Stephen Rose, Lawrence Mishel, and others are debating the economic politics of the middle class this week. Here is Mishel’s opening salvo. Steve Rose has been my friend and intellectual colleague for many years and I hold him in the highest regard. But I strongly disagree with his recent piece for the Progressive […]
Lawrence Mishel
Lawrence Mishel is the former president of the Economic Policy Institute and editor of “Not So Free to Contract: The Law, Philosophy, and Economics of Unequal Workplace Power.”
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Waging Inequality
President Bush recently indicated that additional taxation of top wage earners is “on the table” in future negotiations to address Social Security’s financial shortfall. The ensuing public discussion should also focus on the dramatic growth over the last two decades of wages at the top, while middle-class wages have been relatively stagnant. The consequences are […]
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Torts Flim-Flam
In an era of great economic flimflams, “tort reform” is one of the greatest. “Lawsuit abuse” has become one of just a handful of issues that the Bush administration and its business allies say must be addressed in order to generate more growth and jobs. Yet, it turns out, there’s not a shred of evidence […]
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Schoolhouse Schlock
The dustup over charter schools reached the big time a few weeks back when it landed on the front page of The New York Times under the headline “Charter Schools Trail in Results, U.S. Data Reveals.” The story, which centered on a study by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), led this way: “The first […]
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Excuses, Excuses
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says the economy has hit a “soft patch.” The recent flurry of bad news makes that pronouncement feel like quite an understatement. First, the 4-percent-plus growth we enjoyed for four straight quarters dropped to only 3 percent in the second quarter (April to June). Then came the news that only […]
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Tax Man
The Bush administration has a mantra that we hear whenever some jobs are created: “The tax cuts are working.” But are they? Mark Zandi, president of Economy.com and a highly respected economic forecaster, gave us the answer in a new report analyzing the factors in the past three years of growth; the administration’s tax cuts, […]
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Dismal Scientists
It is curious that in American politics, “values” issues are always social issues but never economic ones. Yet how the disadvantaged among us are treated is clearly a reflection of who we are as a people. Similarly, how workers are treated on the job — their safety, their working conditions, their remuneration — also speaks […]
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Office Space
Worried about outsourcing? Well, you shouldn’t be, at least according to the conventional wisdom; the economy will certainly create better jobs as we climb higher up the skills ladder. Consider, for instance, Jagdish Bhagwati, a leading free-trade advocate and Columbia University professor, who offers these comforting words: “The fact is, when jobs disappear in America, […]
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Job Lurch
Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the February employment numbers. Once again, most economists had forecasted big gains in jobs; once again, their forecasts were way off. The report dashed expectations regarding the arrival of healthy job growth, painting a stark picture of a labor market stuck in neutral. While the government added […]
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Growing Pains
After two and a half years of sluggish growth and persistent employmentlosses, the nation’s overall output of goods and services shot up in the thirdquarter of 2003; unemployment, meanwhile, has ticked down to just below 6 percent. Accordingly, some analysts have declared that the economy is “fixed” and that we have “turned the corner.” Moreover, […]