Sears and the race to the bottom

The Atlantic Cities ran an interesting piece today about corporate relocation battles. The short of it is that states compete with one another to bring in specific corporations by giving away huge sums of public money. Right now, Ohio and Illinois are fighting over the Sears corporate headquarters, with both states offering around $400 million… Continue reading Sears and the race to the bottom

Worker-to-retiree ratio is meaningless for Social Security

For some reason, Social Security seems to get more spurious claims targeted at it than almost any other government program. Commentators mislead the public by calling it a Ponzi scheme, claiming it is insolvent, and strangely calling its treasury bond holdings worthless IOUs. These claims and many others made by the Social Security naysayers are… Continue reading Worker-to-retiree ratio is meaningless for Social Security

What the hell is a job creator?

The right-wing rhetorical machine has been spinning out the word “job creator” for some time now. Recently, that rhetoric has been ratcheted up as Occupy Wall Street managed to break through and bring attention to the massive economic inequality in the country. It is obvious that the title is just used to replace more descriptive… Continue reading What the hell is a job creator?