Category Archives: economic collapse

Krugman strains eyes, can’t see light at tunnel’s end


Give credit to Paul Krugman for consistently refusing to pretend the so-called Great Recession was anything less than a depression. Now he’s suggesting hard times might be here to stay, because working-class Americans are too brain-dead to take action on … Continue reading

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Ding dong! Maggie’s dirty deeds live on


From a 2004 column in Daily Mail on what happened to the working class in Britain after Margaret Thatcher’s successful crusade to kill the miners’ union: … What the [coal miners’] strike represented to us was a set of values … Continue reading

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When life feels like ‘Groundhog Day’


I was biking through a school-free drug zone, on my way to a temp job, cultivating bad habits. Not overtly bad habits — Marlboros and meth, and so on — but rather those drab little habits meant to ensure the … Continue reading

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Shoeshine boys debate job creation


[The job creators] have no intention of creating jobs now or in the future. They don’t have to create jobs and there’s nobody out there to make them do it. They simply will reduce the number of jobs they have … Continue reading

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Thank Obama, the anti-FDR, for the sequester


America is waiting for a message of some sort or another. – David Byrne and Brian Eno It ain’t pretty, the damage Barack Obama has done to working people by trying to cozy up to Republicans over the last four-plus … Continue reading

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There will be blood (or more apathy)


There’s nothing new about eras in which the rich grow richer as the majority slips into the ditch. Or about gilded ages being followed by periods in which worker incomes rise. In between are those interesting chapters in which the … Continue reading

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Obama’s jobs plan… Is that all there is?


OK, here it is, the one substantive suggestion regarding job creation in Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, dutifully reported by The Hill: “Tonight, I propose a ‘Fix-It-First’ program to put people to work as soon as possible on … Continue reading

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Will Obama get real about jobs?


[Hard to tell why the woman in the video is working herself up to jump off a bridge. Maybe it’s Jolson’s voice.] I’m posting this right before the State of the Union address, in the hope that my remarks will … Continue reading

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Joking about the jobless in The Times


There are many jerks in positions of authority, but this fact isn’t likely to hit you on a gut level unless you’re unemployed and in debt and sending resumes to that black hole in the Internet where job applications disappear. … Continue reading

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A rear-view glance at Lance


Between Lance Armstrong admitting he was doping and Jodie Foster coming out as a lesbian, it has been a rough week for the clueless. — Bill Mayer, Real Time, Jan. 18 I groan when the corporate media declare a new … Continue reading

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