Social Justice Magazine
uxury retailers are smiling. So are the owners of high-end restaurants, sellers of upscale cars, vacation planners, financial advisors, and personal coaches. For them and their customers and clients the recession is over. The recovery is now full speed.But the rest of America isn’t enjoying an economic recovery. It’s still sick. Many Americans remain in critical condition.The Commerce … [Read more...]
Not surprisingly, today’s debut upreme Court argument over the so-called “individual mandate” requiring everyone to buy health insurance revolved around epistemological niceties such as the meaning of a “tax,” and the question of whether the issue is ripe for review.Behind this judicial foreplay is the brute political fact that if the Court decides the individual mandate is an … [Read more...]
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom couldn’t have said it better – or worse. When asked by CNN Wednesday morning whether Mitt was being pushed so far to the right by Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich that he’d be handicapped in the general election, Fehrnstrom said “you hit a reset button for the fall campaign. Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch-A-Sketch. You kind of shake it up and … [Read more...]
Republicans are desperate. They can’t attack Obama on jobs because the jobs picture is improving.Their attack on the Administration’s rule requiring insurers to cover contraception has backfired, raising hackles even among many Republican women.Their attack on Obama for raising gas prices has elicited scorn from economists of all persuasions who know oil prices are set in global … [Read more...]
If You Took the Greed Out of Wall Street, All You’d Have Left Is Pavement: Why Greg Smith’s Critique Is Way Too Narrow Greg Smith, a Goldman Sachs vice president, resigned his post Wednesday with a stinging public rebuke of the firm on the oped page of the New York Times — accusing it of no longer putting its clients before its own pecuniary goals.But if Mr. Smith believes his … [Read more...]
Bye Bye American Pie: The Challenge of the Productivity RevolutionHere’s the good news. The economic pie is growing again. Growth in the fourth quarter last year hit 3 percent on an annualized rate. That’s respectable – although still way too slow to get us back on track given how far we plunged.Here’s the bad news. The share of that growth going to American workers is at a … [Read more...]
Last week Rick Santorum called the President “a snob” for wanting everyone to get a college education (in fact, Obama never actually called for universal college education but only for a year or more of training after high school).Santorum needn’t worry. America is already making it harder for young people of modest means to attend college. Public higher education is being starved, and … [Read more...]
Have you heard of William Dore, Foster Friess, Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons, Peter Thiel, or Bruce Kovner? If not, let me introduce them to you. They’re running for the Republican nomination for president.I know, I know. You think Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney are running. They are – but only because the people listed in the first paragraph have given them … [Read more...]
Nothing drives voter sentiment like the price of gas – now averaging $3.56 a gallon, up 30 cents from the start of the year. It’s already hit $4 in some places. The last time gas topped $4 was 2008.And nothing energizes Republicans like rising energy prices. Last week House Speaker John Boehner told Republicans to take advantage of voters’ looming anger over prices at the pump. On … [Read more...]
Suddenly, manufacturing is back – at least on the election trail. But don’t be fooled. The real issue isn’t how to get manufacturing back. It’s how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren’t at all the same thing.Republicans have become born-again champions of American manufacturing. This may have something to do with crucial primaries occurring next week in Michigan and the … [Read more...]
It has been said there is no high ground in American politics since any politician who claims it is likely to be gunned down by those firing from the trenches. That’s how the Obama team justifies its decision to endorse a super PAC that can raise and spend unlimited sums for his campaign. Baloney. Good ends don’t justify corrupt means. I understand the White House’s concerns. Obama is a … [Read more...]
The Downward Mobility of the American Middle Class, and Why Mitt Romney Doesn’t Know January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy – hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary … [Read more...]
America’s Jobs Deficit, and Why It’s Still More Important than the Budget Deficit The most significant aspect of January’s jobs report is political. The fact that America’s labor market continues to improve is good news for the White House. But as a practical matter the improvement is less significant for the American work force.President Obama’s only chance for rebutting Republican … [Read more...]
One of the few things Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich agree on is that President Obama is turning America into “European-style welfare culture.”In his standard stump speech Romney charges Obama with creating a nation of dependents. “Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society.”Gingrich calls Obama “the best … [Read more...]
The Biggest Risk to the Economy in 2012, and What’s the Economy For Anyway? Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few days ago, said the “critical risks” facing the American economy this year were a worsening of Europe’s chronic sovereign debt crisis and a rise in tensions with Iran that could stoke global oil prices.What about jobs and wages … [Read more...]
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