Media

The New York Times editorial was unequivocal: “the [New York City] Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio should unite behind this worthwhile bill” to ban the discriminatory practice of employment credit checks. After all, as the Times pointed out, “The worst of the recession is behind us, but the damage lives on for millions of Americans who are hobbled by bad credit… Does membership in the club of beleaguered borrowers inevitably make someone a risky hire or an unreliable employee? Hardly.

Today’s Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Professor Jean Tirole for his work in industrial organization, and how to best regulate such industries that are dominated by powerful firms, like finance and technology. It’s an important recognition of this work, because the economics profession has long relegated industrial organization, and the study of oligiopolistic markets, to a theory that, sure, it exists in practice— but who cares about practice?

Just a month before the election, voting rights have been on a wild ride. The Supreme Court began its term by reinstating voting restrictions in Ohio and North Carolina after federal appeals courts put these laws on hold for unfairly burdening voting rights, particularly for people of color.

Six years after America sank into the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s, the jobless rate has fallen to 5.9 percent, the lowest since July 2008. But one demographic group — African-American men — seems to be stuck in a permanent recession.

For decades, free high-school education helped strengthen the middle class and generate prosperity. So isn’t it time to extend the same thinking to college?

Deportations reached another record high last year. This is a striking development in light of the fact that illegal immigration and Border Patrol apprehensions have been falling for over a decade, and when — despite intransigence among some House Republicans — for several years there has been broad support for a fundamental restructuring of deportation policies.

Despite Friday’s unemployment rate dropping to 5.9 percent nationally, New York City is still home to the dead-end kids.

Half of the city’s 600,000 recent college graduates are either underemployed or out of work, according to New York Fed researchers.

Most of this 50 percent are working in jobs they are overqualified for — no college degree required — and that are often low-pay, part-time and without benefits. It’s a vast jobs wasteland out there for this Millennial generation. [...]

On Tuesday, Montgomery County Council unanimously enacted a public financing bill that will both encourage participation from small donors in the county and allow civic-minded individuals to run for county office without needing big contributions. Starting in 2015, the county will match small donations from in-county donors for candidates who opt in to the program, demonstrate local public support, and agree to accept only individual donations between $5 and $150.

When people like me write about the middle class, it has nothing to do with envy or class warfare—two shopworn epithets that should be retired from the political lexicon. The condition of the middle class—its size, income and self-confidence—reveals the extent to which economic growth increases opportunity. When the middle class is shrinking, when incomes of middle-class families are stagnating and when the heart of American society is losing hope in a better future, then the U.S. economy is in trouble. And so is the political system. [...]