Media

Housing prices are coming back and consumers—feeling flush now that their home equity is rebounding—are more confident than they've been in four years. The American middle class is finally getting back on its feet after a half decade of trauma, right? 

Well, not exactly. 

Progressive organizations in New York City and Washington, D.C. rail a good amount against big banks. But not enough of those organizations have cut themselves off from those "too-big-to-fail" institutions to join, say, the Amalgamated Bank (AB), a bank which does not have a history of scandals and scams that banks like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase do.

We've entered the new Gilded Age.

It’s hard enough for any specific anti-poverty policy to achieve its mission, let alone work in tandem with other policies to tackle a problem that tends to be complex and entrenched. That's why Washington State’s food stamp program is remarkable, and a candidate for national expansion, if only Congress could agree not to slash SNAP funds in the latest iteration of the Farm Bill. 

When you think about the problems with GDP, it’s likely you don’t think about Lady Gaga. But, in fact, how her work is captured and valued by national economic indicators is relevant to the beyond GDP conversation. We’ve written continuously about how GDP is not a complete measure of our economic activity. For one, GDP is unable to distinguish between good and bad spending.

You probably haven’t seen the terms of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal currently being negotiated by the Obama Administration. Unless you’re one of “600 trade ‘advisers,’ dominated by representatives of big businesses, who enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators” the deal is secret and we know its terms only through select leaks, according to Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.

The fight to raise wages for fast food workers has now spread to the American West, with employees of a Seattle Taco Bell walking off the job on Wednesday night, forcing the store to close. 

Workers at other fast food restaurants in the city walked off their jobs on Thursday. 

In the study Robert Hiltonsmith and I recently completed, we find that taxpayers underwrite nearly 2 million poorly-paid jobs through federal contracts and other funding streams that channel our public dollars to private companies that perform work on behalf of America, but treat their employees in a very un-American way, failing to pay enough to support a family.  

Americans don't like inequality and the want to do something about this problem. But they aren't crazy about using government to redistribute wealth and income. Instead, they would rather see bigger investments in education to expand opportunity and have businesses pay higher wages.