Dollars & Sense articles from November 2000

Dollars & Sense archives from November 2000

A Leaky Roof.(Russian ruble worthless)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... Currency speculation is rampant worldwide. In Russia, however, the concept of buying and selling money has taken a new meaning. The ruble has become so hopelessly devalued, reports the July 26 Wall Street Journal, that Russian entrepreneurs are...

Who's The Boss?(labor shortage means business owners hiring overqualified immigrants and prisoners on work-release programs)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... Have you heard? It's a "great time" to be a worker, or so the September 11 issue of Business Week would have us believe. Times are so flush, apparently, that employees can "hop jobs and demand raises practically at will." Business owners...

Broken Spoke.(bicycle production down in China)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... Bicycling advocates like to point out that the bicycle gets "10,000 miles to the gallon" -- that the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline can propel a cyclist more than 400 times as far as the average U.S. motorist (who gets less than 25...

No Confidence.(in International Monetary Fund in Brazil)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... Between September 2 and 7, Brazil added 5 million more voices to the chorus of criticism against the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The country's National Bishops' Council organized a nationwide "informal referendum," Reuters reported on...

Lost and Found.(save Fenway Park campaign)(old stadiums reconstructed in Mexico)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... The Bostonians driving around with "Save Fenway Park!" bumper stickers on their cars desperately want to preserve the fabled ballpark, whose walls and foul poles have witnessed so many victories and tragedies. They understand the spirit only...

Toast This Victory.(Grand Marnier plantation workers in Haiti)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... The next time you sip Grand Marnier, raise a toast to the 300 workers at the liquor company's orange plantation in Haiti, who recently won a major union victory. French plantation manager Daniel Zephir was forced to return early from a Bastille...

The Idle Rich.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... Hey, gals! Next time you're dragging home from your thankless, underpaid jobs (secretary, sales clerk, home health aide), just think of Lisa Keyko or Susan Wegner, profiled in the September 8 issue of the Wall Street Journal. Keyko and Wegner...

The Horse's Mouth.(Gary Becker's ideas on competition)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... Competition is the motor of innovation, growth, and progress. Without competition there's no impulse for new invention or discovery. An economy without different firms to compete against each other would sink into stagnation. Sound familiar?...

Drug Testing.(research financed by drug companies)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... We constantly depend on outside guidance - book and movie reviews, for instance, and well-worn copies of Consumer Reports - to make informed choices about what to buy. But suppose those reviews were underwritten by publishers and filmmakers?...

STANDING UP TO STANDARDIZED TESTS.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... On the day before a standardized test, teachers usually tell students to go home, relax and get a good night's sleep. A group of high school sophomores in Massachusetts, however, approached the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System...

MORE THAN A SEAT AT THE TABLE.(social action)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... "Lucky for the Left capitalism is so grotesque." So begins Steve Shalom's 1981 book, Socialist Visions, an edited collection of essays envisioning more just and equitable ways to organize our economy, our communities, our workplaces, and our...

POPULAR ECONOMICS EDUCATION: A CULTURE OF ACTION.
November 1, 2000... Brazilian educator Paulo Freire's commitment to the poor was forged by his plunge from middle-class comfort to grinding poverty during the Great Depression of 1929. Hungry and unable to go to school, he vowed to spend the rest of his life...

THE REPEAL OF THE ESTATE TAX: DEAD NOW BUT FOR HOW LONG?(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... The repeal of the estate tax is a dead letter, at least for now. Despite the support of Republicans and a growing number of Democrats for eliminating the "Death Tax," as they like to call it, Congress failed to override President Clinton's...

CANDIDATES AND CONSEQUENCES.
November 1, 2000... THE DOLLARS AND SENSE COLLECTIVE It's that time again. Time to exercise our collective civic duty and head for the polls. As in previous presidential elections, many progressive people are disheartened by the whole experience. After all,...

PRIVATIZING SOCIAL SECURITY IS BAD, PARTICULARLY FOR WOMEN.
November 1, 2000... You've probably heard the rumor that Social Security won't be there for you when you retire. And you've also probably heard that presidential candidate George Bush promised to "save" Social Security by allowing individuals to divert 2% of...

WHAT MIGHT WORK LOOK LIKE?(balanced job complexes)
November 1, 2000... IT'S NO LONGER ENOUGH TO POINT OUT WHAT WE DON'T LIKE, WE HAVE TO WORK OUT "WHAT SORT OF SOCIETY DO WE WANT." Sheila Rowbotham If the mass mobilizations against the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World...

WHERE NOW FOR MEXICO?(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... The Reagan administration spent the 1980s at war against Nicaraguan "totalitarianism," despite contested elections in Nicaragua in 1984 (and, ultimately, the Sandinista government's peaceful surrender of power when it lost at the polls in...

THE ISTHMUS OF TEHUANTEPEC: AN ISLAND IN AN ELECTORAL STORM.
November 1, 2000... On June 28, 2000, four days before Mexico's general elections, I stood with more than 30,000 other people in the city center of Juchitan, Oaxaca, at a presidential-campaign rally of the opposition Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). On...

COMING CLOSE TO CLEAN.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... A VIEW OF THE MEXICAN ELECTIONS FROM OAXACA Five days before Mexico's national elections on July 2, Bernardino Aquino told me excitedly, "For the first time, we don't know who is going to win." Aquino, a local council member of the Federal...

"TO LEAD BY OBEYING".(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... On January 1, 1994, the armed rebellion launched by the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) suddenly drew worldwide attention to Mexico's southern state of Chiapas. The Zapatistas, who take their name from the early-twentieth-century...

INTO THE FRYING PAN: MEXICAN LABOR FACES ITS GREATEST CRISIS.(history of Mexico's labor unions and outlook for labor rights under new president Vicente Fox)
November 1, 2000... What will the election of Mexico's new president, Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN), mean for Mexican lab or? Take the issue of child labor, for starters. Mexican newspapers reported in late August that the Fox family employed...

LAND REFORM: UNFINISHED BUSINESS FOR THE AFRICAN CENTURY.(Zimbabwe)
November 1, 2000... Early this year, southern Africa's land-starved rural peasants, decimated by poverty and disillusioned by the unfulfilled promises and venality of their post-independence national governments, began a region-wide "sit-down strike," occupying...

ZIMBABWE'S CHANGING POLITICAL CLIMATE.(Morgan Tsvangirai, president of Zimbabwe's opposition party, calls for President Robert Mugabe to step down)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... On September 30, Morgan Tsvangirai, president of Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), called for President Robert Mugabe to step down, implying that political unrest would intensify if Mugabe remained in power until the...

World Bank Cuts Off Zimbabwe Loans.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2000... The World Bank announced on October 4 that it would not extend any more loans to Zimbabwe. The Bank's official statement attributed the move to Zimbabwe's failure to make payments within the required six-month period. According to BBC News,...

ASK DR. DOLLAR.(preventing stock market volatility and economic recession)
November 1, 2000... Dear Dr. Dollar: Is there some kind of secret fund used to stabilize the stock market, by pouring in money whenever there is a serious decline (the possible beginnings of a "crash")?... A related question is whether the stock market's...

DIET COKE AND DOM PERIGNON.(analysis of George W. Bush's tax cut plan)(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
November 1, 2000... George W. Bush is on your side. His tax cut proposal proves it, or so he says. "The Bush tax cuts benefit all Americans, but reserve the greatest percentage reduction for the lowest income families," trumpets a "Fact Sheet" issued by the Bush...