in polls all summer, and could actually end up as the state’s next governor. This is […]
In 1998, the gov made it impossible to discharge federal student loans through bankruptcy except upon death, disability, or public service. The gov did provide certain measures to change payments then such as forbearance, economic forbearance (no interest for 3 years), and payment change. In 2005 private student loan originators lobbied to have the same […]