Media

The Aspen Institute hosted an event today on the familiar challenge of closing the skills gap. The people at Aspen, including Melody Barnes, have some good ideas on how to do this -- and also some serious funding from JP Morgan Chase, which has a major initiative on closing the skills gap.

President Obama calling economic inequality the premier challenge of our time is notable for two reasons: first, he is acknowledging the weakening of the America middle class as one of the greatest threats to America's future. But perhaps more telling, he is making this declaration at THEARC - a community center in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.

NEW YORK -- In response to the final, approved version of the Volcker Rule, Demos Senior Fellow Wallace Turbeville, a former investment banker and the author of Demos' recent Volcker Rule explainer and The Detroit Bankruptcy report, released the following statement: 

Quick: What federal expense costs more than food stamps and unemployment insurance combined—and nearly as much as Medicare? No, it's not Medicaid. 

In November, Congress failed to renew the 2009 stimulus provision allocating additional funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  This removed a much-needed $5 billion from an already underfunded public program tasked with keeping 47 million Americans from going hungry. 

Here’s a policy idea that should be as uncontroversial as they get: America should stop doing business with chronic lawbreakers. If a company repeatedly exposes their employees to dangerous working conditions that have triggered serious OSHA penalties, we should think twice before signing another contract with that company to do work for the federal government. If a contractor can’t bother to pay the minimum wage and follow other basic employment laws, we can surely find someone else to run government call centers and carry out public construction projects.

There's a lot of speculation about how the Affordable Care Act is likely to play out in coming months and years. But lately few voices are pushing the point that Obamacare is likely to spur the economy -- both in the near and long term. 

In earlier times, before the dawn of modern American prosperity, it was common for hard pressed families to take in boarders. Watch some old movies if that era has slipped your mind. Then good times arrived, and renting out rooms to survive was no longer a widespread imperative. Images of the quirky boarding house were supplanted in the media by the sprawling suburban home or spacious urban apartment.