Dollars & Sense articles from July 2004

Dollars & Sense archives from July 2004

From the editors.
July 1, 2004... In this issue, we highlight ever-present issues of wealth and corporate power. In Texas, Alcoa has used its political muscle to shape a favorable regulatory environment for years--and residents have paid a steep price in unhealthy air. In a new...

Would you like ketchup with those carcinogens?(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... McDonald's and Burger King restaurants in California may be forced to stamp "may cause cancer" on their fried foods. California's Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) is suing the fast food behemoths over the dangers of...

Trickle down Populism.(The Short Run)(Move America Forward )(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... According to its website, Move America Forward is a nonpartisan, not-for-profit organization that stands with "the millions of Americans who are uniting to 'Move America Forward' to win the war on terrorism." The group's pet project is to...

Barney after midnight.(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Have you ever caught your preschooler watching television and thought, "I hope this program is appropriate for little Tommy?" Well, cable TV giant Comcast has come up with the perfect solution: a 24-hour television network dedicated to...

Bullets for Baghdad.(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Strange: Major combat operations in Iraq ended over a year ago, but the U.S. munitions industry can't keep up with the military's demand for ammunition for that conflict. Alliant Techsystems (ATK), the biggest munitions supplier to the U.S....

A different sort of fear.(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... The threat of terrorism has wealthy Americans feeling afraid--for their stock portfolios. The 2004 U.S. Trust Survey of Affluent Americans found that "the single biggest worry... today is the potential negative effect of terrorism on the...

Land of the gated, home of the secure.(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... In a recently issued report, the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce presented what it believes are the challenges and opportunities awaiting Cuban and American investors in a post-Castro Cuba. Tops on their list of investment opportunities?...

States vs. automakers on global warming.(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... This year, California announced a new plan to decrease automotive emissions of greenhouse gases, joining Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and Maine, which already have similar plans in place. Several additional states plan to follow...

Corporate squeamishness.(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... Continued violence in Iraq is taking a rising toll... on Madison Avenue. In a sign that war isn't always good for business, ad industry insiders are warning that corporations may pull advertising dollars out of television programs that cover...

Let them eat Prozac.(The Short Run)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2004... A Bush campaign worker suggested U.S. workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should just find new ones--or take anti-depressants, according to Reuters. "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy--or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an...

Flame-broiled shark: how predatory lending victims fought back and won.(Active Culture)
July 1, 2004... If someone told you that a number of low-income people, most of them African-American or Latino, most of them women, most of them elderly, had been robbed of much of their equity or of their entire homes by a predatory mortgage lender, you...

Operation Iraqi plunder: the United States spends Iraq's money--with little accountability.(Making Sense)
July 1, 2004... As the war in Iraq looks increasingly like an imperialist quagmire, so does the Bush administration's handling of Iraqi oil wealth. Shortly after the U.S. invasion in March 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) appropriated...

Foxonomics flops: the economic policies of Mexico's President Vicente Fox have failed to spur growth or stem mounting job losses.(Making Sense)
July 1, 2004... The Mexican economy is in dire straits. How bad is it? So bad that the richest man in Mexico, Carlos Slim, remarked in March: "The economic model we've been applying for the last several years hasn't achieved results in terms of growth and...

The mounting costs of the Iraq War.(Balance Sheet)(Illustration)
July 1, 2004... The really incalculable cost of the Iraq War is, of course, the cost in human lives and health. Since the start of the war, an estimated 4,895 to 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents and 1,018 coalition soldiers have been killed. (Over...

Ronald Reagan's legacy: his destructive economic policies do not deserve the press's praise.(Up Against the Wall Street Journal)
July 1, 2004... Two days after his death, the Wall Street Journal ran a lengthy editorial tribute to Ronald Reagan, in the editors' estimation the most important president since FDR. In their paean to the fortieth president, Reagan gets credit for everything...

The bad neighbor: Alcoa's dirty dealing in central Texas.
July 1, 2004... Earlier this year, the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) broke ground on the $83 million Three Oaks lignite mine outside Austin. The mine will provide coal to Alcoa's massive facility near the town of Rockdale: an aluminum smelter plus the...

The coming era of wealth taxation.
July 1, 2004... Americans concerned with inequality commonly point to huge disparities in the distribution of income, but the ownership of wealth is far, far more concentrated. This fact is certain to bring the question of wealth taxation to the top of the...

Geese, golden eggs, and traps: why inequality is bad for the economy.
July 1, 2004... Whenever progressives propose ways to redistribute wealth from the rich to those with low and moderate incomes, conservative politicians and economists accuse them of trying to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. The advocates of...

Ask Dr. Dollar.(protectionism)
July 1, 2004... Dear Dr. Dollar: Supposedly, countries should produce what they are best at. If the United States makes computers and China produces rice, then the theory of free trade says China should trade its rice for computers. But if China puts...

Offshoring by the numbers: new numbers suggest that offshoring accounts for a very small percentage of jobs lost to mass layoffs.(Economy in Numbers)
July 1, 2004... Offshoring has attracted a lot of attention lately from the presidential candidates, the media, economists, and workers. From all the talk, you'd think that offshoring represents the single largest threat to U.S. jobs. But according to new...