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The political history of race in America will record the Obama era as a breakthrough moment and a huge step forward. But any economic racial history will tell a nearly opposite story: Under the first black president, African-Americans have lost much of the wealth they built up over previous decades. The main culprit has been an ongoing foreclosure crisis that Washington has done very little to stop, even as it has shoveled trillions in nearly free loans to big banks who have enjoyed record profits. 

In 2012, no one, it seemed, could afford to sit on the sidelines. Having decried super PACs as "a threat to democracy," Obama and his advisers flip-flopped and blessed the creation of one devoted specifically to reelecting the president. Soon, they were everywhere, at the local, state, and federal levels.

Tomorrow, the public interest will take a loss and the largest banks will chalk up a win.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, you should be able to agree that the IRS needs to be rigorously neutral in its oversight of the nonprofit sector. 

The retail and restaurant sector – two primary employers of low-wage workers – receive larger public subsidies than the fossil fuel industry in the form of public assistance for the working poor.

Fast food workers have organized a series of one-day strikes in cities across the country, calling for better pay and union representation. 

This week has delivered two economic surprises that illustrate the right way and the wrong way to respond to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.

First, the euro zone economy shrank more than expected in the past three months, moving France back into a recession. That's what happens when you implement an austerity policy that serves to undermine economic demand. 

Previous research has found that the majority of the jobs added to the economy since the end of the recession pay low wages. Middle-wage and high-wage jobs haven’t seen nearly the same rate of growth, meaning that the economy has traded comfortable jobs for those that merely allow workers to scrape by.

At the very least, argues a recent report from Demos, the American government owes employees on its payroll a livable wage. Demos, a research and policy center focused on economic stability, defines low-wage work as “a job paying $12 an hour or less, equivalent to an annual income of about $24,000 for a full-time worker. Nationwide, a family of four trying to subsist on $24,000 a year hovers near the poverty level.