Browsing PBH By Articles

Why Low Paying Job Are Here To Stay

The Article: Low-paying jobs are here to stay by Tami Luhby in CNNMoney.

The Text: Stuck in a job with lousy pay? Better get used to it.

Some 28% of workers are expected to hold low-wage jobs in 2020, roughly the same percentage as in 2010, according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute.

The study defines low-paying jobs as those with wages at or below what full-time workers must earn to live above the poverty level for a family of four. In 2011, this was $23,005, or $11.06 an hour.

Continue Reading

Big Government Is Bad, But Only When Republicans Say So

The Article: Meddling for Morality in The Economist.

The Text: For a party that likes to preach about the evils of an overweening federal government and the virtues of deferring authority to states, localities and individuals, it was a peculiar stance. Yet the vast majority of Republican members of the House of Representatives voted this week to ban abortions in Washington, DC beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy. The constitution gives Congress the power to administer the city in which it sits (and denies the city’s residents the right to send any representatives to Congress), and although a more magnanimous bunch of legislators granted the city home rule in the 1970s, their successors regularly meddle in everything from its transport budget to its needle exchanges.

Thanks to a procedural quirk the abortion bill needed, and did not get, a two-thirds majority to be approved. It never stood a chance in the Senate, and would doubtless have suffered legal challenges too, since it seemed to run against the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade. It made no exception in cases of rape or incest, threatened wayward doctors with prison sentences and would have allowed third parties to secure injunctions against abortions they suspected were about to happen. It was, in short, election-year posturing of the most transparent sort. Nonetheless Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s official but impotent observer in Congress (the Republican leadership did not even allow her to testify at a hearing on the law), was livid. “States’ rights—I thought that was their thing,” she sputtered.

Continue Reading

Fiddling While The Post Office Burns

The Article: Congress Fiddles While Post Office Burns by John Nichols in The Nation.

The Text: Americans have heard a lot in recent days about the “default” by the United States Postal Service. And the way that much of the media covered the story would lead those who have not followed the wrangling over the USPS’s future to imagine there’s a problem with the post office.

After all, the financial circumstance of the USPS sounds nightmarish.

“The Postal Service, on the verge of its first default on Wednesday, faces a cash shortage of $100 million this October stemming from declining mail volume that could balloon to $1.2 billion next year, “ declared the New York Times. “Confronting $11.1 billion in payments over the next two months for future benefits, the service said it would fail to pay about half that amount, which is due Wednesday, and does not foresee making the other half, which is due in September. An additional $5.6 billion payment due next year is also in question.”

Continue Reading

The GOP’s Scorched Earth Obstructionism

The Article: The GOP Economy and Scorched-Earth Obstructionism by Paul Krugman in Common Dreams.

The Text: There has been plenty to criticize about President Obama’s handling of the economy. Yet the overriding story of the past few years is not Mr. Obama’s mistakes but the scorched-earth opposition of Republicans, who have done everything they can to get in his way — and who now, having blocked the president’s policies, hope to win the White House by claiming that his policies have failed.

And this week’s shocking refusal to implement debt relief by the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency — a Bush-era holdover the president hasn’t been able to replace — illustrates perfectly what’s going on.

Some background: many economists believe that the overhang of excess household debt, a legacy of the bubble years, is the biggest factor holding back economic recovery. Loosely speaking, excess debt has created a situation in which everyone is trying to spend less than their income. Since this is collectively impossible — my spending is your income, and your spending is my income — the result is a persistently depressed economy.

Continue Reading

The Lies Of Economic Inequality

The Article: 3 Big Lies Perpetuated By the Rich by Paul Bucheit in AlterNet.

The Text: When it comes to the economy, too many Americans continue to be numbed by the soothing sounds of conservative spin in the media. Here are three of their more inventive claims:

1. Higher taxes on the rich will hurt small businesses and discourage job creators

A recent Treasury analysis found that only 2.5% of small businesses would face higher taxes from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

As for job creation, it’s not coming from the people with money. Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, real estate, and personal business accounts. In the real estate business, ensuring you acquire a good and quality property that meets your desires is paramount. Contacting experts like canary wharf estate agents is a wise and informed approach to achieve this.
Angel investing (capital provided by affluent individuals for business start-ups) accounted for less than 1% of theinvestable assets of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. The Mendelsohn Affluent Survey agreed that the very rich spend less than two percent of their money on new business startups.

Continue Reading