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College graduates with student loans accumulate less lifetime wealth than their debt-free classmates, according to a study released this month.

About two-thirds of the 20 million people who attend college every year borrow money to do so. We’ve heard a lot about how growing educational debt loads — the average student borrower now graduates owing $26,600 — can be a detriment to someone just starting out in life, and to the health of the broader American economy. Student debt loads are crowding out other things that young people historically spend money on, forcing them to delay marriage, home ownership, auto and other big-ticket purchases, investments in start-up businesses, and retirement savings.

The controversy over an unpaid intern listing at LeanIn.org, the new nonprofit created by Sheryl Sandberg, has been welcome, because it spotlights a growing consensus that unpaid internships are bad. All sorts of organizations will think twice after this episode about paying people nothing to do work. 

Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are facing heat for handing over their customers’ call records to the government. But it isn’t the only way that these phone companies are frustrating their customers – they also waste time and money by extending their prerecorded voicemail instructions.

Sluggish sales at major retailers paint a grim picture of an uneven economic recovery that has low- and moderate-income households reluctant to buy anything beyond the bare necessities.

Three years out from the worst recession in generations, many Americans are still contending with unemployment or stagnant wages that limit their disposable income. This group has also been disproportionately squeezed by the restoration of the payroll tax and rising gas prices, economists say.

“Whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I’ll use it,” announced President Obama in last month’s landmark economic address in Galesburg Illinois. Now consensus seems to be building around one thing President Obama can indeed use his executive powers to do to boost hundreds of thousands of workers into the middle class: raise their wages.

For decades, the dictators of the Middle East basically gave the following rap to any westerner who questioned their tyrannical rule:

You may not like us, but we're better than the alternatives. We're better than a democratic government that will inevitably be hijacked by Islamists. And we're better than the sectarian or tribal civil war that will erupt if we don't keep a lid on things. 

In the wake of the Detroit bankruptcy, there has been no shortage of finger pointing, blame, and calls for “shared sacrifice.” On a personal note, I love hearing the phrase “shared sacrifice” because what usually follows is a lot of sacrifice that is rarely shared. And, the case in Detroit is no exception.

We hear a lot that college "isn't for everybody," but this phrase is typically applied to working class kids—with the suggestion that we should expand opportunities to get vocational training that leads to solid blue-collar jobs. 

Of course, though, there are young people across the class spectrum who may not want to spend four years sitting in classes and doing piles of homework. And as I wrote yesterday, the financial downsides of college are higher now than ever.