Media

Other Demos writers have been doing great work thinking about job quality, and ways to raise retail and service sector wages. I would like to broaden the focus a bit to include buying power, not just nominal wages.

NEW YORK — Miles Rapoport, President of national policy organization Demos, released the following statement in response to Michigan’s State House and Senate suddenly passing bills Thursday to defund unions and undermine the ability of working people to organize for better pay and benefits:

Today's jobs report shows that the economy continues to slowly improve. After getting run down by a truck driven by Wall Street bankers in 2008, the economy has — over the past four years — emerged from intensive care, left the critical condition list, and is slogging steadily forward through a grueling rehabilitation. 

A new Explainer from Dēmos looks at why Washington focuses so heavily on deficit reduction and not on job creation, even as unemployment rates remain high. In short: the affluent donor class and big business interests prioritize deficit reduction and Congress, in turn, prioritizes what they prioritize. As detailed in the Explainer, if deficit reduction was really the priority, Congress would increase spending and invest in job creating projects, like infrastructure upkeep.

Why it's as if there were a tax on the non-financial portions of the economy that redistributes wealth to the financial sector.

Before the Great Recession, the financial sector had consistently been eating up a greater and greater share of the economy. In 2007, it accounted for a whopping 40 percent of corporate profits. Before 1950, the financial sector made up less than 3 percent of GDP; now it makes up more than 8 percent.

The Center for American Progress is out with a budget plan that would reduce deficits by $4.1 trillion over the next decade and, at first glance, seems to makes a good deal of sense.

A few months ago, I wrote about the fracked up logic used by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to outsource reviewing the health impacts of fracking to the Health Commissioner. The ramifications of this decision are now becoming clear.

We’ve been talking a lot this year on PolicyShop about the work of groups like Fast Food Forward, OUR Walmart, the Retail Action Project, the Restaurant Opportunities Centers,