Media

Credit card fees can be expensive and annoying, there’s no doubt about it. But many of them can be avoided if you’re careful and others may be worth paying if you get something worthwhile. For example, many of the best rewards credit cards charge annual fees, but people who use them frequently are able to earn additional rewards that outweigh the extra cost.

In today's global economy, a victory for workers anywhere is a victory everywhere. Why? Because capital's advantage over labor in recent decades has rested on its ability to play workers -- and governments -- off against each other, moving production to wherever wages are lowest. That advantage will endure as long as poor countries with huge populations lack strong labor standards, and offer a hospitable home to sweatshops. 

You can explain the current plight of the American middle class in three sentences. Timothy Egan did in the New York Times this week:

Progressives have typically attacked economic inequality on fairness grounds, arguing that it's just not right that so much national wealth is funneled to the top even as millions struggle to get by. 

By some measures, public trust of government is now at its lowest point ever recorded. To be sure, this partly reflects a concerted thirty year assault on government by conservatives. But it also reflect legitimate public doubts about the ability of government to solve problems -- doubts that are being reinforced by the calamitous rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

Most people think of sequestration as imposing across-the-board cuts of 5 to 7 percent, a figure that doesn't sound all that alarming. While that's technically correct, what's now becoming clear is how the cuts have ramifications far larger than the 5 to 7 percent figure would suggest. This is the finding a big new study on sequestration by NDD United, a coalition that works to protect non-defense domestic spending. 

The co-chair of the Moreland Commission set up to investigate campaign finance issues in New York, William Fitzpatrick, is a Republican, fiscal conservative, and a recent convert to public financing. Fitzpatrick stated, “If the money's not there, I'm inclined not to spend it.

The establishment consensus is accurately summarized by Martin Feldstein, “Preventing an explosion of the national debt requires slowing the growth of the benefits of middle-class retirees.” But the truth is that the middle class and poor need more help than ever.

There aren't a lot of causes that can fire up Americans across the political spectrum, but getting money out of politics is definitely one of them. That's the finding of a recent poll-based memo by the DemocracyCorps. 

A majority of Americans see Washington as corrupt, the memo reports, and many blame "moneyed interests" for that corruption -- believing both parties are deeply compromised.

They are right, of course.