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When I was 18, I spent a year and change flipping burgers in one of those restaurants where customers eat from a tray balanced across their car windows. It was one of the three jobs I held at the time, affording a simple budget and enough left over to save up to go to college after a couple of years. I put in hard hours for my employer and it eventually worked out just fine for me. It also makes for a nice story, but one that is embarrassingly dated.

Thousands of fast food workers plan to walk off the job in 100 U.S. cities today, a major escalation in labor’s strongest-ever challenge to an industry that’s become ever more central to the present and future of U.S. work. One year after a surprise work stoppage by 200 New York City fast food workers, two questions raised by that first-of-its-kind walkout have already been answered: Could workers sustain and grow their numbers in the months after returning to the job?

Low wages are not just keeping workers in poverty, they are also holding back the economy by weakening consumer demand and keeping employers from realizing the benefits that accompany investments in the work force. Retail and fast food companies that pay poverty wages sabotage their own bottom lines and the health of the American economy, but a raise for the lowest paid would have benefits that extend to workers, consumers, and employers across industries.

Progressives are starting to worry that President Obama may be more talk than walk when it comes to raising the minimum wage. Again, on Wednesday, the president said, "It's well past the time to raise a minimum wage that, in real terms right now, is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office."

Trust in government has almost been never been lower among Americans, and the botched rollout of Obamacare has made things even worse. But maybe that's not such a big deal.  

The largest city in American history to file for bankruptcy protectionis officially bankrupt.

The bill for decades of Detroit's financial decline has now come due.

A federal judge's ruling approving the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history Tuesday sets the stage for an epic legal battle over who will be asked to help pick up the tab, including bond investors, retired city workers, city vendors, state taxpayers, or Wall Street bankers.

The White House has offered “no response” to a months-old call from congressional Democrats to bypass Congress and use executive action to raise workers’ wages, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus told Salon Tuesday afternoon.

New research illustrates ways in which the current economic difficulties of African American households are compounded even further by a legacy of discriminatory policies that have left African Americans with significantly fewer assets and lower rates of homeownership than white households.