Dollars & Sense articles from May 1996

Dollars & Sense archives from May 1996

Blackball Crestar Bank.(Active Culture)(Column)
May 1, 1996... Unionized workers at Washington [D.C.] Gas Light Co. have been engaged in a bitter struggle with management since last summer when the utility locked them out. The battle began when Washington Gas pressured its employees to accept contract...

Making wages pay.(Active Culture)(Column)
May 1, 1996... In January, during his State of the Union address, President Clinton called on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage. And with 1996 being an election year, many state-level politicians have used this issue as a tactic to court the support...

Another gold medal for the United States. (dubious distinction for economic performance)
May 1, 1996... The Olympic flame only recently arrived in Los Angeles and commenced its cross-country torch relay to Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Games. But the United States is already busy racking up gold medals against our international competitors. In...

The media mega-mergers.(includes related article on the political power of large media companies)
May 1, 1996... In 1951, the distinguished jurist, Learned Hand, said "The hand that rules the press, the radio, the screen and the far-spread magazine rules the country." Recent years have seen this ruling hand further centralized. In 1989 Time, Inc. and...

Putting the public on hold: notes on the privatization of telecommunications. (includes related article)
May 1, 1996... Soon, anyone who picks up a phone in Mexico will enjoy one of the most celebrated of consumer freedoms - the right to choose your long-distance telephone company. Six years ago - in urgent need of capital to replace a phone system all but wiped...

Pumping up the Pentagon: the domestic geopolitics of military spending.
May 1, 1996... All last year, as the White House and the Congress were debating how far to go in shredding the social safety net by cutting welfare, health care, education, nutrition and scores of other domestic programs in the name of deficit reduction, one...

Understanding the flat tax: simplicity no, Reaganomics revisited yes. (includes related article on burden to consumers)
May 1, 1996... For a few weeks in New Hampshire, the world was very flat indeed. Steve Forbes was everywhere - which was, after all, what the man paid for - selling the all-healing powers of his magical flat tax. Think taxes are too complex? Think all that...

Broken promises: Yale's union-busting binge. (includes related articles)
May 1, 1996... For five weeks last fall, hundreds of Yale University graduate students refused to hand in grades for the classes we teach. As members of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization (GESO), which represents the graduate teachers at Yale...

Revenge of the classics: rational expectations wins the Nobel Prize. (economist Robert Lucas)
May 1, 1996... Nineteen ninety-five was not a good year for the welfare state. A Gingrich-led Congress attempted to pull the plug on universal entitlements for the poor, from welfare to Medicaid. And the Royal Swedish Academy of Science awarded the Nobel prize...

Strategic labor organizing: how to win against the odds.
May 1, 1996... WHERE WE STAND Things are terrible out there. Unions in this country are in terrible trouble. Workers feel hopeless and the reason they're not organizing isn't complicated. When they are constantly told that the reason they are in this mess is...

Mondragon: Still a Model?
May 1, 1996... Mondragon, the network of worker cooperatives based in Spain's Basque region, has long inspired those who seek an alternative path of industrial economic development. But over the past several years, Mondragon has made major changes in response...

The New American Crisis.
May 1, 1996... The nation's radical heart pumps faintly these days, but what strength it has beats in publications such as the Open Magazine Pamphlet Series. Created during the Gulf War as a kind of "emergency broadcasting effort" for anti-war activists, the...

Post-Industrial Capitalism: Exploring Economic Inequality in America.
May 1, 1996... There is an old wisecrack among economists: even if businesses originally didn't maximize profits as specified in the standard economic models, by now the models have been taught in business schools for so many decades that businesses must have...

Defunding the poor.
May 1, 1996... The recent Medicaid and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) reform proposals approved by the National Governors' Association (NGA) indicate that the governors have joined the race to decimate poverty programs. Their proposals build on...