The features of the bill that are likely to help ordinary people were catchy and easy to understand—reduced taxes on tips and overtime pay and a higher standard deduction for the elderly on income taxes. Yet these projected revenue losses are tiny compared to those incurred by the super rich.
To even begin to understand the recent crisis in the U.S. and global banking industries, you have to look back at the seismic shifts in the industry over the past 30 to 40 years. The story that continues to unfold is one of progressively worse policies that make financial crises more common and more severe. Read more »
When ideologues of global capitalism step out of line, who better to let them know about it than the editors of the Wall Street Journal? Just ask the economists at the Asian Development Bank, who had the temerity to report that increasing inequality was a serious problem.
Read more »
The U.S. economy has been in expansion mode since November 2001. Though of reasonable duration, the expansion has been fragile and unbalanced. Now, with the subprime mortgage and credit crises, there are signs that the expansion may be ending. If the Fed deserves criticism, it is for endorsing the policy paradigm underlying a distorted expansion. Read more »
The Bush administration has asked for significant increases in both war appropriations and regular defense appropriations for fiscal year '08. If Congress agrees to these requests, defense spending will resume its upward climb to between 4.3% and 5.0% of GDP in 2008. Read more »
Social change requires a large number of open-minded, concerned people to develop into highly committed, effective activists. Agents of change need a foundation of knowledge, a theoretical framework that integrates this knowledge, and the practical skills to conduct a long-term struggle for change. A new online "study/action" program helps people move from framework and knowledge to action. Read more »
Available only in the print edition of Dollars & Sense:
features
Conscripted by Poverty
By Anna Sussman
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than
33,000 young people have been associated with armed
groups in recent years, mostly in the troubled eastern Congo
region. International aid agencies say the child soldier epidemic in eastern Congo
can be traced largely to economics. That's why aid groups are focusing demobilization efforts on economic solutions. | Order this issue or subscribe.
Law enforcement officials swoop down on hundreds of undocumented
immigrants who had not made it far past the border. Over one hundred are detained, some hospitalized with major injuries. Sound like a border raid in Arizona or Texas? Try Mexico�s southernmost state of Chiapas, and those detained were not Mexicans, but Central Americans trying to get to El Norte. Welcome to Mexico's other immigration problem, in which Mexican authorities are
implicated in brutal repression against migrants from farther
south—at the behest of the U.S. government. | Order this issue or subscribe.
