The "Great" Recession? Gimme a Break

As Occupy Wall Street appears to slip below the cultural horizon, is it a sign that Americans are more accepting of the "New Normal" ?

Poorer Americans as the "middle class" shrinks further here

Robert Reich on the forgotten American worker - the economy is expanding incrementally, but paychecks aren't. Link here

The President depends on High Tech Industry supporters, but is this causing him to overlook potential abuses of the H1-B foreign worker visa for the purpose of replacing American high tech workers with lower paid staff recruited from oversees? Link here

Beyond the free market: Alex Gourevitch and Aziz Rana in Salon write:"Despite the ambiguity of their goals, the Occupy protests have made one point abundantly clear: The mainstream Democratic alternative is paltry stuff. For the most part, Democrats disagree that tax cuts and deregulation are the solution, and instead argue that the state should be used to guarantee equal opportunity. For instance, cheap, publicly available education, job training and affirmative action are all justified on the grounds that each American should have the skills to compete and the labor market should treat everyone equally.


"Yet, the two parties differ only on means, not ends. While Republicans profess a more abiding faith in a self-regulating economy, Democrats believe carefully tailored state interventions are needed to ensure equal opportunity.

"The question becomes: Equal opportunity for what? For both parties, opportunity basically means a market-oriented ideal where individuals are given the chance to fight over a limited supply of high-status jobs. As it turns out, the end that each party agrees on is largely same: the equal opportunity to become unequal." Article here