Articles Archive for January 2009

The banking and credit “crisis” is generating lots of news, including talk about nationalization. Here’s a front page article from the New York Times, a Times piece by columnist Paul Krugman, a CNBC story putting the possible cost at $4 trillion, and something from AlterNet by Joshua Holland that says we should just go ahead [...]

The Obama economic stimulus plan, conservative critics note, will create jobs at a cost of $275,000 each. That’s a “bogus talking point,” according to Paul Krugman. Here’s a key paragraph in his NYTimes column: The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000 – and the net [...]

There were two issue campaigns that Martin Luther King focused on throughout the last year of his life, and both are still relevant, still necessary. One was opposing the war in Vietnam and his more general opposition to militarism.  The second was calling for a guaranteed income. For King, moreover, they were not separate issues, [...]

“We Are One” is the title for concert and celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. The music and speeches were full of patriotic themes, though not much in the way of specific, concrete proposals to enhance and strengthen our sense of oneness. Perhaps Obama and the speechwriters don’t yet know the history of income security ideas. [...]

From Barack Obama on down, politicians, economists, pundits, and journalists are obsessed with creating and saving jobs. Obama’s proposed economic stimulus plan would save or create three million to four million jobs at a cost of $775 billion. If it’s three million jobs, that’s $260,000 a job. Four million jobs would be $194,000 each. These [...]