Blog

By Robert Reich
Former U.S. Secretary of Labor, Professor at Berkeley

As global capital becomes ever more powerful, giant corporations are holding governments and citizens up for ransom — eliciting subsidies and tax breaks from countries concerned about their nation’s “competitiveness” — while sheltering their profits in the lowest-tax jurisdictions they can find. Major advanced countries — and their citizens — need a comprehensive tax agreement that won’t allow global corporations to get away with this.

Google, Amazon, Starbucks, every other major corporation, and every big Wall Street bank, are sheltering as much of their U.S. profits abroad as they can, while telling Washington that lower corporate taxes are necessary in order to keep the U.S. “competitive.”

Baloney. The fact is, global corporations have no allegiance to any country; their only objective is to make as much money as possible — and play off one country against another to keep their taxes down and subsidies up, thereby shifting more of the tax burden to ordinary people whose wages are already shrinking because companies are playing workers off against each other.

I’m in London for a few days, and all the talk here is about how Goldman Sachs just negotiated a sweetheart deal to settle a tax dispute with the British government; Google is manipulating its British sales to pay almost no taxes here by using its low-tax Ireland subsidiary (the chair of the Parliamentary committee investigating this has just called the do-no-evil firm “devious, calculating, and unethical”); Amazon has been found to route its British sales through a subsidiary in low-tax Luxembourg, and now receives more in subsidies from the British government than it pays here in taxes; Starbucks’ tax-avoidance strategy was so blatant British consumers began boycotting the firm until it reversed course.  (more…)

By Jim Hightower
Author, Commentator, America’s Number One Populist

My state of Texas seems to have an inordinate share of nincompoops in public office. But it’s only fair that office holders from other states be considered before deciding which one is the nincompoopiest of all.

Give credit to Pennsylvania, for example, whose GOP governor, Tom Corbett, recently scored big nincompoop points by explaining why his state ranks 49th in job creation. “Many employers,” the guv grumbled, during a radio interview, “say ‘we’re looking for people, but we can’t find anybody that has passed a drug test’.” Yes, the old my-constituents-are-a-bunch-of-drug-addicts dodge! That’s world-class nincompoopery. Did I mention that Tom’s voter approval rating is down to 38 percent?

But compare Corbett to one of the Lone Star State’s congress critters, Steve Stockman. Steve’s re-election campaign has put out a bumper sticker with this uplifting thought: “If babies had guns, they wouldn’t be aborted.” Wow – that’s two nincompoopisms in only eight words!

Still, even Steve can’t hold a candle to Rep. Louie Gohmert, the mouth that never shuts. Vice-chair of a House homeland security sub-committee, Gohmert recently revealed an astonishing piece of intelligence on the terrorist threat to the US of A. Al Qaeda, he informed the whole world, has set up radical Islamist camps on the “other side” of the Texas-Mexico border. Really? No. But the Islamist alarmist proceeded to tell us that Mexican drug gangs are teaching al Qaeda infidels how to cross the border into Texas, and they’re also being trained “to act like Hispanics.” (more…)

By Paul Buchheit
Author, editor, expert on income inequality

The damage caused by the relentless corporate drive for profits has become more clear in recent years. In the most important areas of American life, devastating changes have occurred:

Health Care: Almost half of the working-age adults in America passed up doctor visits or other medical services because they couldn’t afford to pay. The system hasn’t supported kids, either. A UNICEF study places the U.S. 26th out of 29 OECD countries in the overall well-being of its children.

Education: Student loan balances increased by 75% between 2007 and 2012.

Household Wealth: Median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among black households between 2005 and 2009, mainly because of the mortgage banking collapse. Almost half of Americans have ZEROwealth, with their assets surpassed by debt.

Water and Food: Life-giving seeds and drinking water have been increasingly treated as products to be bought and sold.

All these areas of life have been degraded by a free-market system that has thrived on publicly-funded research, infrastructure, and defense. Yet in a brazen show of hypocrisy, major corporations have ignored all the problems they’ve caused, choosing instead to cut their taxes in half despite doubling their profits, to hold 60% of its cash offshore, to eliminate workers rather than create jobs, and to reduce the pay of their remaining employees. (more…)

By Isaiah J. Poole
Executive editor of the blog site OurFuture.org

I got my first job while I was in high school through a small community organization run by Willie J. Hardy, a community activist (and later D.C. City Council member) who operated out of what legendary Washington Post writer William Raspberry described as a “tiny, hopelessly cluttered quonset hut” in the Deanwood section of Washington.

