Media

In his HBO show last night, John Oliver had an astute segment on the growth of inequality in our democracy. His segment echoes our Stacked Deck analysis, hitting on American attitudes toward class and echoing our argument about the striking political saliency of repealing the estate tax. He even hits, albeit briefly, on the stark racial breakdown of economic elites.

After popularizing luxury groceries for the well-off, Whole Foods is trying to take the concept to the masses. But amid growing inequality and a sluggish recovery, those masses have gone missing.

Voter ID laws are back in the news this week after a group of college students joined a lawsuit challenging North Carolina's new restrictive rules.

Last week Maria Shriver posted a tribute to California's groundbreaking, decade-old paid family leave. In her Huffington Post column, she wrote:

Last month, IndexCreditCards.com asked, "Are you embarrassed by your credit card balances and credit score? " The question was prompted by a survey from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling that found three times more consumers being ashamed of their card balances than their weight. 

DALY: Our mismeasured economy. "Today's polarized debates about the role of government often boil down to a single issue: the size of government compared with the size of the overall economy, as measured in gross domestic product....But such comparisons are not very meaningful: The way we measure government’s role in the economy is limited, inaccurate and unrealistic....We make the case that, in at least four critical ways, this G.D.P.

Sharon Lerner, a senior fellow at the public policy organization Demos, has spent the past year interviewing a diverse sample of New Jersey employers about the effect of paid leave. Those who admitted they’d feared being deluged by workers abusing the policy said they’d learned such fears were unfounded. None of the employers in the survey reported that paid leave had negatively affected their company’s productivity, profitability, or turnover, and some reported improved morale.

Employers should pay their workers enough to live on and support their families.

There are few more important moments in a person’s life than when a family member needs care — whether a new baby is born or adopted or a parent, child or spouse falls seriously ill or has an accident.