workers

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – It’s official. Trump has put US manufacturing, which is about 14% of the US gross national product, into recession, according to AFP. Recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of decline. The recession in manufacturing has many reasons, including a cyclical slowdown in the Chinese economy. But on top of […]

Climate Change

From New Orleans to Bihar: Why the Climate Emergency is a Poor People’s Issue, Too

OtherWords

By Mallika Khanna | – Poor and working communities stand to gain the most from protections against corporations that expose them to pollution. If you’ve read anything about climate change over the past year, you’ve probably heard about the IPCC report that gives a 12-year deadline for limiting climate change catastrophe. But for many parts […]

Epidemics

America’s Suicide Epidemic is Hitting Trump’s Base Hard

Rajan Menon

(Tomdispatch.com) – We hear a lot about suicide when celebrities like Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade die by their own hand. Otherwise, it seldom makes the headlines. That’s odd given the magnitude of the problem. In 2017, 47,173 Americans killed themselves. In that single year, in other words, the suicide count was nearly seven times […]

workers

Labor Strikes, once Blunted by GOP and Corporations, are Back and Shaping Public Policy

John Buell

The teachers strikes have been focused on demands that have a major impact on the quality of classroom instruction

Democratic Socialism

Rashida Tlaib and Working Class Authenticity v. Trump’s Plutocrat Pretense

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Why does Donald Trump get a pass on speaking and acting obscenely but Rashida Tlaib is pilloried for calling him a Mofo? It is because US corporate media and political elites expect the wealthy to do bad imitations of working class profanity (so as to fool the rubes into voting […]

workers

Somehow Despite Trump “Tax Cut,” GM to fire 15% of Workers, Shutter Plants

AFP

Sen. Sherrod Brown said, “The company reaped a massive tax break from GOP tax bill and failed to invest that money in American jobs,.”

Featured

On Labor Day, American Workers are Poor because they Aren’t Socialists

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The emergence of the Democratic Socialists of America caucus in the Democratic Party and its stars such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York City and Rashida Tlaib in Detroit is a signal of profound disappointment among working Americans with the current social deal they are being offered by management. The […]

Trade

How Trump’s Trade War Hurts Working-Class Americans

The Conversation

By Jeffrey Kucik | – President Donald Trump justifies tariffs on imports by arguing that “unfair trade policies” have harmed American workers. This has led to a trade war in which the U.S. and China have placed tit-for-tat tariffs on each other’s products. Most recently, China said it’s ready to slap tariffs on US$60 billion […]

Education

Why do Red State Teachers need to Strike for a living Wage? It is about Class

contributors

By Steve Fraser | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Teachers in red-state America are hard at work teaching us all a lesson. The American mythos has always rested on a belief that this country was born out of a kind of immaculate conception, that the New World came into being and has forever after been […]