David Obringer

posts and bio David Obringer

David Obringer is the special collections librarian and university archivist at Edinboro University, with occasional stints teaching in the history department.

Share the Wealth

by on February 21, 2019

There is a growing awareness that wealth inequality is directly affecting everyman. All politicians recite the pledge to help the middle class, republicans with more supply side solutions and democrats with tax plans.

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After Paycheck Taxes

by on June 6, 2017

I am a public employee. And what is worse, I work at a university. Mine is a public university sucking the lifeblood out of middle class Americans who, if they did not have to pay my salary, would otherwise have a much reduced tax burden.

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Mr. Trump and the Super-Person Tax Rate

by on May 9, 2017

Working people who felt forgotten or ignored by the government voted for a change. What used to be a fairly solid voting block has been split. Now the person who touted himself as the representative of working people will be judged on his actions.

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Tinkering with Taxes

by on October 10, 2016

The recent debacle Apple has found itself in brings attention to how companies skip from country to country to avoid taxes. In a previous essay, I questioned whether it should be legal to be a ‘right to work’ state. Lower costs draw corporations away from locations with strong unions and leave those workers behind to fend for themselves.

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Should Right to Work Laws be Legal?

by on April 26, 2016

If ever a law was mislabeled, it is the Right to Work legislation. This anti-union contagion has spread through state legislatures like an ever growing fungus (witness Wisconsin). Pro-business conservative nabobs are making the argument that more business means more jobs and Right to Work laws promote business development or relocation.

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French Workers Fight to Maintain 35-Hour Work Week

by on March 23, 2016

French workers are fighting to maintain their 35 hour work week. Adopted in February of 2000, as part of the platform of France’s Socialist Party, it became effective in 2002. Now, despite no ill effects in productivity the MEDEF, or the “Movement of the Enterprises of France,” which is an employer’s union, is pressing for a return to the past.

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