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Requiring people to show government issued photo identification in order to vote is unnecessary, discriminatory and has the potential to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of people.

For years now, we've been hearing that single parenthood is at the root of American poverty. If unmarried mothers would just settle down, the argument went, then our national poverty rate would go down, too. But new data show how wrong that argument is. Half of poor parents raising kids under 18 are now married, according to the report just released from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The poverty rate for married couples with children is going up, having increased 47 percent since 2000.

It’s the biggest shopping season on the calendar and retail companies are expecting hundreds of billions of dollars in sales. To meet this demand, retail pulls in around 600,000 seasonal workers on top of a workforce of 15 million.  This massive work force is majority female and fairly diverse – people of color comprise about 30 percent of workers in the sector.  It is also low-paid. 

By 2020, more than one-quarter of U.S. workers will be working low-wage jobs, not making enough money to keep a family of four out of poverty.

Walmart is by far the nation's largest retailer, with 2.2 million employees (the next largest is Target with 365,000), and its low wages have set the tone for a nation where the majority of jobs created in the so-called economic recovery pay less than $13.83 per hour.

Will you drive on over to your local Wal-Mart on Black Friday morning, only to find yourself confronted by capitalism's misdeeds, in the form of protesting Wal-Mart workers demanding something approaching a living wage? Here is a list of planned Wal-Mart Black Friday actions around the country.

NEW YORK - Just in time for Black Friday, when consumers rely on scores of retail workers to help them navigate the stressful holiday season, a new study released today by national public policy center Demos, Retail’s Hidden Potential: How Raising Wages Would Benefit Workers, the Industry and the Economy Overall, examines the economic benefits of a wage increase for large chain retail workers on consumer experiences, businesses, fa

How and why large financial institutions damage the middle class even if there is no financial crisis.

If Walmart and other major retailers would just raise worker wages to a livable level, not only would 700,000 people be lifted out of poverty, but the economy and retail sales would grow. That's the conclusion of a new report by Demos' Catherine Ruetschlin, anyway. And her argument has backup in today's retail industry: