Last week, urbanologist Richard Florida did a post ostensibly about Vancouver, but completely relevant to all the great cities of the West. As he said, "Young, affluent, highly educated people have flowed back to downtown cores in cities like London, New York, San Francisco and Vancouver.
In the 21st century Americans have been distracted by the hyper-expensive “war on terror.” Trillions of dollars have been added to the taxpayers’ burden and many billions of dollars in profits to the military/security complex in order to combat insignificant foreign “threats,” such as the Taliban, that remain undefeated after 15 years. All this time the financial system, working hand-in-hand with policymakers, has done more damage to Americans than terrorists could possibly inflict.
The scarcity of jobs and the low pay are direct consequences of jobs offshoring. Under pressure from “shareholder advocates” (Wall Street) and large retailers, US manufacturing companies moved their manufacturing abroad to countries where the rock bottom price of labor results in a rise in corporate profits, executive “performance bonuses,” and stock prices.
May 8. Today’s payroll jobs report is more of the same. The Bureau of Labor Statistics claims that 223,000 new jobs were created in April. Let’s accept the claim and see where the jobs are.
Specialty trade contractors are credited with 41,000 jobs equally split between residential and nonresidential. I believe these are home and building repairs and remodeling.
The rest of the jobs, 182,000, are in domestic services.
Despite store closings and weak retail sales, 12,000 people were hired in retail trade.
No one likes the tax collector; no one ever has. But the anti-IRS hysteria generated by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Congress' richest (and most crooked) Member, was way beyond the ginned up Tea Party Scandal merited-- even by right wing standards of hollow victimology and martyrdom. But it was never very difficult to figure out why they worked so hard to undermine the IRS and delegitimize its authority-- and slash its budget.
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
— Carl Sandburg, from The People, Yes
Over the decades various administrations, seeking to improve their economic record, monkeyed with economic statistics to the point that the statistics are no longer meaningful.
According to Friday’s (March 7) payroll jobs report, the US economy created 175,000 new jobs in February. If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll let you have at a good price.
At This Time, Collapse Seems the Most Likely Forecast
The inability of the media and politicians to focus on the real issues never ceases to amaze.
Another entitled multimillionaire in Congress undermining the lives of ordinary AmericansIf you caught the post Monday about how the DCCC recruits too many damned millionaires who have no way of relating to ordinary working families, you may have noticed that Maryland multimillionaire backbencher John Delaney spent $2,370,556 last year to buy himself a seat, the third most among the wealthy Democ
