Media

Are people better off than they were before the recession?

Walmart employees and their supporters have planned national protests today to demand an increase of their wages. Here is why the average American should support the workers’ demands.

We famously live an age of capital, where those who own businesses or other assets are prospering, while most people who rely on the value of their labor are doing terribly. 

President Barack Obama wants workers to make more money. Walmart and other low-wage employers also want to make more money.

They could both get what they want if the federal minimum wage goes up.

After decades of seeing their incomes shrink, those at the bottom of the economic ladder are starting to band together and fight back — and it’s one of the most important economic stories of our time.

It's hard to believe in the power of organized labor if you've grown up over the past thirty years, a period of steady union decline. Conventional wisdom hold that the new service economy is inherently hostile terrain for labor organizers and, more broadly, that Americans just aren't the joiners they used to be. (Lots of civil society institutions have withered, not just unions.)

President Obama met with the nation’s top financial regulators last week, to urge for rulings associated with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law passed more than three years ago. It was the first time the president convened a sit down with each regulator since 2011.

According to a White House statement, Obama “stressed the need to expeditiously finish implementing the critical remaining portions of Wall Street Reform to ensure we are able to prevent the type of financial harm that lead to the Great Recession from ever happening again.” [...]

The deep racial segregation of America's schools is such a difficult challenge because it is so driven by economics: Many families of color simply can't afford to live in white or mixed neighborhoods. Zoning rules also play a big role, with white communities often making it difficult to contruct more affordable multi-family apartment units.