The last time our nation was in the midst of mass unemployment, with a few people getting very rich and millions losing everything, our leaders stood up and took drastic action and changed the world.
Last month, I was getting ready to convene yet another meeting by Zoom. I got a message from a wealthy New York lawyer informing me that her second home in East Hampton, a beach area about a two hour drive from New York City, didn’t have reliable enough high-speed internet to handle Zoom. For us, it wasn’t a big problem – we rescheduled our meeting … Continue reading The Digital Divide
My memory of Representative John Lewis, an icon of the 1960s Civil Rights movement and a decades-long member of Congress, is from 2012. Lewis was at a Democratic party event and he related a story of someone recently coming to his office on Capitol Hill, and apologizing for having beaten him up many decades earlier – all the way in 1961. To put that in … Continue reading To Honor John Lewis, Take Up His Battle
House Democrats are making a serious mistake. On July 1st, the Democrat-controlled House passed a massive, $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill. This bill is basically just a messaging bill, intended to serve as a display of Democratic priorities, since it has almost no chance of getting passed in the Republican-controlled Senate. This infrastructure bill has a lot of good things in it, but there’s one significant … Continue reading The House Infrastructure Bill Has a Big Problem
The way Senator McSally would like it presented, her bill gives Americans $4,000 to take a vacation, but the reality is much more complicated.
The Supreme Court just announced (Monday, 22 June 2020) that they are refusing Intel’s final appeal, and Intel will now apparently be paying some taxes on a small part of their profit that they were trying to shelter in some little Caribbean Island.
If you take some of your money that is invested in one business, and use it to invest in something (like a building) for the purpose of running another business, should the act of buying the stuff for the new business generate a huge tax break for you? The way our government answers that question has hundreds of billions of dollars of impact on corporate taxation.
We know that the racial wealth gap is real, and large. We also know that it didn’t just happen, it’s the result of a long history of government policies that favored white families over Black ones. Just because many of these programs and policies have ended doesn’t mean we can ignore their legacy.
As we approach the third month of nationwide social distancing orders, many of us have become accustomed to our new life indoors thanks to the plethora of activities and connections internet access can provide. However, for many of my fellow Americans in small towns and rural communities, high-speed fiber optic internet connection is a luxury that they simply do not have access to. In today’s … Continue reading High-Speed Internet Isn’t a Luxury – It’s a Necessity
There is no reason for the government to give a free handout to the shareholders of the airlines.
Amazon can more than afford to make concessions to its workers.
The government might need to bail out the airlines for the sake of their employees and the economy as a whole, but that doesn’t mean that there should be no consequences for a decade of corporate irresponsibility.
In the midst of an unprecedented crisis, Congress is failing the American people.
As I write this, I am eating lunch in my New York City office, near the Flatiron building in Manhattan. A lot of people have offices in this neighborhood, like FanDuel and Credit Suisse. As I often do as part of my regular office day, I went to a branch of Dig Inn that normally has over a dozen workers making lunches assembly line style. … Continue reading A COVID-19 Economy: I’m Not Worried About the 1%. I’m Terrified for the Bottom 50%.
Out of all the issues and priorities that the US could and should be focusing on right now, the White House has decided the most pressing thing that could be done is yet another round of tax cuts.
As I’m writing this, it’s several days since the Iowa caucuses, our nation’s first step towards choosing a Democratic presidential nominee to face off against President Donald Trump. And it’s also several days after one of the more spectacular election night snafus in recent memory. The Iowa fiasco has already drawn widespread condemnation, and threatened to undermine public confidence in this aspect of our democratic … Continue reading Democracy Needs A Paper Trail
This New Year’s, 24 states rang in the new decade by increasing their minimum wage, giving their most vulnerable workers a well-needed pay raise.
As the 2020 presidential candidates increasingly talk about raising taxes on the wealthy, it seems like every day a new, well-paid talking head comes out of the woodwork to try and convince us all why this would somehow, actually, be a bad thing. The latest act of mental gymnastics comes to us from Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA, who desperately wants working Americans … Continue reading Actually, Taxing Capital Is A Great Idea
I met Elijah Cummings on October 14, 2014. He talked about growing up in Baltimore, as a young person with a learning disability. It sounded to me like he was describing dyslexia but I don’t recall him ever using that word – but the point is that he didn’t know. He and his family were just told that he was stupid, and he would never … Continue reading Honoring Elijah Cummings’ Legacy
There are loopholes in the laws that allow employers to take advantage of their workers and avoid paying them or giving them benefits that they by rights are owed. As our economy changes in the face of automation, the gig economy, and new corporate employment schemes, we need to focus not just on how employees are treated, but on who counts as an employee at all.