Rethinking the Economy

On Sunday, Kamal Abbas, general coordinator of the independent Egyptian Centre for Trade Unions and Workers Services (CTUWS) and all-around bad ass, sent Michael Moore a video clip supporting his union brothers and sisters protesting at the Wisconsin State Capitol. As I was reading the transcript, one thing blew me away:
No one [...]

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Very cool news courtesy of the Wall Street Journal :
The United Auto Workers union said it is prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in a bid to organize employees, including a new push for hourly factory workers at foreign-owned car plants in the U.S.
The effort is part of a major shift in [...]

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The American Prospect has an interesting series of articles on how CWA, the Steelworkers, SIEU, and other US unions have been reaching out to European unions for help in organizing. You may not realize it, but if there’s a school bus that gets your kid to school, or there’s a security [...]

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Steven Rattner, who oversaw the GM bailout, just published Overhaul, his account of what happened. The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn has an interesting interview with him. A few of the highlights:
On why the bailout was necessary: I’d missed this during the initial coverage of the GM bailout. Even though I don’t like GM, I [...]

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Plenty of studies have shown that when CEOs get insanely big paychecks, it doesn’t pay off in terms of performance — in short, it’s bad for shareholders. Now comes a study from Desai, Brief, and George that shows it’s bad for employees too.
higher income inequality between executives and ordinary workers results in executives perceiving themselves [...]

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When two feet of snow slowed DC life to a crawl last week, I started catching up on old New Yorker’s. In an interesting December article on China’s “crash program for clean energy,” one paragraph caught my eye:
[a] message is gaining currency in Congress; it frames American leadership as manifesting not so much [...]

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Now that the Supremes have said the corporations can run wild with political spending, what’s our next move? Back in November, the Brennan Center’s Ciara Torres-Spelliscy made an interesting suggestion in Business Week — do what the Brits do and put more power into shareholders’ hands:
A law passed in 2000 requires British companies [...]

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