Fred Siegmund

Salary Sharing Taboos and the Memory of Gordie Howe

The title of the article reads “Salary-sharing taboo a big hurdle for pay equity.” No single bit of American pretension, vanity and egotism does more to harm the common cause of labor than pay secrecy. It harms more than pay equity; it lowers wages for all. The article cites a LinkedIn survey of a thousand […]

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Review: A Fighting Chance, by Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren’s latest book, Fighting Chance, has the label Political Science on the back cover, but librarians catalog it in biography. It is a little of both, but more the politics of banking and finance and her two-decade role in it. The first chapter does chronicle her growing up in Oklahoma in typical fashion for […]

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Ted Cruz and the IRS

Recently the Washington Post ran an editorial by Catherine Rampell discussing the Ted Cruz proposal to get rid of the IRS. [“Cruz’s Anti-IRS illogic,” Washington Post, 3/24/15] “Imagine abolishing the IRS” he tells his audience, where they “have more words in the IRS code than there are words in the bible.” Congress makes the tax law, […]

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Retire a Millionaire

I was speaking with a financial advisor but not at his office. It was at a party where there was lots of informal chit-chat over a nip of the grape. One thing he said to me and some others standing close by was meant as humor, a joke. It was “People sometimes ask me, How […]

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Review: Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Capital in the Twenty-First Century by French economist Thomas Piketty studies and examines the only controversial question in economics: the distribution of income and wealth. It studies distribution between capital and labor, among wage earners, among capital owners, between countries and over several hundred years. Few authors of economics books more than 500 pages with […]

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Eroding Returns in College Education

A good financial return for a college education should not be assumed as it once was. Chances remain high that college will pay, but changes in tuition and labor markets are lowering the return and raising the risk it might not pay for all graduates. Higher and higher tuition, delays finding jobs and the course […]

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Review: “Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt” by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is back with another book on Wall Street just four years after The Big Short, his last book on the abuses of Wall Street. Flash Boys tells the story of new abuses and how and why the old stock market has disappeared. Back in 2002 eighty-five percent of stock trades traded on the […]

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A Union of Northwestern University Football Players

On March 26th, the Chicago regional office of the National Labor Relations Board (“the Board”) agreed that 55 scholarship football players of Northwestern University can be represented by a union for purposes of collective bargaining. The 24 page ruling relies on relevant citations from the National Labor Relations Act as amended. The player’s petition argued […]

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McCutcheon v. FEC: Free Speech, Picketing and Bribery

The phrasing in the First Amendment to the U.S Constitution intends to guarantee the right of free speech and the right to peaceably assemble to redress grievances. The Supreme Court just decided that campaign finance laws that limit contributions to candidates limit free speech. In this case known as McCutcheon v. FEC it might be […]

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Inflation and the Buying Power of the Minimum Wage

President Obama has proposed an increase in the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour that may or may not be considered and passed by Congress. The last increase in the minimum wage was July 24, 2009, when it went up to $7.25 an hour. Even though inflation rates are low, a wage fixed for almost […]

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Review: The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America

Some believe Americans live in a new age of decline. In The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, author George Packer invites readers to test their views on decline while reading 430 pages of journalistic narrative on a selection of Americans and their activities from the last twenty-five years. The book does not […]

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The Simple Economics of High Occupancy (HOT) Lanes

Some cities and states are experimenting with tolls lanes on congested commuter highways to cut commute times. The new lanes are called HOT lanes, which stands for High Occupancy Toll. Highway officials argue the new policy gives a choice to crawl along in traffic or get in the fast lane. State Department of Transportation officials […]

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Don’t Be Fooled About Detroit’s Bankruptcy

The media coverage of Detroit’s bankruptcy promotes Governor Snyder’s plan to default on Detroit debt and pension contracts by repeating the debt total over and over. Detroit has debt of $18 billion, $18 billion, $18 billion. Repeating the amount helps dramatize the notion there is no choice except to yield to terms handed down by […]

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Fred Siegmund

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