Ilargi: The American Consumer Will Never Be Back
I don’t see a time in the future when American consumers will start spending again at a rate near that required for economic recovery.
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
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...Gaius Publius: Ron Wyden, Progressives and the TPP
Are progressives willing to attack Ron Wyden on TPP?
Read more...What Happened to the “Feel Good” Economy?
Even though this video is from December (hat tip Philip Pilkington), it gives an informative and nuanced explanation of the rise in income inequality and consumer debt levels, and how they play into our unimpressive “recovery”. The interview of Steve Fazzari and Barry Cynamon by Marshall Auerback discusses how the rise of inequality has many drivers, but the biggest appears to be financialization which is so pervasive and well-protected politically as to make it hard to roll back. It also put focus on key metrics that often get lost in conventional coverage. For instance, inflation and productivity adjusted wages would now need to be over $20 to match the levels of the 1960s.
Read more...Michael Hudson: Quantitative Easing for Whom?
Michael Hudson recaps the theory, or perhaps more accurately, political justifications for quantitative easing, as opposed to how it works in practice.
Read more...Obama Administration Makes Unverifiable Claim of 545,000 IT Job Openings; H-1B Visa Boosting Likely Culprit
Two stories on Slashdot say a great deal about the reality of the labor market versus the official hype. It’s noteworthy that the comments, which are typically fractious at Slashdot, line up almost uniformly on the “employers are looking for insanely specific and often unrealistic experience.” And why might that be? In the case of tech in particular, to justify bringing in more H-1B visa candidates.
Read more...Doug Smith: Dear Stephanie – Uh, That Thing About McDonald’s Workers That’s Missing
On the curious way a New York Times story on McDonald’s efforts at transformation said almost nothing about McDonald’s workers.
Read more...Troika Tightening the Noose on Greece as Government Cash Crunch Worsens
The Troika and Eurogroup look to be working towards the Greek government to start having similar thoughts. However, given the high level of popular support for Syriza, and press reports that Greek citizens fully expect that the new government to at best only be able to deliver on a small portion of its campaign promises, the end game for Greece is looking more and more likely to be a failed state rather than a more neoliberal-friendly government.
Read more...Look Who is Selling the TransPacific Partnership
Some Serious Economists have signed a letter supporting the TransPacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. The missive says a lot about the discipline, and not in a good way.
Read more...Bill Black: Scott Walker’s War on Workers and the Wall Street Journal’s Cleaned-Up Coverage
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has channeled his inner Mitt Romney and written off an immense swath of Americans as people he would not represent if he were elected President.
Read more...The Administration’s Dishonest Response to Elizabeth Warren’s Attack on Secret Investor Arbitration Panels in Trade Deals
Elizabeth Warren is clearly getting on the Administration’s nerves.
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
Read more...The School Closure Playbook – How Billionaires Exploit Poor Children in Chicago
A hard-hitting overview of who is behind the taxpayer looting program known as “corporate school reform” and the mechanics of how it operates.
Read more...Mathew D. Rose: Greece – Dead Man Walking
Rose focuses on an issue that reader Swedish Lex and other have pointed out: the heavy-handed actions of Germany in the tempestuous negotiations between the Eurozone and Greece have wound up being a major own goal.
But the bigger issue that Rose raises is that last week’s ugly negotiations, in combination with the fiasco in Ukraine, is exposing Germany as a lousy hegemon, which he argues is producing a political crisis in Germany and fracture lines in Europe.
Read more...TransPacific Partnership: Fast Track to Financial Instability
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama said he would submit a bill to Congress that would grant him the fast track authority to finalize the TransPacific Partnership (TPP)—a trade pact with Pacific Rim countries such as Japan, Malaysia, Peru, and Chile. While free trade has brought benefits in the past, tariffs in the world economy are at an all time low and new deals like the TPP offer few new gains in terms of growth and jobs for the American people. And the TPP in particular comes at unacceptably high cost.
Read more...