economy

Warning! Alert! Gloom, despair, and agony on all of us! The end of life as we know it! Not really, but that’s what they’d like you to think.

A new survey shows that despite the tough economy, many of the nation's largest churches are thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff.

In an ominous sign for charities, Americans say they will pull back on their giving in the coming year.

A recent poll from the Wells Fargo/Gallup quarterly survey shows that U.S. small business owners are growing "increasingly pessimistic" as the new year approaches, with 21 percent expecting to decrease their workforces in the next 12 months to a level not seen since Aug. 2003.

What’s the "fiscal cliff" that's been so much in the news lately? We should take a closer look, or, come January, we may be asking ourselves "What happened?" when our taxes go up a couple of thousand dollars and the economy heads into another recession -- as some are predicting.

A big part of the difficulty in preventing a painful trip off the fiscal cliff is a fundamental misunderstanding of what "trillion" means.

Many rich people have left Britain to avoid the 50 percent income tax. In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than 1 million pounds. That number fell to 6,000 after then-prime minister Gordon Brown introduced the new top rate.

As long as people envy the successful and wealthy, as long as they feel entitled to other people's income, as long as they think wrong decisions should be subsidized by government, they won't make right decisions because they have no incentive.

The recession continued to affect how much Americans gave to charity last year, and the triple whammy of Superstorm Sandy, a national election and the looming fiscal cliff may cut how much we donate in the crucial final month of 2012, experts say.