A New Car vs. Health Insurance? Average Family Job-Based Coverage Hits $27K
KFF data shows that 2025 marked the first time in two decades that the annual cost of covering a family of four rose by 6% or more for three consecutive years.
Read more...Category Archives: The destruction of the middle class
Not the Fix—The Tell: The Meaning of a $100,000 H-1B Fee
The new $100,000 H-1B fee tacitly acknowledges what early policy architects signaled: expanding temporary tech visas can depress domestic wages. By bringing the fully loaded cost of a new H1B hire closer to what the local market would require to recruit and retain comparable talent, it narrows the wedge between visa-enabled staffing and hiring Americans at market rates.
Read more...Data Centers Spark Bipartisan Fury As Energy Costs Soar
Voters are waking up to the fact that their soaring electricity costs represent a big subsidy to data centers. What happens next?
Read more...Economic Myths: Homo Economicus
Richard Murphy is starting to take part bad economic idea. This series may wind up having no ending.
Read more...A Front Line Report of AI Damage to the Job Market
Informative, if also distressing, detail on the havoc AI is wreaking on the job market, particulary for the young.
Read more...What Do Trump Administration’s Threats on “Anti-Capitalism” Terrorism and RICO Mean for Organized Labor?
If the administration continues to expand guest worker programs and makes good on anti-capitalism pre-crime threats, who there by any union workers left for planned general strike on May Day of 2028?
Read more...Workers’ Wages Siphoned To Pay Medical Bills, Despite Consumer Protections
“If you can’t maintain your health, how are you going to work to pay back a debt? And if you fundamentally can’t pay the bill, wage garnishment isn’t going to help you do that. It’s going to put you in more financial distress.”
Read more...US Workers Experience Large Month-to-Month Fluctuations in Pay
Yet another indiginity low-wage workers suffer: uncertainty in pay due to employers not giving them steady hours.
Read more...What Does All the Justice Department Sleaze Mean for Your Rental Housing Costs?
The Biden DOJ closed a price- and wage-fixing loophole from the days of Clinton. Is Trump about to reopen it?
Read more...War on Labor Accelerates: Administration Predictably Embraces Guest Workers and “Anti-Capitalism” Is Labeled Terrorism
A look at who is being deported and who is being ushered in shows that what’s happening is a trading out of people for exploitable workers. And fighting back just got harder with Trump’s new security directive.
Read more...The Milton Friedman Question
A critical look at the anarcho-libertarian (per his son) propagandist Milton Friedman.
Read more...Trump Again Applies His Tariff Wrecking Ball to US Citizens and Businesses with 100% Levy on Imported Patented Drugs, 25% on Imported Trucks, 30% to 50% on Furnishings
Trump is again deploying his tariff weapon, mainly at hapless American patients and consumers….and Indian drugmakers.
Read more...Masters and Minions and Muppets, Oh My!
Time for muppets to develop class consciousness and unite.
Read more...AI Will Soon Have a Say in Approving or Denying Medicare Treatments
The Trump Administration plans to launch a new war against citizens, here via a pilot scheme to use AI to cut Medicare services.
Read more...The Karl Marx Question
Karl Marx has aged well. What happens if you take his analysis seriously?
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