Washington Post

How capitalism enriches the few rather than the many

Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:32:29 +0000

Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys,” his takedown of high-speed stock trading, may be making headlines this week, but it’s just one of two books on our economic dysfunctions that are flying off the shelves. While “Flash Boys” explains how the fastest-growing form of trading enriches the few at the expense of the many, the other book, Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” provides a more fundamental and disquieting explanation: how capitalism itself enriches the few at the expense of the many.

The coming job apocalypse

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 18:26:44 +0000

As a general rule, more Americans work than do the citizens of other advanced economies. Since the late 1970s, when the number of women in the workforce ballooned, the share of Americans who either had jobs or were trying to get one was greater than the share of comparable Europeans. For reasons good and bad — the higher availability of jobs, the need to bolster stagnating incomes, the linkage of jobs to health insurance — Americans worked like the dickens.

Russia doesn’t respect borders. Neither has the U.S.

Wed, 05 Mar 2014 19:07:54 +0000

In light of Russia’s military movement into Crimea, it’s a good thing that the United States repudiated the Monroe Doctrine. In 1823, to deter European powers from military or political intervention in the emerging nations of Latin America, President James Monroe announced a policy implying that that region was our sphere of influence, not Europe’s. The United States invoked the Monroe Doctrine, along with the imperatives of the Cold War, to justify some of its own interventions there: in Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Chile, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela — it’s a long list.

Arizona uses religion as a shield for bigotry

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 18:55:50 +0000

As patriotism can be the last refuge of scoundrels, so religion can be the last refuge of bigots.

The most recent attempts to besmirch religion have come from Arizona’s Republican state legislators, who last week, on a near- party-line vote, passed a bill allowing businesses to discriminate against same-sex couples on religious grounds. The bill is on the desk of Republican Gov. Jan Brewer; she has until week’s end to sign or veto it.

Share the dividends of increased productivity

Thu, 20 Feb 2014 22:49:02 +0000

The United Auto Workers’ failure to organize the employees at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., has been greeted with predictable hosannas from the sworn enemies of American unions. Survey their celebratory columns, though, and you won’t find the slightest consideration of most Americans’ primary economic problem: How do workers get a raise in today’s economy? With the rate of unionization so low that even unionized employees have trouble winning good contracts, how can workers profit from the gains in their productivity? What will it take for workers to regain the power to reap what they sow?

The myth of maximizing shareholder value

Tue, 11 Feb 2014 22:44:21 +0000

In a well-intentioned op-ed in The Post [“Dialing up the power in people’s phone calls,” op-ed, Feb. 9], Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently extolled his new phone venture, which has pledged to devote a quarter of its profits to “good causes” selected by an independent foundation. Now, I support good causes as much as the next fellow, and I have nothing negative to say about this initiative. I am compelled, however, to note that in delineating the obligations that corporations must meet, Wales made an error at once so common and so fundamental that it screams for correction.

Money made at others’ expense

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 17:09:20 +0000

“Sore winners” was the phrase critic John Powers came up with to describe the George W. Bush administration, but the term seems more lastingly applicable to those members of the 1 percent who decry the broad economic populism across the land. The most notoriously sore winners are those mega-wealthy investment bankers who have likened critics of economic inequality to the Nazis — most recently, Tom Perkins, founder of the venture capital group Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, who last week equated “the progressive war on the American one percent” to Kristallnacht.

What should public-sector workers do if they can’t strike?

Tue, 28 Jan 2014 17:06:48 +0000

My colleague Charles Lane, a stellar product of the equally stellar, unionized Montgomery County school district, has opined that collective bargaining should be banned for public employees. However, he writes, “No one is saying public workers have no right to organize. They are free to associate and lobby government, openly, for better wages and working conditions.”

Supreme Court aligns against the have-nots

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 16:59:21 +0000

Among the causes most frequently cited for the dizzying rise in American inequality in recent decades — globalization, technology, de-unionization — one culprit is generally left off the list: the Supreme Court. But the justices (more precisely, the conservative justices) must be given their due. In cases ranging from Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, they have greatly increased the wealthy’s sway over elections — which, in turn, has led to public policies that have reduced taxes on the rich, curtailed regulation of Wall Street and kept workers from forming unions.

Free trade and the loss of U.S. jobs

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 16:54:49 +0000

When President Obama delivers his State of the Union address this month, he will surely highlight the issue of growing economic inequality and argue for such remedies as raising the minimum wage. He may also put in a plug for the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement his administration is negotiating with 11 Pacific Rim nations and for fast-track legislation that would limit congressional input in the accord to facilitate its ratification.