Media

The 2007 economic crisis and the lingering stagnation it wrought has led economists, philosophers and policymakers to a profound rethinking of how we measure economic performance and social progress. As Joseph E. Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi write in the forward to their book, Mismeasuring Our Lives, during the run-up to the 2007 crisis, “the seemingly strong performance of some countries prior to the crisis (as predicted by GDP) was not sustainable and was based on “bubble” prices that exaggerated profits and output.”

A new brief by the national public policy organization Demos analyzes one way Walmart can raise worker pay to meet employees’ $25,000 benchmark target. A Higher Wage is Possible: How Walmart Can Invest in Its Workforce Without Costing Customers a Dime details how Walmart can give workers a raise by redirecting the funds spent annually on buying back shares of Walmart’s own company stock.

“We are on strike today to have respect and dignity at work,” says Walter Melendez, one of approximately 40 Los Angeles port truck drivers who walked off the job at 5a.m. morning in protest of alleged unfair labor practices. The strikes featured the rolling “ambulatory pickets” that the truckers have excelled at—chasing down trucks as they leave the port and setting up picket lines in front of them.

In the past week, both a senior editor at Fortune magazine and the liberal think tank Demos have made similar proposals for how Walmart could greatly increase worker wages without harming its business prospects.

Today is World Toilet Day, which strikes me as a good moment to reflect on how government can radically improve people's daily lives.

We need to restore the positive concept of public goods that existed decades ago.

A historic $13 billion settlement is in the works between the federal government and JP Morgan -- the biggest-ever penalty for wrongdoing by a bank. 

But this settlement is unlikely to deter tomorrow's lawbreakers in finance, and here's why. 

There are few better ways to uncover fraud in an industry than to incentivize insiders to blow the whistle on wrongdoing. And a little known part of Dodd-Frank did just that for the securities industry, creating a new whistleblower program run by the SEC that can bestow huge rewards on anyone who brings to light evidence of fraud that results in a settlement. 

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.