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Category Archives: Economics

Failing Upwards

Monday, December 22, 2008

Folks of my generation will no doubt remember the Peter Principle, first propounded by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their book of the same name. Peter and Hull proposed that in any hierarchical organization, a person tends to rise to his or her level of incompetence. This principle has long since been […]

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Guest post: A proposal for dealing with the credit crisis

Friday, December 12, 2008

Yesterday I was talking to Frank Liberty, an attorney from New London. He told me about his own ideas for dealing with the credit crisis. I started a post yesterday, to incorporate them, but after doing some math, decided that his idea would be prohibitively expensive. Frank wrote me this morning, with a suggested post, […]

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Joe Courtney votes for Auto Bailout

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

This from an email from the prolific Brian Farber: Congressman Joe Courtney released the following statement this evening after voting in favor of H.R. 7321, the Auto Industry Financing and Restructuring Act, which passed by a vote of 237-170: “‘Main Street’ is hurting and Connecticut’s hard working individuals are feeling the brunt of the economic […]

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Good Choice for Labor

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

This should be good news for progressive types who were worried that Obama is being too centrist. According to Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly: Mary Beth Maxwell, founding executive director of American Rights at Work, is reportedly being considered for Labor Secretary. It’s plausible to assume that she shares the objectives of the group […]

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An obvious solution that will go untried

Thursday, November 27, 2008

I couldn’t agree more with this from Firedoglake: It’s not hard to rein in executive compensation, all you have to do is decide what the maximum pay you want someone to be able to receive is and tax most of the rest of it away. The simplest thing is to just count all income equally, […]

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A third way

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

For the life of me I really can’t understand how people like David Sirota can deal with complete idiots like Grover Norquist: The man is a one trick idiot. I would like to suggest, however, that there is a third alternative to Obama either sticking with his original tax plan or keeping the Bush tax […]

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Block that meme

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” Winston Churchill Right now the left wing of the blogosphere is trying to put the pants on a bit of truth about union workers at GM, so I thought I’d do my share. This particular lie started […]

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Memo to Peace & Justice Organizers and Activists

Monday, November 24, 2008

My friend Bob Roth has been an occasional contributor to these pages. He is definitely not your typical blogger, in that he doesn’t think it easily digested bite size pieces like some people I could mention, such as-well…me. Bob passed the following along to me for publication on this backwater site. I am happy to […]

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Compassion for the downtrodden

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

My wife told me about this. She is an honest person, as everyone knows, but I couldn’t help think that she was delusional: The governors of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey are asking the federal government for a $48 million emergency grant to help thousands of financial industry workers who are losing their jobs.…The […]

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Fool them thrice, or more

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

From the New York Times: The Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., on Tuesday rejected pleas to use money from the $700 billion bailout program to help homeowners avoid foreclosure or to stave off bankruptcy by Detroit’s Big Three automakers. Facing a barrage of complaints from Democratic lawmakers that he was ignoring the will of […]

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