Rethinking the Economy

Another nice example of how to do a protest with style, courtesy of the fabulous boys and girls of SF Pride at Work:
Here’s a little more about SF Pride at Work:
San Francisco Pride at Work is an organization of queers for economic and social justice. We are the LGBTQ arm of the [...]

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James Surowiecki has a great piece in the New Yorker on how the media talks about homeowners vs. corporations walking away from their debts.
We normally say that a company “went bankrupt,” implying that it had no choice. But when, recently, American Airlines filed for bankruptcy, it did so deliberately. The airline had four [...]

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A few weeks ago, Gingrich made a splash by declaring war on lazy poor kids.
“It is tragic what we do in the poorest neighborhoods, entrapping children in, first of all, child laws, which are truly stupid.
“You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. [...]

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Via Michael Lind, a great 1924 quote from Andrew Mellon, who was according to Wikipedia the “the third highest income tax payer in the US behind only John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford” in the 1920s:
The fairness of taxing more lightly income from wages, salaries or from investments is beyond question. In the first [...]

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Every once in a while I’ll read a snarky post by a liberal/lefty finance blogger saying that Gretchen Morgenstern, the famous New York Times finance reporter, doesn’t really know what she’s talking about. Most of the time they don’t give enough detail for me to understand what they’re talking about — especially since I don’t [...]

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If you aren’t just fired up about how quickly Occupy Wall Street is taking off and you’re still worried about the lack of specific, winnable demands, 2 suggestions:
1) Borrow a teddy bear and hug it out.
2) If that doesn’t work, check out Investing in Chicago Communities: A Jobs Fund for a Future That Works. This [...]

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Another good sign for Occupy Wall Street’s future: a new group called “Occupy the Hood.”

Founded by Malik Rhasaan, 39 of Queens, N.Y., and Ife Johari Uhuru, 35, based in Detroit, @OccupyTheHood has close to 3,500 followers on Twitter, the growing support of notable figures and a cadre of volunteers devoted to getting the word [...]

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When Occupy Wall Street started, my first reaction was an uncharitable “meh.” Not publicly – I don’t publicly criticize fledgling organizing unless I think it’s actively doing harm. But the whole scene felt like the bad old days, when I was involved in in the dysfunctional, ultimately self-destructive parts of [...]

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In a great New York Times op-ed, “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich,” Warren Buffett lays out why folks like him should be paying more taxes:
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us [...]

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If we start taxing capital gains — the money folks make from investments — at the same rate we tax salaries, will investors stop investing? No, says Warren Buffett:
I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in [...]

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