Media

Critics of the fast-food worker strikes don't just make the mistake of relying on industry-backed research to argue that higher wages are unaffordable (see Jillian Kay Melchior's slanted and shallow piece in NRO) and ignore the real-live examples of U.S. states that have raised their minimun wage with no adverse effects (like Washington). 

In the absence of federal leadership, states are taking the lead in the fight against climate change. Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley recently released an ambitious climate change plan that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020, generate $1.6 billion in economic benefits, and support more than 37,000 jobs. The plan has over 150 initiatives that touch on nearly every aspect of the economy from transportation to agriculture to zero waste.

The city of Richmond, California, has taken bold action to pull the community out of the depths of the residential real estate crisis. Its approach -- using eminent domain to forestall foreclosures -- promises relief for Richmond homeowners. But it also is a template for cities across the land suffering from their own fiscal crises and facing bankruptcy.

One of the sorriest American myths these days is that getting into enormous debt will secure a better financial future for today’s students.

Not only is debt a manacle for future generations, it’s not good for the country at large — a $4 trillion burden on future earnings and wealth.

When politicians make a stink about student loan rates, they’re smelling a rotten fish, but not the most obvious one. They should be berating colleges and our own broken higher education-funding system for not providing more grants — and less loans.

Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the labor market has built up little steam over the course of the year, with July job gains that put us on course to reach full employment in 2020. For young adults, waiting another 7 years just to get on track means forbearing dreams of income and asset building over a lifetime and instead settling for opportunities that make it possible to just get by.

North Carolina lawmakers are dangerously constricting access to the ballot, torpedoing years of progressive expansion.

Once upon a time, it was a given that Republicans were the friends of business. Lately, though, the picture has grown far murkier. While Congressional Republicans are still the dutiful servants of business on any number of issues, such as their endless campaign to gut Dodd-Frank, the past five years has seen a growing chasm between big business and the new libertarian populist right that commands the heart of the Republican Party. 

The fast food worker strikes have become an occasion to repeat age-old arguments that raising pay for low-skilled jobs will result in fewer such jobs. In effect, the advice to fast-food workers—many of whom work full-time but still live in poverty—is to endure low wages because lousy pay is better than no pay.