Best Business Commentary

The future? For workers, not so bright.

A growing economy isn’t enough to raise living standards any more, says David Leonhardt in The New York Times. “We now seem to need a major boom” for workers to see any “solid pay increases.” But looking at August’s negative employment numbers, “the odds are probably closer to one in two” that we’re entering a recession. And our problems are bigger than wages: college graduation rates are stagnant, health care is increasingly unaffordable, and our children are unhealthier. Let’s hope all this bad economic news at least makes “the larger problem harder to ignore.”

A losing package

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Is the convenience of “all-you-can-eat” media package worth the price? asks David Lazarus in the Los Angeles Times. When you subscribe to combined voice, video, and Internet service from phone and cable companies, you open a “potentially significant threat” to your privacy. Read the fine print: A typical package from your “leading telecom” gives the company—“and possibly government officials”—the right to see who you call, what you watch, and everything you do online. And to sell that information to marketers. “Internet, TV, phone—it’s hard to imagine a more revealing glimpse of your private life.”