(Source: Amy Lyne) The folks at Rolls-Royce have just opened a brand-new dealership—in the poverty-stricken Philippines. This nation of nearly 100 million people now hosts 334 deep pockets worth at least $50 million, more than enough, the Rolls-Royce CEO noted earlier this month in Manila, to guarantee a robust market “for the ultimate in super […]

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(Source: Emmanuel Saez) With the government set to reopen and the threat of default evaded for now, fears are emerging that the resulting fiscal austerity and financial uncertainty may have seriously weakened the recovery (by as much as $24 billion). But it’s worth looking at exactly what’s being jeopardized. Independent of the GOP’s games of […]

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  Since last summer, workers at some of the largest and highest-profile low-wage employers in the U.S.—like Walmart and McDonald’s—have joined an open struggle for higher wages, better working conditions, and an end to abusive (and sometimes illegal) treatment.   It seems that commentators unsympathetic to workers employed by Walmart are cherry-picking the figure that […]

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(Source: Demos) The debate over America’s federal budget is getting stale—and getting us nowhere, as the latest government shutdown depressingly reminds us. Political obsession over budget deficits has now morphed into legislative extortion. Today, more than ever, we need to refocus the federal “tax and spend” debate—from deficits to inequality. Two researchers from the New […]

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The federal income tax this week turns a century old. On October 3, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the first modern federal tax on income. John Buenker has been writing about the events—and attitudes—that led to that signing for a good bit of the last 50 years. His 1985 book, The Income Tax […]

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