“Money always helps, but for the very poor, one lump sum can last a long time,” Dylan Matthews reports.
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What if money expired?
Jacob Baynham: “A long-forgotten German economist argued that society and the economy would be better off if money was a perishable good. Was he an anarchist crank or the prophet of a better world?”
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Guaranteed basic income could substantially improve economic security in the Pacific Northwest
GBI is a proven tool for improving social, economic, and health inequities; it entails providing periodic cash payments to people, like the economic assistance payments provided to millions of Americans during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Report: Studio bosses plan to stay away from bargaining table in gambit to starve writers into submission
Via Deadline: “’The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,’ a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it ‘a cruel but necessary evil.'”
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The conservative campaign to rewrite child labor laws
Via The Washington Post: “The [right wing] Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida-based think tank and lobbying group, drafted state legislation to strip child workplace protections, emails show.”
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The Fed-induced bank wobble
“Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is a function of the Fed rate spike, and will surely trigger calls for its well-heeled tech and venture capital clients to get a bailout,” David Dayen writes.
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The Republican Party’s long war against Medicare and Social Security
“It has been widely forgotten, but soon after taking office Ronald Reagan proposed major cuts to Social Security. But he backed down in the face of a political backlash, leading analysts at the Cato Institute to call for a ‘Leninist’ strategy — their word — creating a coalition ready to exploit a future crisis if and when one arrived,” Paul Krugman writes.
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White-collar workers are being gutted by layoffs ahead of holidays
“As Corporate America prepares for a possible recession in 2023, companies big and small are axing thousands of positions amid the holidays,” Taylor Telford reports.
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Falling inflation rates are great news — unless you’re a Republican politician
“Has the worst of the pandemic-induced inflation already passed? The latest economic data released this week suggest so. That leaves Republicans in a quandary,” Jennifer Rubin writes.
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The crypto-congressional complex
“Markets don’t exist in nature. They’re created and enforced by governments,” Robert Reich points out, echoing what George Lakoff has previously written about all markets being constructed for someone’s benefit.
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Amazon apologizes to Representative Pocan; admits recent tweet was a falsehood
Amazon has apologized to one of Congress’ most progressive leaders for a rude and false tweet that suggested reports about drivers relieving themselves in bottles were made up.
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2021 will be the year of guaranteed income experiments
“Fueled by a growing group of city leaders, philanthropists and nonprofit organizations, 2021 will see an explosion of guaranteed income pilot programs in U.S. cities. At least 11 direct-cash experiments will be in effect this year, from Pittsburgh to Compton,” Bloomberg reports.
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Biden did better in parts of America with strong economies
“In 2020, Biden won 477 counties that account for seventy percent of the U.S. economy, while Trump won 2,497 counties amounting to just shy of thirty percent of the economy, according to an analysis by Mark Muro, senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and his team.”
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Coronavirus resurgence is killing America’s small businesses
“More owners are permanently shutting their doors after new lockdown orders, realizing that there may be no end in sight to the crisis,” reports The New York Times’ Emily Flitter.
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Trump regime: Americans on Social Security will have to file a simple tax return to receive a $1,200 check
“Many lawmakers and advocates for the poor say filing a tax return shouldn’t be necessary for people on Social Security since the government already knows how to send this population monthly checks. The $2.2 trillion aid package said that if someone has not filed a 2019 or 2018 tax return, the U.S. Treasury should get their information from Social Security, if applicable,” The Washington Post reports.
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Robert Kuttner: We need a WWII-size mobilization to stop COVID-19 from destroying the economy
“The need for a Green New Deal can rendezvous with the imperative of anti-depression public investment. Much of this sweeping proposal is on the drawing boards and has not been done for lack of funding. Some of it will take some advance planning. The time to start is now.”
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Facebook co-founder: It’s time to break up Facebook
“We are a nation with a tradition of reining in monopolies, no matter how well intentioned the leaders of these companies may be. Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American,” Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes writes, referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “It is time to break up Facebook.”
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Private equity pillage is what’s killing brick and mortar retail — not online competition
“The private equity business model is to strip assets from companies that they acquire. The latest victims: retail grocery chains.”
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Katie Porter’s questions leave JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon speechless
Freshman Democratic Congresswoman Katie Porter asked JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon a simple arithmetic question about his employee’s pay. Representative Katie Porter joins Lawrence O’Donnell to explain why he couldn’t answer.
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Amazon isn’t paying its electric bills… but you might be
You may be gifting to Amazon and not even know it. Ain’t corporate welfare great? Bloomberg explains how the company’s rate discounts have pushed up utility costs for everyone else.
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Airlines ask Trump regime to gut consumer protections for the flying public
“The deregulation initiative is a dramatic shift for the federal agency, which under President Obama adopted or proposed more than eighty airline-related consumer-protection and safety regulations,” writes Hugo Martin. These include the tarmac delay rule, truth in fare advertising rule, and the twenty-four hour grace period for cancellations that allows for full refunds.
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