Author: Stable Genius

I am the very model of a Stable Genius Liberal.

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart

Costco’s average pay, for example, is $17 an hour, 42 percent higher than its fiercest rival, Sam’s Club. And Costco’s health plan makes those at many other retailers look Scroogish. One analyst, Bill Dreher of Deutsche Bank, complained last year that at Costco “it’s better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder.” Mr. Sinegal begs to differ. He rejects Wall Street’s assumption that to succeed in discount retailing, companies must pay poorly and skimp on benefits, or must ratchet up prices to meet Wall Street’s profit demands. Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, he said. And Costco’s customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers’ expense. “This is not altruistic,” he said. “This is good business.”

RINO Hunters Fire Warning Shots At Republican Senate Candidates

RINO Hunters Fire Warning Shots At Republican Senate Candidates

Tea Party Express has a history of upsetting the Republican establishment. The group backed O’Donnell’s Delaware Senate run in 2010 and got behind Mourdock’s primary challenge against Lugar this year. Kremer said it was “way too early to make any decisions on what races we will be involved in during the 2014 cycle,”

The Tea Party has been more successful at getting moderate Dems elected in red states than the DLC.

Revenge of the Reality-Based Community

Revenge of the Reality-Based Community

At least a few conservatives now recognize that Republicans suffer for epistemic closure. They were genuinely shocked at Romney’s loss because they ignored every poll not produced by a right-wing pollster such as Rasmussen or approved by right-wing pundits such as the perpetually wrong Dick Morris. Living in the Fox News cocoon, most Republicans had no clue that they were losing or that their ideas were both stupid and politically unpopular. I am disinclined to think that Republicans are yet ready for a serious questioning of their philosophy or strategy.

Bruce Bartlett is attempting to pull the right back to reality. I wish him luck.

Only 3% of the very rich are entrepreneurs

Only 3% of the very rich are entrepreneurs

According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate. Only 3.6 percent of taxpayers in the top .1% were classified as entrepreneurs based on 2004 tax returns. A 2009 Kauffman Foundation study found that the great majority of entrepreneurs come from middle-class backgrounds, with less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs coming from very rich or very poor backgrounds

As someone who spent a few years working on a portfolio management system used to manage risk for high net worth clients, this doesn’t surprise me.

Robert Reich: Why BP Isn’t a Criminal

Robert Reich: Why BP Isn’t a Criminal

robertreich:

I’m appalled by the carelessness and indifference of the BP executives responsible for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that killed eleven people on April 20, 2010, and unleashed the worst oil spill in American history.
But it defies logic to make BP itself the criminal. Corporations aren’t people. They can’t know right from wrong. They’re incapable of criminal intent. They have no brains. They’re legal fictions — pieces of paper filed away in a vault in some bank.
Holding corporations criminally liable reinforces the same fallacy that gave us Citizen’s United

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To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there’s more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of… Continue reading Untitled

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after decades in which right-wingers have attacked long-established institutions — Social Security, progressive taxation, unemployment insurance — as “socialism”, a lot of young people now believe them, and think that this “socialism” thing really isn’t so bad. Socialism! – NYTimes.com