David Cay Johnston on Work

"f we're going to fix this, and if we're going to get this manifestly unqualified criminal out of the White House, we have to do some work. We've got to diagnose the real underlying problem."

"residents of companies have gone from apologizing when they had to lay off workers to boasting of the riches... obtained through mass firings. ...nvestors ...owe their wealth ...to buying companies in deals that required destroying lives and careers"

"Fundamentally I argue in Free Lunch what's happened is, that a narrow segment of our society, large corporations which are immortal and amoral... They're necessary, they're important, they are great producers of wealth, but there's reasons that you want to regulate and control entities that are both amoral; their purpose is to maximize return to capital, which is a perfectly good thing to do, but they have no other obligation... hey are immortal. Unless they mess up in the marketplace they go on forever, unlike you and I... Unless we have rules that govern their conduct, they can do enormous damage to our society; and we have had a massive effort to collect subsidies from the government, to get rid of government employees and replace them with private sector workers who typically cost twice as much. So the federal work force has gone down... but the number of people who are paid by the federal government to work is going up; and the cost per... labor-hour is going up enormously. ...Unlike creating a bureaucracy ...empire-building bureaucrats, now you have a corporation that makes campaign contributions to encourage more of this ...and more contracts and... money flowing their direction."