Media

America's huge income gaps are routinely described as inavoidable, thanks to large structural forces like globalization and technological change. Skilled labor has become worth more, unskilled labor is worth less, and that's that. 

Of course, though, we know that story is incomplete. Any number of public policies have also fanned inequality, like giving big tax breaks to the rich, and any number of policies could help close the income gap. 

Molly Ball has a long piece in The Atlantic on "The Fall of the Heritage Foundation and the Death of Republican Ideas." 

It’s their fifth strike in five months, but the workers of Good Jobs Nation didn’t seem the least bit tired this morning. Low-paid employees from the food courts of federal buildings, the gift shops of the Smithsonian, and others employed under federal contracts, concessions, and lease agreements donned matching t-shirts, picked up signs and marched to the White House.

Here’s an easy way for the government to save about $7 billion a year: Tighten the cap on the lavish salaries paid to executives at government contractors.

The cap is currently at $760,000 per contract per executive per year. That’s almost 15 times greater than the average household income – meaning that the federal government is helping to worsen the same income inequality President Obama has decried.

Courtney Shackleford is one of two entry-level employees at the Ben and Jerry’s in Washington, D.C.,’s Union Station, where she makes $8.25 an hour. Like many workers in America’s growing low-wage economy, she struggles to make ends meet: Between her pregnancy and her tuition fees at Trinity Washington University, Shackleford doesn’t make enough to cover basic expenses.

NEW YORK, NY – Following the Census Bureau’s release of poverty numbers verifying the country’s growing income gap, national public policy center Demos has published a new report illustrating how the federal government promotes inequality through its contracting policies.

Progressives both in and outside New York City are super excited about Bill de Blasio running City Hall. President Obama summed up those feelings in his endorsement yesterday of de Blasio, saying that his ideas for universal pre-K and affordable housing could make him a "great mayor." 

The U.S. is one of just a handful of democracies that places the duty of registration on the individual. 

Almost nobody seems to believe that Obamacare can be stopped under any realistic scenario given Democratic control of the Senate. And yet some House Republicans are willing to shut down the government—and possibly inflict a serious wound on their party—in pursuit of that chimerical goal. 

What's going on here? 

In fact, there is no one explanation. But here are my favorites in descending order.