Dictators and odious debts allow the One Percent to abuse people and resources. Take the apparel industry, for example. A t-shirt shipped from more than 1,500 miles costs $14 at the store and comes with a mark-up price of 60%. Who takes the other 40%? Slave workers in countries like China and Bangladesh get 12 [...]
Liberal proposals for increasing both the minimum wage and taxes on multinational corporations usually brings the best out of right-wing extremists: “HOW WILL THE POOR AFFORD HIGHER FOOD PRICES?!”, they exclaim. A study by the University of Kansas shows that paying workers an honest living wage of $15/hour, double the legal minimum wage, would only [...]
Apple continues to squeeze suppliers in China by switching its supply chain away from Foxconn. Petragon will produce Apple’s new low-cost iPhone after the supplier accepted thinner profits, the Wall Street Journal reports. In a global market controlled by a few multinational corporations like Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung, suppliers are often pitted against each other [...]
Steve Jobs grew up in a country with a firm economic structure, one with schools and factories. He then helped destroy the structure that empowered his creative genius. In the video above, Steve Jobs attributes failure to lack of trying, a meme that was all too commonly repeated by Teapublicans during the 2012 campaign. Mr. [...]
House Republicans are pushing bill H.R. 1406, which will force workers to lend their overtime pay to their company at no interest from their overtime pay. Crooks & Liars reports that companies will keep overtime pay and workers will have to exchange it for time off, except that companies will not be required to grant [...]
The ideological difference between the two low-cost wholesalers is outstanding and the marketplace has proven Costco right. Costco experienced a whooping 8% in annual sales growth while WalMart only experienced an anemic 1.2%. The average wage at Costco is $17/hour versus $10 at WalMart, according to Harvard Business Review. Costco continues to pay living wages [...]
Why is the GOP is going after the Fair Labor Standards Act? We all know that the working poor need a higher minimum wage and their right to overtime pay so that they don’t need to work 55 to 80 hours per week (depending on the state) to stick their heads above the poverty line. [...]
Bill Black, law and economics professor at the University of Missouri Kansas City (UMKC), former Executive Director of the Institute for Fraud Prevention from 2005-20007, and author of The Best Way To Rob a Bank is To Own One, joins the Real News Network to discuss the inhumane conditions that led to the death of [...]