Almost lost by the wave of responses to the Supreme Court’s decisions last week upholding the Affordable Care Act and allowing gays and lesbians to marry was the significance of the Court’s third decision – on housing discrimination. In a 5-4 ruling, the Court found that the Fair Housing Act of 1968 requires plaintiffs to show only that the effect of a …
Why Nike Is the Problem, Not the Solution – Robert Reich
Tomorrow President Obama will be giving a speech promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Paradoxically, he’s chosen to give it at Nike headquarters in Oregon. Nike isn’t the solution to the problem of stagnant wages in America. Nike is the problem. It’s true that over the past two years Nike has added 2,000 good-paying professional jobs at its Oregon headquarters, fulfilling the requirements of …
The Big Chill: How Big Money Is Buying Off Criticism of Big Money
Not long ago I was asked to speak to a religious congregation about widening inequality. Shortly before I began, the head of thecongregation asked that I not advocate raising taxes on the wealthy. He said he didn’t want to antagonize certain wealthycongregants on whose generosity the congregation depended. I had a similar exchange last year with the president of a …
The “iEverything” and the Redistributional Imperative
It’s now possible to sell a new product to hundreds of millions of people without needing many, if any, workers to produce or distribute it. At its prime in 1988, Kodak, the iconic American photography company, had 145,000 employees. In 2012, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. The same year Kodak went under, Instagram, the world’s newest photo company, had 13 employees serving 30 million customers. The …