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By offering low-fee checking accounts, Walmart dares to go where most big banks won't. Few major financial institutions are willing to give lower-income Americans checking accounts these days -- without exorbitant fees.

But, unlike the big banks, Walmart really needs low-income customers.

Last week, I had the honor to testify in the Senate on Demos' core mission: the intersection of economic and political inequality.

Today is National Voter Registration Day. Almost 2,000 partners around the country—student groups, educational institutions, unions, faith groups, civic leagues, libraries, worker centers, and elections agencies—are promoting opportunities for individuals to register to vote. Volunteers will spend hundreds of hours doing face-to-face outreach, technology will help voters find registration drives or, if available, register online, and tens of thousands of voters are expected to register to vote in a single day.

On Sept. 21, an estimated crowd of 100,000 people will flood the streets of Midtown Manhattan to march together on a single issue: climate change. The People’s Climate March, taking place two days before the UN’s global summit on climate, is the culmination of 6 months of planning and outreach by a growing coalition, ranging from labor unions to racial justice and indigenous organizations to tried-and-true environmental groups. 

The most accurate threshold to enter the rarefied top 1% of wealthholders, $7,880,400, is almost three times as high as the Census estimates. 

If it's hard for the current seniors to retire because of student debt, imagine the struggles the current generations will face.

The New York Times recently ran a piece highlighting the growing impact of student debt among older Americans, including the challenge of paying down debt on a fixed income and the increasing number of Americans having their Social Security checks garnished to service defaulted student loans.

While the de Blasio administration and the City Council work through the details of a bill that would prohibit employers from reviewing the credit histories of potential hires, liberal advocates are pushing for passage of the strongest possible version of the legislation.

When the Senate went to college, they paid an average of just over $11,443. If they attended the exact same institutions today, they’d pay an average of $32,279.

Fewer American high school students are working summer jobs and part-time jobs than a decade ago, and that will likely mean lower wage-earning capacity in their futures, research indicates. In 2000, about 34 percent of high school students age 16 and older held jobs, but that share had fallen to 18 percent by 2012, data from the National Center for Education Statistics indicate.