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"Not only the absence of oppression but the presence of opportunity"

In his speech at the Lincoln Memorial the President movingly honored the sacrifice and commitment of the people who marched on Washington fifty years ago today. He was emphatic in noting that the progress has been immense, an accomplishment that belongs not only to the leaders of the movement but the ordinary people who “never appeared in the history books.”

In the spring of 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to join sanitation workers seeking better pay, fairer treatment and the right to form a union.

I was with Dr. King as he stood with workers, all African-American, all fighting years of labor repression and wages that relegated them to poverty. Dr. King was assassinated on that trip to Memphis. His death, just as the images of workers carrying signs reading, "I am a man," is forever seared in my memory.

Charles Lane is a smart guy, but his recent column in the Washington Post on higher education makes you wonder how much he has dug into that issue. 

If we comparison shop for clothes and cars, why can't we do the same for something as serious as prices for the most common medical procedures? Until very recently, these prices were a closely guarded secret, secluded in a unwieldy, outdated government database that interested researchers had to pay to access. This secrecy has a variety of consequences for all Americans, but particularly the uninsured.

Fifty years after the "dream" of racial equality invoked by Martin Luther King at the March on Washington, the reality is that African-Americans still suffer the most unemployment.

Government statistics show the overall US unemployment rate stood at 7.4 percent in July.

But while whites had a jobless rate of 6.6 percent last month, the rate was nearly double for blacks at 12.6 percent.

By comparison, the Hispanic, or Latino, minority fared better, with 9.1 percent unemployed.

If you don't like unions, pray for tight labor markets. Because when labor is scarce, the law of supply and demand raises wages and workers don't have big incentives to unionize. It's when market's aren't tight that unions become a must-have for workers seeking more pay. 

That insight explains a lot about the growing wave of fast-food strikes over the past year. The biggest strike yet is scheduled for this Thursday, August 29. These strikes are rapidly becoming the most significant labor activism in years, if not decades. 

The Cato Institute came out with a big study recently that argues the familiar point that generous welfare payments undermine incentives to work. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities promptly replied with a four-page paper rebutting key aspects of the report. 

Right now, eager 18-year-olds from across the country are tweeting with bravado photos of their newly postered dorm rooms and scanning with private fear their freshmen class schedules. They're embarking on a journey to capture their piece of the American Dream.

On Friday, Paul Krugman dealt with financial market price bubbles, focusing specifically on emerging markets. He takes on the issue of bubble creation as a result of aggressive Fed loose money policy of the recent past. He correctly points out that the emerging markets situation is really one of a series of bubbles (commercial real estate, Asian securities, dot-com, residential real estate), referred to by George Soros as a “super bubble,” that has roiled through the economy since the 1980s.