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At Demos, we are working for an America where we all have an equal say and an equal chance. The slaying of Trayvon Martin has reminded us that we have not yet achieved an America where we all have equal chance to merely live. Trayvon Martin was denied that chance because his identity was one that our society marks, in countless ways each day, as fearsome.

And you thought the government didn’t have a jobs program. It does. The problem is that the pay and benefits are lousy, and in many cases the working conditions ain’t so great either.

Employer-sponsored plans such as 401(k)s are workers' best hope for a secure retirement. Critics of the 401(k) system contend that the plans weren't designed to be the foundation of a secure retirement and should be scrapped in favor of something tailor-made, while supporters of the system say it just needs fine-tuning. While regulators, academics and the financial industry tussle over the best way to get everyone to retirement, investors have to keep saving as much as possible and, just as importantly, keep expenses low.

Ian Ayres of Yale University has the 401(k) marketplace fuming.

At Demos, we are working for an America where we all have an equal say and an equal chance. The slaying of Trayvon Martin has reminded us that we have not yet achieved an America where we all have equal chance to merely live. Trayvon Martin was denied that chance because his identity was one that our society marks, in countless ways each day, as fearsome. This fear-based animus towards young African American men is so pervasive in our society that a jury found this fear to be reasonable -- so reasonable that it was justifiable grounds for his killing.

Thirty seven. That's how many attempts House Republicans have made to strike down the Affordable Care Act. Most of the attempts gave been focused on dismantling the law as a whole, and while the current version is not as robust as Obama's original proposals, the law has survived extensive attacks. 

Employers don't want to look at the resumes of unemployed people. In fact, they don't even want those resumes sent to them.

Some employers will actually do whatever it takes — without doing anything illegal — to prevent the unemployed from applying for positions at their company.

How financial market practices not only risk catastrophic systemic failure like 2008, they constitute a massive extraction of value from the real economy by the financial sector.

Over the past decade or two, top transnational corporations -- including Apple, GE, and Google -- have figured out how to sidestep national tax collection systems, depriving governments of billions of dollars in revenues.