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Category Archives: Economic issues

Ken's new article in Salon

Sunday, January 20, 2013

The link is below. My 1,700-mile hike across the XL pipeline: I wanted to learn everything about the environmental battle. I saw a country marked by apathy, and flickers of hope

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So much destruction, so little oil

Sunday, January 6, 2013

We’re being bombarded with all kinds of propaganda these days about a so-called renaissance in American oil production, as though they’ve found a way to get around the absolutes of peak oil and keep the stuff flowing for decades more, cheap. See that little blip on the end of the chart? That’s what we’ve gained […]

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Competition

Tuesday, November 27, 2012

No crowded aisles today at Whole Foods A few weeks ago I mentioned that a new Trader Joe’s has opened less than a mile from Whole Foods. Yesterday, on a Monday morning, Trader Joe’s was busy. But Whole Foods was as un-busy as I’ve ever seen it. It’s interesting that Trader Joe’s seems to siphon […]

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Regulatory capture

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Americans pay four times more than the French for Internet and cell phone service The last time I posted on how Americans are being ripped off on the cost of Internet and cellular service, the U.S. ranked around 11th, as I recall, on Internet speed. Now we’re 29th and still falling. As the article says, […]

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50% of us hold only 1% of American wealth

Thursday, July 19, 2012

California, 1936 Right-wingers cracked up on right-wing propaganda make much of the fact that almost half (around 46 percent) of Americans pay no federal income tax. It is true. The Wall Street Journal often calls these people the “lucky duckies,” and all right-wingers just know that the lucky duckies are getting a free ride off […]

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The income of the top 10 percent

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Striking It Richer: Emmanuel Saez Charts like the one above help make it clear why the right wing hates — and fears, and demonizes — progressive economic policies like those advanced by Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Those policies left us with plenty of rich people, but the rich could no longer take it […]

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Tax propaganda

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Timothy Geithner Every now and then I read dozens of versions of so-called reporting on stories that are important to the establishment, just to marvel at the shallowness of the reporting and the shocking level of co-ordination among the mainstream “news” outlets. I went through this exercise this morning on stories about President Obama calling […]

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How we got into this mess

Friday, February 3, 2012

James Goldsmith on the Charlie Rose show, Nov. 15, 1994 The devastation to our economies caused by globalization and Wall Street gaming was predictable. It also was predicted. Those of us who, in the 1990s, failed to anticipate where globalization would lead now have an obligation to look back and try to understand why we […]

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The real cause of food inflation

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Commodities traders at the Chicago Board of Trade If you asked a few Americans about the causes of food inflation, what answers would you get? Ask a right-winger, or a so-called libertarian, or anyone else who lives in an ideological fantasy world, and you’ll be told that it’s the government’s fault, that’s it’s all about […]

Also filed in Food, Sustainable living | | Comments (0)

Dying of consumption

Friday, November 25, 2011

Smike on his deathbed, dying of consumption — Nicholas Nickleby It’s a dark pun, but the people of the 19th century, and we in our own time, are stalked by the same wasting disease that leads inevitably to ruination if not death — consumption. Today is “black Friday.” The media (feeding the frenzy while pretending […]

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