Inequality

By Manuel Perez-Rocha | – Free trade agreements and other neoliberal economic rules grant excessive privileges to transnational corporations, elevating their narrow interests above people’s livelihoods and the environment. Beyond mere economic prescriptions, neoliberalism also embraces repressive and anti-democratic measures. We are increasingly seeing this in the Northern Triangle of Central America, which includes Honduras, […]

Debt

Why we need a Debt Jubilee for Renters as the Covid eviction Moratorium expires

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – What is going to happen when the eviction protections now scheduled to expire at the end of July finally do so? The rental deficits hanging over some tenants’ heads are so extreme that default is virtually inevitable, and the numbers affected so many that rental debt is […]

Employment

Dear National Public Radio: The Stock Market is not the Economy– Tell us about Hunger and the Real Unemployment Rate

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – I have a pet peeve with NPR. Why do so many of its top- of- the- hour five minute newscasts begin and end with short stock market updates? Is there no more important factoid its news editors could be passing along to us? NPR likes to portray […]

Inequality

The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax

ProPublica

By Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel | – The Secret IRS Files ( ProPublica) – Inside the Tax Records of the .001% In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, […]

Inequality

Biden’s modest corporate tax increases to fund public infrastructure projects are wildly popular — except among CEOs

Jim Hightower

By Jim Hightower ( Otherwords.org) – “Outrageous,” screeched the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “It doesn’t feel fair,” whimpered a top corporate executive. The wailing by those who run corporate America is not for the plight of the workaday families who’ve seen their incomes stagnate and even plummet to zero during the pandemic. Rather, this chorus […]

Employment

On How there is no Restaurant Worker Shortage, only a Shortage of Safe Jobs with Adequate Pay

John Buell

From the earliest days of the Pandemic relief initiatives business lobbies and conservative pundits have griped about the $600 Federal Unemployment Insurance supplement. They complained that combined state and federal programs would give many employed workers more income than they received in their current jobs. Workers would have an incentive to stay home to sit […]

Banking

Let Lebanon be Lebanon: Paris should Stop Threatening Beirut with EU Sanctions

John Hickman

John Hickman “Governing Lebanon is surely more daunting than governing France.”[1] That pearl of wisdom in an essay defending consociational democracy by University of Pennsylvania political scientist Brendan O’Leary has never been more accurate. A delicate balance of domestic interests with institutional vetoes at the best of times, Lebanese politics has been stalemated for months […]

Employment

Congress needs to pass Labor Laws Protecting Union Drives and right to Strike

OtherWords

By Rebekah Entralgo | – ( Otherwords.org) – Following one of the most high-profile union votes in history, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama ultimately rejected efforts to form a union. But for labor advocates, this fight is far from over. “The Amazon workers who voted for a union in Bessemer are already […]

Epidemics

Pfizer and Big Pharma need to waive Patents on Covid-19 Vaccine to Save the World

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – It is a familiar story. A Pharma giant sells life- saving vaccine , which costs no more than 7 dollars a dose, to most nations at almost 20 dollars per shot. Knowing that unseemly profits in the midst of a global pandemic may elicit outrage and perhaps […]