Obama started Wednesday at the Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, N.J., where he attended a roundtable with small-business owners. He ended the day mingling with some of New York's wealthiest at the Greenwich Village townhouse of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Price of admission: $30,000.
NOW THAT Senator John F. Kerry has agreed to pay the taxes on his yacht (“Kerry will pay Mass. tax on R.I. yacht,’’ Page A1, July 28), the media should now play “gotcha’’ with all the Massachusetts drivers who register vehicles out of state. Better yet, maybe it’s time to look at all the businesses in the state that avoid paying their fair share of local, state, and federal taxes. I suggest starting with all the hospitals that are nonprofit organizations, but seem to make millions. It would make Kerry’s tax total seem like a drop in the ocean.
How can America's corporations so defy gravity? Ever adaptive, they have evolved a business model that enables them to make money even while the strapped American consumer has cut back on purchasing. For one thing, they are increasingly selling and producing overseas. General Motors is going like gangbusters in China, where it now sells more cars than it does in the United States. In China, GM employs 32,000 assembly-line workers; that's just 20,000 fewer than the number of such workers it has in the States. And those American workers aren't making what they used to; new hires get $14 an hour, roughly half of what veterans pull down.