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Economy

Assembly line workers put final touches on 2018 Ford Expedition SUV at the Ford Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, Ky

African-Americans and the driving forces in the American auto industry

By Editors' Choice

By Herb Boyd — When Africans were forcibly brought to America, they worked at the points of production. And whether as a multitude of enslaved workers on small farms, large plantations, in mines or elsewhere, black laborers were vital cogs in creating wealth for their owners. On a national scale, enslaved black laborers provided a workforce vital for the development of the American republic by bringing wage-free economic success and…

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Military Recruitment

The student debt crisis is fueling the poverty draft

By Commentaries/Opinions

With the cost of higher education skyrocketing, many young Americans from economically struggling communities across the South and elsewhere have turned to the military as a solution for student debt. By Benjamin Barber, Facing South — Earlier this month, after a United States drone strike in Iraq killed 10 Iranian military leaders including the country’s top security and intelligence commander, elevated tensions between the U.S. and Iran raised alarms about…

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Sen. Elizabeth Warren

2020 will be a litmus test for capitalism

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Rana Foroohar, The Washington Post — The two most interesting questions in politics at the moment are whether Elizabeth Warren will be the Democratic candidate in 2020 and whether President Trump will still be around to duke it out with her. Neither is certain, of course, but Warren’s ascendance already guarantees that the 2020 election will come down, as elections often do, to a fight between old and new. Or, in this case,…

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A job fair in Washington DC in August. In April 2019, when the overall unemployment rate was 3.6%, the white unemployment rate was 3.1% while the black unemployment rate was 6.7%.

Hollow boom: why black Americans feel left out of US’s robust economy

By Commentaries/Opinions

Unemployment rate tells a different story about the economy when race is considered, even when job numbers are strong. By Lauren Aratani, The Guardian — What I’ve done for African Americans in two and a half years, no president has been able to do anything like it,” Donald Trump boasted in August, the latest in a series of statements in which he has claimed to be the best president for…

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Barack Obama

Barack Obama’s Biggest Mistake

By Commentaries/Opinions

It rhymes with ‘schneo-liberalism.’ It was an economic disaster and a political dead end. It was an economic disaster and a political dead end. In the early days of his presidency, Barack Obama had the power to overhaul the economy, but instead he focused on smaller, less effective fixes. By Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times — In 2009, Barack Obama was the most powerful newly elected American president in a generation. Democrats controlled the House and, for about five months in the second half of the year, they enjoyed a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate. For the first six months of his presidency, Obama had…

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Trump’s Trade War and the Emerging Corporatist-Fascist State

Trump’s Trade War and the Emerging Corporatist-Fascist State

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Anthony DiMaggio, Counter Punch — President Donald Trump’s fit over China speaks to the rise of neofascism in American politics, at a time when neither Congress nor the courts are showing any interest in rolling back presidential power. Trump’s unique brand of neofascism first emerged in the form of his attempt to crack down on journalistic critics for “treason,” and via the onset of his white ethno-nationalist, which he declared via…

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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg speak during the Business Roundtable (BRT) CEO Innovation Summit in Washington, D.C., on December 6, 2018. Since its inception, BRT has been at the forefront of corporate resistance to pro-consumer, pro-union legislative efforts.

A Bunch of CEOs Want to Fix Capitalism. You Can’t Fix Anything Built on Slavery.

By Commentaries/Opinions, Reparations

By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout — Anyone who cracked open the business pages of the major papers on Monday morning was confronted by an avalanche of self-congratulation from the CEO caste and its idolaters. The Business Roundtable (BRT) — a large cohort of massive businesses that has been bending the economy to its will since 1972 — announced that it is “rewriting how it views the purpose of a corporation,” according to The Washington…

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