The work itself wasn’t particularly memorable, but the impact I will never forget. Instead of having to hang out at grocery stores and carry groceries for tips or go door-to-door scrounging for yard work or errands, I could earn steady money off the streets. For the first time, I had defined work hours, a timesheet to fill out, and in the end a check to cash. And that had an exponential impact on my dignity.

This summer too many teenagers will not have the opportunity I had to get a lift onto the first rung of the economic ladder. One reason is that organizations like Hardy’s that many youth could depend on for their first job long ago lost much of the federal support they need to provide these pivotal job opportunities. This year’s federal budget sequester worsens an already serious and continuing failure of Congress and the Obama administration to agree on a set of initiatives that would ensure an adequate supply of jobs to young people, particularly in communities where unemployment is highest.

It is making for a cold summer of discontent that will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of young people and the economy as a whole.

Just in the past decade Congress has cut $1 billion from youth jobs programs, according to a report by the Center for American Progress. And that is at a time when even before the Great Recession youth unemployment was at chronic high levels: Average unemployment rates for youth between the ages of 16 and 19 had gone up from an average of 13 percent in 2000 to close to 16 percent in 2007, the year before the economy crashed. So far this year, unemployment rates in this age group are averaging 24 percent. The unemployment rate for 16-to-19-year-olds hasn’t been below 20 percent since October 2008.

There is currently a youth jobs deficit of 4.1 million; that is the number of jobs that the economy would have to produce to restore the job market to what it was in 2007, according to a Demos report on youth joblessness.

These unemployment rates remain historically high even as the labor force participation rate for teenagers has plummeted from around 50 percent in the early 2000s to an average of 34 percent in the past year. If it were not for that drop in labor force participation, the unemployment rate would have been far higher. (more…)

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Senior Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future

The day may come when the worst nightmare a crooked banker or compromised regulator can have begins with the words, “You have a letter from Senator Warren.”

But before we get to that, here’s an experience that may seem familiar: You’re at a party or family get-together — a Sunday barbecue, perhaps — and someone says something like, “We need less government regulation.” Next thing you know you’re having an argument.

Here’s some advice for the next social event: There’s no need to get into an argument. You can just ask, “How do you figure?”

With every unreasonable assertion you can ask a reality-based question like, “Where’s the study that says that?” Once in a while they may cite a shallow white paper from some right-wing foundation, but more often than that they won’t even get that far. Soon the conversation will peter out with a “Well, uh …”

We can never go wrong asking questions. We only go wrong when we don’t ask questions.

That’s what makes this letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren so important. For five years we’ve watched the Justice Department ignore overwhelming evidence of bank crime, on grounds that Attorney General Eric Holder made explicit only last March when he said that “the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute… it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.” (more…)

By Dave Johnson Fellow
Campaign for America's Future

The Senate is getting ready to vote on five nominees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They should confirm the whole package and get the NLRB functioning again. They are also voting on several other nominees from judges to cabinet positions. If Republicans filibuster to obstruct these, it is time to fix the filibuster. We just had an election and the results were decisive. Republicans must stop obstructing democracy.

A “Full Package” Of NLRB Nominees

President Obama has nominated 5 people to serve on the NLRB. Two of these are “management side” (i.e. anti-union) Republicans. Labor and other groups are urging the Senate to confirm all of these nominees as a “package” so the NLRB can get back to work. Working people need and deserve a functioning NLRB, and confirmation of the “full package” of nominees will provide that stability

400 professors and 125 leaders nationwide have signed letters urging the Senate to confirm these nominees and get the NLRB functioning.

More than two dozen women’s organizations have also written urging confirmation of the nominees, (from AFL-CIO blog),

The National Labor Relations Board has long worked to ensure the rights of employees to bargain collectively, if they choose to do so. This work is particularly meaningful for women… Unions have always been important to advancing women’s economic security. Union wage and benefit structures are typically more transparent than those for non-union workplaces, which in turn helps to decrease wage discrimination… working families need a functioning, fully-staffed National Labor Relations Board to protect their right to an important strategy in the fight for economic security: collective bargaining. (more…)

By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Senior Fellow, Campaign for America’s Future

Simpson and Bowles, those two hired pitchmen for budget-cutting hysteria, are still hawking an economy-killing product called “austerity economics,” a product that’s designed to benefit their wealthy patrons at everybody else’s expense.  This philosophy provides some (very thin) intellectual cover for the Republicans’ lunatic bloodbath of spending cuts.

