Let them eat iPhones
Apple's lack of any sense of obligation to support American workers — indeed, the lack of any national loyalty at all — is appalling. Yet that’s not even the truly frightening part of the recent New York Times story. Most troubling is the broader, underlying narrative conveyed and ultimately encouraged by the story: there is nothing that America as a nation can or should do to alter the trajectory of events.
Cheap labor not the way for U.S. to attract investment
Our article on how German automakers treat their workers in the U.S. less well than those in Germany highlighted a critical national choice: create structures that help to level the playing field between management and labor, or surrender to the pernicious idea that nothing can or should be done to restrict an employer race to the bottom.
Cuomo to the 1 percent: here's a tax cut for Christmas
If you have an adjusted gross income of $1.8 million, for example, and file a joint tax return, New York's Andrew Cuomo has engineered annual tax savings for you of $27,280 in future years.
RD to immigration advocates: are there any limits?
Offered opportunity to describe in extended interviews how U.S. immigration should ideally be regulated, no concrete limitations put forward.
Open spaces, closed files
Wouldn't facility by facility information on operating costs, staffing, and level of use help New York City's Parks Dept. and outside observers assess whether there is equity in funding between and among parks as well as the related question of whether and to what extent to rely on private as opposed to public funding? Good luck getting the data.
NYC gov't staffing, 1980 to present
Peaks and valleys across agencies and across the decades.
Neither rain nor snow nor occupy...
...can keep Congress and the press from shortsightedly focusing on "balanced" budget reductions despite a stalled economy and both long-term and short-term experience with the folly of austerity. It's like one of those arguments where you may think you're making headway, but where you get to the end and you might as well have saved your breath. Can anything prevent Democrats from seeking to give up hard-won gains?
You don't get answers if you don't ask questions
A perennial conceit of much of the press is “we don’t make the news, we only report the news.” A just-released poll, however — revealing overwhelming support for greater income and wealth equality — underlines how much real news has been ignored by reporters preoccupied with centrism and compromise as all-weather solutions.
More U.S. kids in poverty than people in your state?
Unless you live in Cal., Tex., N.Y., or Fla., yes. Number of children in poverty, child poverty rate, and scope of race and ethic disparities all up.
Perils of incrementalism: the demise of the ACA's promise of affordable insurance for long-term care
The abandonment of the element of the Affordable Care Act that was designed to provide insurance against the staggering costs of long-term care, announced by the Obama administration last Friday, raises important questions about the wisdom of having a strategy of always going for a legislative "half a loaf," especially when doing so obliges you both to understate the real costs of dealing with problems and to oversell the promise and potential of your solutions.
Get updates
The latest on original reporting, data visualization, interviews, and more!