Category: Working Class Economist

Ever since his announcement as Romney’s VP selection—–which I still maintain as a poor pick, as noted in last Saturday’s editorial about it—–Paul Ryan has been under increased scrutiny in the eyes of “moderates.” “Moderates” being another word for the people that have never heard of him, since Republicans, Democrats, and people that actually follow…

Last week, we talked a little bit about why Chic-Fil-A were, to put it bluntly, assholes. Why Dan Cathy runs the company more like an evangelical prosperity-preacher than a real businessman. Why their corporate culture is rotten with retrograde social prejudice (not just homophobia, but religious discrimination and telling female managers their place is in…

I know today is technically the first day of August, but I got my calendar slightly confused a week ago and thought this would be the last Wednesday of the month for July…Whoops, but in a way it really worked out because by waiting a week a fantastic asshole of the month contender emerged: Chic-Fil-A…

Welp, once again, I enjoyed a Barnes and Noble author event where the author of a new book drops by to discuss it, and eventually answer questions from the crowd. And tonight’s was none other than economist/writer Joseph Stiglitz. Now that name may not mean a whole lot to most people, but Stiglitz is something…

This will be a pretty straightforward WCE today as I think today’s issue is pretty straightforward. It’s just that so many Republicans, conservatives, and the corporate interests they serve have made it complicated. First, a quick economics refresher. Keynesian Economics: Whatever people think about the economy is how the economy winds up. If they think it’s strong,…

Scranton, Pennsylvania—-the notoriously dumpy/depressing rust belt armpit that is the setting of NBC’s The Office—-is now famous for an entirely different reason. They have become the first city in the country to slash 400 government employees pay down to minimum wage. [That’s 7.25 an hour, otherwise known as “a joke” for a working adult to be…

I bet you folks thought I might have forgotten to do Working Class Economist’s usual “Rich Asshole of the Month,” and, in fact, I nearly did. It turns out I was so fixated on the Supreme Court Justices who would surely vote down “Obamacare” that I didn’t quite have a pick after they didn’t do…

With my recent trip to China and ongoing struggle to post pictures from Shanghai and Hong Kong (more coming tomorrow…I hope) some regular features on the site have suffered as of late. And perhaps none more so than the regular “Rich Asshole of the Month” feature which is coming in at the 11th hour on…

So in the fuss to “scandalize” Obama’s secret service detail for doing something in Colombia that everyone who visits Colombia does (pay for sex) and also to ridiculously criticize him for using some tax dollars to travel for his re-election campaign (something every incumbent president has done), the media has overlooked something in the past…

…Rick Santorum! Now I know that perhaps picking on Santorum is shooting fish in a barrel to a certain extent, and that you don’t have to be the wittiest (or most politically aware) writer to call him out on pretty much everything. So why take on such an easy target? I’ll tell you… 1. Now…

Few things are less mind-boggling than the persistent Republican belief that government jobs are seemingly less valuable (or outright destructive) than private sector jobs. Typical comments range from the usual bureaucratic speak “The public sector is out of control…creating jobs at a faster rate than the private sector can pay for them” to this outright…

When it came time to do my “Rich Asshole of the Month” segment for Working Class Economist, the answer was a no-brainer. From Stephen Colbert to MoveOn.org, liberals have heard a lot about the horrific Supreme Court decision that allowed corporations and rich individuals to donate unlimited amounts of money into shadowy super-PACs, and even…