Dollars & Sense articles from November 2004

Dollars & Sense archives from November 2004

Looking backward, looking forward.(from the editors)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... As we mark the 30th anniversary of Dollars & Sense, the Bush administration is already setting in motion its second-term domestic priorities. The partial privatization of Social Security is just the opening salvo of a planned multistage assault...

Safety first? No thanks.(the short run)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Almost 6,000 workers died from traumatic injuries incurred on the job in 2000, according to a recent AFL-CIO report. Another 6.3 million were injured or suffered from work-related illnesses. By some accounts, work-related injuries cost the...

Galactic playground.(the short run)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... The world's megarich may soon have a new travel destination--outer space. For an estimated $200,000 a ticket, wealthy adventure-seekers will be able to take a three-hour space voyage on the first-ever commercial spacecraft, "Virgin Galactic."...

Sue the bastards!(the short run)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... If you believe the Republican Party and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, "frivolous" lawsuits by individuals are responsible for a host of social ills, from sky-high health care costs to the stifling of business innovation. But while conservative...

Major media censor the "Bush Bulge" story.(the short run)
November 1, 2004... From Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting: The New York Times killed the "Bush Bulge" story about the suspicious object George W. Bush wore on his back during the presidential debates. Journalist Dave Lindorff revealed on Counter-Spin, FAIR's...

Blood sport.(the short run)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... In 1922, the Supreme Court declared baseball a sport and nothing but, making it legally impossible to accuse the American and National Leagues of enjoying monopoly power in buying players' labor. The decision left the upstart Federal League,...

Executive Excess.(the short run)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... Chief executive officers working for companies that outsource jobs receive fatter paychecks than those in companies that do not outsource, according to United for a Fair Economy's report "Executive Excess 2004." CEOs who outsource jobs to other...

Company police force.(the short run)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... At the turn of the last century, employers regularly used brute force and the strong arm of the law to squelch workers' efforts to demand a fair wage and a voice on the job. Those days were supposed to be long gone. Not at Smithfield Packing....

A retrospective.(dollars & sense 1974-2004)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... In November 1974, well aware that a serious recession was developing, we introduced the first issue of Dollars & Sense by writing: "You don't need a new magazine to tell you that the economy is in a mess. But, if you are interested in...

Filipino dump activists turn waste into wealth.(active culture)
November 1, 2004... To visitors from outside, the Payatas dumpsite outside Manila is at best an eyesore and at worst a vision of hell on Earth. For the thousands of families who earn their livelihoods by recycling materials in Payatas, though, garbage is a form of...

Corporate tax cut bonanza: without fanfare, Congress gives big tax breaks to U.S. corporations.(making sense)
November 1, 2004... Today, U.S. corporations are sitting on unusually large piles of cash and not investing much, their profits are rising much faster than workers' wages, and they're paying a smaller share of taxes, by any reckoning, than they have in decades....

Death of the progressive dream? Time for a bottom-up strategy.(comment)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... We at Dollars & Sense would have liked nothing better for a 30th anniversary present than for the American people to have tossed out the most dangerous president of the modern era. Instead, George W. Bush is back for four more years, with...

Missing jobs still lost.(UP AGAINST THE WALL STREET JOURNAL)
November 1, 2004... "Missing Jobs Found" ... It turns out that this economic expansion is different from those in the past, but not in the way that many thought. New jobs are being created as usual, but they are different kinds of jobs. The U.S. economy...

Social Security isn't broken: so why does Greenspan want to fix it?
November 1, 2004... Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told Congress earlier this year that everyone knows there's a Social Security crisis. That's like saying "everyone knows the earth is flat." Starting with a faulty premise guarantees reaching the...

African Americans and Social Security: why the privatization advocates are wrong.
November 1, 2004... Proponents of Social Security privatization are trying to claim that the current program is unfair to African Americans and that a privatized program would serve African Americans better. This argument lends support to the privatization agenda...

Thirty years from today: visions of economic justice.
November 1, 2004... I would like to see a completely gender equitable world 30 years from now--an equal proportion of men and women working for pay and earning the same amount on average, regardless of which jobs they are in. Similarly, I would like to see the...

Sharing the wealth of the commons: institutionalizing the commons could promote both economic equality and environmental protection.
November 1, 2004... We're all familiar with private wealth, even if we don't have much. Economists and the media celebrate it every day. But there's another trove of wealth we barely notice: our common wealth. Each of us is the beneficiary of a vast...

America Beyond Capitalism: what a "Pluralist Commonwealth" would look like.
November 1, 2004... Many books in recent years have portrayed promising grassroots economic alternatives in the United States and around the world, many have forwarded visions of what an alternative to capitalism might look like, and many have analyzed the...

Neoliberalism vs. history.(comic strip of neoliberalism)
November 1, 2004... FRANCIS FUKUYAMA'S 1992 BESTSELLER, THE END OF HISTORY, EXPLICITCY ARGUED THAT, WITH THE FALL OF COMMUNISM, HISTORY ARRIVES AT ITS HAPPY ENDING: LIBERAL DEMOCRACY of CUT-THROAT CAPITALISM FOR EVERYBODY, FOREVER. WHETHER YOU FIND THIS PREDICTION...

Ask Dr. Dollar.
November 1, 2004... Dear Dr. Dollar: What is the difference between how a "radical" or "progressive" economist and a "liberal" economist looks at things? It seems like there are plenty of liberal economists around today who are critical of the...

The Social Security administration's cracked crystal ball.(economy in numbers)
November 1, 2004... 2042. That's the year the Social Security Trust Fund will run out of money, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA). But its doomsday prophesy is based on overly pessimistic assumptions about our economic future: The SSA expects...