(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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(Source: Polis) I’ve long been bothered by activists’ recent habit of focusing on debt both as a political target and analytical center. This came to the fore during the Occupy moment, and continues today in, well, should we call it the post-Occupy era? Yes, debt is a problem, no doubt about it. Given the age […]

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(Richard Trumka | Source: Creative Commons) Sitting in the office of the AFL-CIO president, Richard Trumka, one sees books on labor history, economics, corporate crimes and proposals for change piled up everywhere. Perhaps that helps explain why Mr. Trumka, a former coal miner who became a lawyer, presented his besieged organization’s quadrennial convention in Los […]

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(Source: Coalition of the Academic Workplace) Here’s the biggest obstacle to organizing adjunct professors who comprise 75 percent of college faculty, with part-timers working for $2,700 per course on average. Fear. Most assume adjuncts fear retribution. That worry is not unfounded. But many adjuncts feel paralyzed by a deeper, unspoken fear, one primarily internal and […]

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