Of course, Simpson and Bowles and austerity’s other sales people aren’t really economic thinkers. They’re paid to pitch a product. They didn’t invent austerity any more than Alex Rodriguez invented Pepsi.

But what they’re peddling isn’t a soft drink. It’s a lot worse for you than that.

Snake Oil

You don’t believe that Simpson and Bowles are frauds, snake-oil salesmen trying to lure us into a bait-and-switch for the rich and powerful?  See for yourselves:

(more…)

By Dave Johnson
Fellow, Campaign for America's Future

The deficit is now down 60 percent as a percent of gross domestic product. It is down more than the deficit hawks Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles asked for. This rapid reduction is seriously hurting the economy and jobs, but demands for cuts continue. It is time for Congress and the President to “pivot” to focusing on our real problems: the jobs gap, the wage gap and the trade gap.

Mythical Deficit Problem Solved

The “deficit problem” is man-made. When Bill Clinton was president we were paying off the debt. George W. Bush turned Clinton’s budget surpluses right around, calling deficits “extremely positive news” because they would later force cuts in government. Ronald Reagan’s “strategic deficits” began a strategy to make the borrowing appear so bad that the public would be panicked into allowing cuts in the things government does to make our lives better – so the wealthy few could have even more wealth and power. (Reagan tripled the national debt, Bush doubled it again.)

So after Bush we had a problem. When ‘W’ left office the budget deficit was $1.4 trillion. Then after Obama took office Wall Street and the right started terrifying the public about deficits and outlining their “solutions”: Cut government, cut regulation of the giant corporations, cut entitlements, cut investment in infrastructure, privatize public assets, cut the safety net, etc… Cut the things that government does to make our lives better (government spending) and cut the things government does to protect us from the immense power of the insanely wealthy and their giant corporations.

But something got in their way. The deficit started coming down before all of the “solutions” could be forced on us. The deficit is now down 60 percent as a percent of GDP from the level Bush left behind (see the chart in this post). (more…)

By Jim Hightower
Author, Commentator, America’s Number One Populist

Step right up, folks, and take your chances in the Amazing New American Workplace. Constantly high unemployment! Low wages always! No employee bargaining power! A corporate paradise!

This paradise has enriched the already-rich investor elite and rewarded top executives with multimillion-dollar pay packages. It also lets corporations treat the masses of people in today’s workforce like Kleenexes: Just use ‘em and toss ‘em – after all, they’re cheap, plentiful… and disposable.

Indeed, taskmasters-in-suits have now redefined the term “hired” to mean that you’re tethered to a corporation full-time, but you actually work and get paid for only the few hours a week when the boss calls. This nefarious practice, known as “on-call shifts,” is all the rage among national retail chains. Such giants as Abercrombie & Fitch, Gap, and Urban Outfitters require employees to work without set schedules and to be available to have their strings yanked at any time, day or night, even on weekends, with as little as two hours’ notice. Likewise, if customer traffic in a store is slow, retail workers who got dressed up, battled the morning commute, and reported on time, can simply be sent away after an hour or so – with no pay for their lost hours. (more…)

By Dean Baker
Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Author

As we move toward the fifth anniversary of the great financial crisis of 2008, people should be outraged that cutting Social Security is now on the national agenda, while taxing Wall Street is not. After all, if we take at face value the claims made back in 2008 by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, Wall Street excesses brought the economy to the brink of collapse.

But now the Wall Street behemoths are bigger than ever and President Obama is looking to cut the Social Security benefits of retirees. That will teach the Wall Street boys to be more responsible in the future.

Most people are now familiar with President’s Obama’s proposal to cut Social Security by reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment (COLA). While the final formula is somewhat convoluted, the net effect is to reduce benefits by an average of roughly 3.0 percent.

Since Social Security benefits account for more than 70 percent of the income of a typical retiree, this cut is more than a 2.0 percent reduction in income. By comparison, a wealthy couple earning $500,000 a year would see a hit to their after-tax income of just 0.6 percent from the tax increase that President Obama put in place last year.

While President Obama is willing to make seniors pay a price for the economic crisis, his administration is unwilling to impose any burdens on Wall Street. Specifically, it has consistently opposed a Wall Street speculation tax: effectively a sales tax on trades of stock and derivatives. The Obama administration has even used its power to try to block efforts by European countries to impose their own taxes on financial speculation.

If the idea of taxing stock trades sounds strange, it shouldn’t. The United States used to impose a tax of 0.04 percent until Wall Street lobbied to eliminate it in the mid-1960s. Many countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland, China, and India already impose taxes on stock trades. (more…)