Bob CollinsAs the housing crisis eases, have we learned anything? Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Tag: Economy
The media buy into the National Retail Federation’s holiday hype. Read more →
Walmart employees who protest their wages will probably lose their jobs. That seems to be just fine with a lot of people who take these sorts of things personally Read more →
Why Minnesota works and Wisconsin doesn’t, the band of brothers who stick up for a first-grader, the woman behind the hockey microphone, the B-17 flyover in Green Bay, and why Dilbert’s creator wanted his father to die. Read more →
This sign at a Walmart store in Canton, Ohio is either: (a) Proof that Walmart doesn’t pay its employees enough to make a decent living or: (b) Proof that Walmart cares about its employees. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says the idea for the food collection tubs, which are in an employees-only area, originated at the Read more →
Last month’s sudden — and somewhat mysterious — closing of Jerabek’s Bakery in Saint Paul apparently will be followed by a sudden — and equally mysterious — reopening. Read more →
If Thanksgiving is going to be just another day to go shopping, do we really need to have it off from work anymore? Read more →
I’d love to put my arm around the people of International Falls and tell them everything is going to be alright after the big layoff at the paper mill there. History tells a different story, though. Jennifer Vogel’s story about the impact of the plant’s sale and layoffs is like a walk back in time. Read more →
The issue nobody will campaign on, what does Saint Paul have against Burlington Coat Factory, a fantasy world with real cash, the overpaid Minnesota athletes, and ballet at the World Trade Center. Read more →
About three dozen people in Duluth are being tossed out of work because the rest of us aren’t drinking enough milk. Kemps announced today it’s closing its Franklin Foods milk processing plant in the city next month. It’s not Obamacare. It’s not state taxes. It’s not the cows. It’s not, apparently, any of the things Read more →
Wired.com has noticed that Best Buy’s stock has tripled so far in 2013, suggesting that it’s back from its near-death experience. Read more →
It’s a rough year to be a business owner depending on tourists around Mille Lacs Lake.
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More than 22 percent of people living in Winona live below the federal poverty level. But exclude the number of college students in the college town and the number drops in half. The same is true for Mankato, another college town in the state. Read more →
The suit to stop the unionization of Minnesota home day-care operators, the unemployment rate drops in Minnesota, how those little memory slips might suggest Alzheimer’s, a man who wanted to testify against Whitey Bulger turns up dead, and the 76-year-old Milwaukee man who doesn’t feel “that bad” about killing a 13-year-old. Here’s today’s news conversation Read more →
Last night’s Frontline episode profiling two middle-class families who plunged into poverty through no particular fault of their own will do little to fix the problems faced by people who once were middle-class working Americans. But maybe it can help them feel less like failures. The Stanley family, one of the families profiled, is at Read more →