Who to Blame for the Financial Crisis

Who to Blame for the Financial Crisis

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Cities, counties take back corporate tax breaks

In the January 2, 2010 article " Cities, counties take back corporate tax breaks ," Associated Press writer Don Babwin reports communities are fighting back against corporations with unfulfilled promises of job creation: CHICAGO – Cash-strapped communities have a message for corporations that promised jobs in return for tax breaks: A deal's a deal. As the economy sputters along, municipalities struggling to fix roads, fund schools and pay bills increasingly are rescinding tax abatements to companies that don't hire enough workers, that lay them off or that close up shop. At the same time, they're sharpening new incentive deals, leaving no doubt what is expected of companies and what will happen if they don't deliver. "We will roll out the red carpet as much as we can (but) they are going to honor the contract," said Brendon Gallagher, an alderman in DeKalb, Ill., where Target Corp. got abatements from the city, county, school district and other taxin...
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Inequality In U.S. Is Scarily High and Rising

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In June 2013, President Obama acknowledged that inequality is on the rise "even though the economy is growing." That growth hasn't helped many people who lost mid-wage jobs during the recession. Half of the U.S. population is now considered poor or low-income, and income has been redistributed from the middle class to the very rich faster under Obama than under George W. Bush. Income inequality in the U.S. is much worse than it is in other industrialized countries, where it is also an alarming problem, according to a new report from the International Labour Organization. The gap is only getting wider as the median wage continues to fall. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/inequality-us-_n_3421381.html
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Americans actually live in Russia, although they think they live in Sweden. And they would like to live on a kibbutz.

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In "The Lottery Mentality," a 2011 editorial in The New York Times , Chrystia Freeland explains that "Americans are mistaken about income inequality because of national self-confidence and the lottery effect." http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/21/rising-wealth-inequality-should-we-care/the-lottery-mentality Americans actually live in Russia, although they think they live in Sweden. And they would like to live on a kibbutz. This isn’t the set-up for some sort of politically incorrect Catskills stand-up joke circa 1960. It is the takeaway from a remarkable study by Michael Norton and Dan Ariely on how Americans think about income inequality. The right likes to argue that income inequality as an issue doesn’t win elections because Americans don’t begrudge the rich so much as they want to join them. The Norton and Ariely study suggests otherwise. Given a choice, the authors find, Americans would prefer to live in a society more equal than even highly egalitar...
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