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Regulation is such a dirty word these days that it's easy to forget what a big difference it can make in the lives of ordinary people.

Take, for instance, the Federal government's successful push to ban refund anticipation loans.

1. The government has collected less in taxes as a proportion of the economy in the past three years than it has in any three-year period since World War II, and tax rates are at historic lows.

Hattie Carthan Community Garden nyc.go

A Conversation with Rakim Brooks

A compromise has been reached on New York's living wage, and it is now estimated that it will help only 400-500 workers a year. Even the bill's opponents will tell you this legislation is no threat to their livelihood.

The Fairness for Struggling Students Act should apply not only to private student loans but to government student loans as well.

States are spending less money on public colleges than they did in the past. According to an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, adjusted for inflation, state support for public colleges and universities has fallen by about 26 percent per full-time student in the last 20 years.

Most Americans earn their bachelor's degrees at public universities, and it's easy to see why.

Adjusted for inflation, state support for each full-time public-college student declined by 26.1 percent from 1990 to 2010, forcing students and their families to shoulder more of the cost of higher education at a time when family incomes were largely stagnant, according to a report released on Monday by the think tank Demos.