Dollars & Sense articles from September 2001

Dollars & Sense archives from September 2001

Stupid Product Alert.(Invisible Jim )(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Capitalism has reached its ultimate conclusion, and it's not anarchy after all. It's the new Australian "doll" called "Invisible Jim," which reached the U.S. this summer. The "doll," reports the Wall Street Journal, is actually an empty box....

The Shepherds' Lot.(wages and work hours in California)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... "I never thought when I came here from Peru that this country would treat people as less than human," says Victor Flores, a former shepherd and founder of a California advocacy group called the Sheepherders Union. California's 800 shepherds...

In Advertising, Anything Goes.(First Amendment protection)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw wanted to market vitamin supplements with labels claiming that the supplements could "reduce the risk" of certain illnesses and birth defects. When the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rejected the couple's...

If You Charge Them, They Will Come.(leisure farming in Hong Kong)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Over a decade ago a Hong Kong group called Produce Green purchased land on the outskirts of the city with plans of running an organic farm. Making the farm financially viable, however, turned out to be harder than they thought. That's when they...

Credit Cards R Us?(marketing to teens)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Apparently it wasn't enough to pull college students into the credit-card trap. With the new "Visa Buxx" card, the credit-card company is now trying to get teenagers used to paying with plastic. Of course, that's not what Visa says it's...

The Night Shift.(overnight child care)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... For years, working parents have had to deal with the hassle and expense of day care for children too young to be left alone at home. Now, with night work hours becoming more common, overnight child care is becoming an inevitable reality for...

Smoke Your Way to a Healthy Economy.(Philip Morris promotes smoking in the Czech Republic)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Philip Morris released a report in the Czech Republic arguing that smoking actually saves the country money, according to CNN.com. When smokers die, they don't become a burden on the government by getting old, the report says. The money that...

Prison Explosion.(more spending, more prisoners)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... While some states, including New York, are now spending less on higher education than they were 20 years ago, all 50 states have increased prison spending. Since 1980, prison spending in the U.S. has increased six times faster than higher...

Writers Battle Media Companies.(copyright and electronic publishing)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... The media industry is "stealing" writers' work, according to Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers' Union (NWU). In 1993, Tasini discovered a freelance article he had written for the New York Times on Mead Data Central...

College Students Oppose Private Prisons.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Dump Sodexho Marriott. That was the message students at over 50 U.S. colleges sent this spring as they protested against university contracts with companies that they believe operate private prisons. According to the Prison Moratorium Project,...

COMENT CANADIAN DREAM.(Canada's economy)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Every day, American commercials showing families hopping into Lexus SUVs and couples boarding cruise ships taunt the Canadian upper and middle classes. While upper class Americans become richer and richer, times get tougher and tougher for...

READ ALL ABOUT IT (BUT NOT IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA) WALL STREET CONTROLS YOUR LOCAL PAPER.
September 1, 2001... On Wednesday, June 27, staff of the Grand Forks Herald in Grand Forks, North Dakota, along with other communication workers from around the city, demonstrated outside of the Herald's offices. The reason: Knight Ridder, the Herald's owner, was...

UN-FAIR TO SMALL FARMERS.(Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act )(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... In December 1999, Roger Warne, a fifth-generation Iowa farmer, was forced to give up his family's farm. Originally, he had planned to pass the farm on to his children. But after accumulating debts of more than $100,000, he and his wife Nita...

A CRACKED FOUNDATION FOR SPAIN'S ECONOMY.
September 1, 2001... Once known as the "poor man of Europe," Spain finished the twentieth century with a burst of dramatic economic growth. Between 1997 and 2000, the country boasted an annual growth rate of 4%, and reduced its unemployment rate from over 20% to...

U.S. BANKS AND THE DIRTY MONEY EMPIRE.
September 1, 2001... Washington and the mass media have portrayed the United States as being in the forefront of the struggle against narcotics trafficking, drug-money laundering, and political corruption. The image is of clean white hands fighting dirty money from...

