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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of December, 2005.
Viewing Economics NEWS articles 1 through 23 of 23.
- We must stop accepting that low-wage, low-benefit, part-time jobs are the best our children can do. We need to ensure a livable wage for all. - "If the United States government designed and implemented the policies according to human rights standards much of the problem of poverty could be resolved..."
- Debt-fueled growth is qualitatively different from economic growth that results from an increase in high value-added jobs. - Break out those champagne wishes and caviar dreams. The donor class is getting what it paid for.
- When aid or debt relief are discussed, attention often focuses on corrupt leaders and governments in Africa and other parts of the developing world. But they are amateurs compared with the rich companies and individuals who use the world's tax havens and banking systems to hide sums of money that could address almost all of the continent's financial needs.
- Genetically modified crops have failed to deliver the economic benefits promised to US farmers and could pose similar problems if adopted in Australia, a former US government bureaucrat has warned.
- In the stately pantheon of class-warriors, Greenspan's spectral-image looms larger than any other; the foremost proponent of hardnosed social-Darwinism and exclusionary economics. Even his carpet-bagging consort, G.W. Bush, pales in comparison. - The now-moot ordinance, passed by the county Board of Supervisors in 2000, had required that contractors paid more than $250,000 for services agree to remain neutral when facing efforts to organize their employees.
- There is, simply, a national denial. It’s echoed in the daily press. So the newspapers in my city run big, colorful daily sections on food preparation. In general the media is dramatically disinterested in the poor, and dramatically interested in the rich – the same newspapers carry regular sections on real estate which show baronial homes in Bel Air.
- The cost of rental housing has increased faster than wages, making it increasingly difficult for low-income families to afford even modest apartments, an advocacy group said Tuesday. - 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.
- They bleat about the free market, then insist that we subsidise them.
- "The Iraqi people...will continue to move forward toward a sovereign Iraq, an Iraq where an elite few can no longer erect expensive and ornate palaces like these while the majority of the people suffer in fear and poverty." The whistling of the dud mortar overhead as he spoke--sending generals scrambling for cover--seemed a fitting catcall to this piece of hypocrisy. - Call it the class war economy--a shocking transfer of wealth out of the pockets of working people and the poor and into the overstuffed bank accounts of the super-rich.
- The facts about oil supply, our primary energy source, have been known for some time. The body of literature on oil supply is very compelling, but seldom makes the bestseller list. What is really surprising is the silence from the mainstream media and our elected officials about this enormous issue that has been bearing down on us for decades.
- The fast-food giant tries to appease migrant farmworkers while doing everything possible to keep its labor costs dirt-cheap. - The strike by transit workers is an event of international significance. Defying massive fines and even the threat of jail, the strike represents a direct challenge to a super-rich Wall Street elite that is accustomed to imposing its economic interests and its will not only on New York City, but on the world.
- Some 70% of the world's Christmas ornaments and other paraphernalia now originate in officially atheist mainland China. Tinsel, Santas, mistletoe and artificial trees of every shape and hue are churned out at a relentless pace by thousands of factory workers in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces. - "This is the biggest cut in the history of the federal student loan program," said David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, an umbrella group for public and private colleges and universities.
- Wages & Incomes Down, Poverty & Debt Up - December is the month for year-end bonuses for Wall Street’s traders, brokers and investment bankers and this year the top layers are expected to pocket some $17 billion in incentive payouts. According to Johnson Associates Inc., a compensation consulting firm, the average bonus for a managing director will be $1.2 million, with top investment bankers and prime brokers seeing checks padded by as much as 20 percent more than 2004’s bonuses.
- The great shame is that the debate that should have happened, the debate the people of this nation so desperately need to hear, never occurred. Every major media outlet gave only cursory coverage of the transit workers’ case.
- The American Dream is becoming the American Pipe Dream.
Pages for December, 2005
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