To hear a lot of people talk, you'd almost think that the government was giving away truckloads of money to enable the lowest income Americans to live it up without having to worry about such things as working or paying bills. You'd think that we didn't have problems with crushing poverty or food insecurity or a vastly underfunded social safety ( Read more... )

I've been reading Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, which is an intriguing exploration of the complexities of globalization and outsourcing. I'm not that far into it yet, but a paragraph from the first chapter jumped out at me. It's about Mr. Friedman's visit to Dalian, a city in northeastern China ( Read more... )

Now this is a cool idea. A company called Suitable Technologies is offering a completely mobile robotic device called the Beam that allows employees who work remotely to be "at the office ( Read more... )

For the first time in over four years, I'll no longer be self-employed after this week. Yes, that will probably surprise some people, but I was offered too good of an opportunity to pass up in a bad economy. I've decided to accept an offer from a travel website (not saying which one here, for obvious reasons -- yes, it is one that you all have ( Read more... )

In yet another example of how companies continue to be unfair to Americans looking for work in this crappy economy, I came across this little gem from the New York Times:

The Help-Wanted Sign Comes With a Frustrating AsteriskThe unemployed need not apply ( Read more... )

Another consequence of our over-the-top "law and order" society: one in four Americans has a criminal record, which disqualifies them from most employment. In some cases, such practices are illegal and in most, they are clearly discriminatory.

One bright spot is that at least the federal government recognizes the problem and runs special programs ( Read more... )