SWEATSHOPS 101.(Independent University Initiative inspects garment factories)(Industry Overview)
September 1, 2001... LESSONS IN MONITORING APPAREL PRODUCTION AROUND THE WORLD Navy blue sweatshirts bearing a single foreign word, Michigan, and a well-known logo, the Nike swoosh, were piled high in a small room off the main factory floor. After cutting,...

LABOR AND DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH AFRICA WHERE TO NOW?
September 1, 2001... Angelina is a street cleaner in the Soweto region of Johannesburg, South Africa, and a member of the South African Municipal Workers Union (SAMWU). She earns 2300 rand (US$290) a month. Once she has paid for her health insurance, housing loan,...

SHIFTING GEARs.(conflicting economic policy in South Africa)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... From the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP) to the Growth, Employment, and Redistribution (GEAR) Plan Reading the African National Congress government's "Growth, Employment, and Redistribution" (GEAR) plan of 1996, one would...

SOCIAL-MOVEMENT UNIONISM IN SOUTH AFRICA.
September 1, 2001... A STRATEGY FOR WORKING-CLASS SOLIDARITY In recent decades, it has become fashionable to predict that labor movements will soon fade into irrelevance. Farewell to the Working Class -- the title of a 1980 book by French social theorist Andre...

DYING TO SERVE YOU.(violence against service industry workers)
September 1, 2001... VIOLENCE IN THE RETAIL WORKPLACE A couple of years ago, I worked as a clerk at a large books tore in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Clerks there often work at night, until as late as 10:00 or 11:00 PM, and often work alone. One late night, Alice...

REDUCING OFFICIAL POVERTY IS NOT ENOUGH.(tax laws)
September 1, 2001... HOW REFORMING THE TAX SYSTEM CAN HELP With her mother and nine-year old daughter in attendance, 27-year-old Mary Spencer proudly accepted her graduation diploma. She had just completed a ten-week health-care attendant training program at...

FINLAND EXPERIMENTS WITH A SIX-HOUR WORK DAY A FAMILY FRIENDLY POLICY?
September 1, 2001... "I feel that I have more time for my family," said a child care teacher in Finland, in response to a shift to a 6-hour working day. Being less hurried, she added, had an enormous impact on everything in life. Her reactions were echoed by dental...

NEXT STEPS FOR THE LIVING-WAGE MOVEMENT.
September 1, 2001... This past May, Harvard University students made national headlines by occupying a university building for three weeks to demand that Harvard and its contractors pay employees a living wage. While Harvard refused to grant the $10.25 wage that...

"SURPLUS VALUE DAY".(property and taxation, a Marxist approach)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Around "tax time" each year, the right-wing Tax Foundation issues its annual "Tax Freedom Day" report. The report estimates what the total share of local, state, and federal taxes will be as a portion of national income for that year (for 2001,...

Letters.
September 1, 2001... WHAT'S A RECESSION? John Miller's article, "When is the Economy in a Recession?" (D&S, July/August 2001) is an interesting and useful analysis. But it also throws a revealing spotlight on one aspect of the "dismal" state of current...

A World, Not a Nation The Martian Utopias of Kim Stanley Robinson.
September 1, 2001... Red Mars (Bantam Books, 1993) Blue Mars (Bantam Books, 1994) Green Mars (Bantam Books, 1996) The Martians (Bantam Books, 2000) By Kim Stanley Robinson I once sat staring at the screensaver on my computer, an image of...

ASK DR. DOLLAR.(the difference between gross domestic product and gross national product)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2001... Dear Dr. Dollar: In some of your articles, your authors have referred to the "GDP" while others have referred to the "GNP" as putatively interchangeable. This doesn't sound correct. --Bruce T. Boccardy, Allston, MA The two...

GETTING BACK MORE THAN THEY GIVE.(economic fallout of lower tax rates)(Statistical Data Included)
September 1, 2001... BUSH TAX CUT SHOWERS BENEFITS ON THE RICH By now your $300 tax rebate must be long gone. If you got one, that is. Some 34 million mostly low-income taxpayers didn't. If you did get a rebate, don't go looking for much more. For the vast...