The world’s investment leader, Warren Buffett, once said, “It’s only when the tide goes out that you realise who has been swimming naked”. When the banking system hit the rocks and the tide turned, the naked were caught disrobed.

Similarly, sometimes it takes a pitch-black economy to reveal who and what in the financial firmament really shines. It is only when darkness falls that one can see the stars twinkle. The moonlight coming from the otherwise bleak sky of the financial world, has been made possible thanks to honest taxpayers, who are transfusing precious blood to the currently bleeding banks.

An admirable corrective to the economic 'happy talk' coming out of the Trump regime.

Do recent political events in Italy herald another global economic crisis?

You are more likely to be killed at work than in a terrorist attack or plane crash. On average, thirteen workers die on the job every day. Most of these deaths are completely preventable. And yet the complex web of state and federal agencies and insurance programs meant to protect worker’ssafety and incomes are persistently under-funded and under attack.

The problem is that we can't just vote socialism into existence. Even if Sanders were elected president--and the bipartisan U.S. political system has and will continue to deploy every trick to make sure he's not--most of the wealth by far that could be redistributed is the private property of the 1 Percent.

That's the biggest reason we can't seem to stop climate change: the laws of capitalism say we can't stop oil companies from pumping out their oil, even if it destroys our species.

In Chicago this coming weekend, 2,500 rank-and-file activists, from the U.S. and abroad, will be meeting under the banner of Labor Notes to celebrate the revival of union militancy, including recent strike victories like the West Virginia teachers’ walk-out.

This conference—nineteenth of its sort since 1981—will be the largest gathering ever hosted by the now Brooklyn-based labor education project. Labor Notes staff train shop stewards and local officers, promote cross-union networks, and publish books and newsletters about union democracy and reform.

German metalworkers’ union IG Metall made international headlines last month after a twenty-four-hour “warning strike” compelled employers to sign a deal with the union giving its members the right to a twenty-eight-hour workweek.

State-level reforms for universal health care are laudable; they are not single payer.

Two states with a long history of state-based healthcare reform efforts, California and New York, are hard at work organizing for state bills labeled as single payer healthcare plans. Other states are moving in that direction too. This raises questions by single payer advocates: Can states create single payer healthcare systems? Does state-level work help or hinder our goal of National Improved Medicare for All (NIMA)?

During his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump exclaimed that the “war on American Energy” had ended and that “we are now an exporter of energy to the world.”