Media

On Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave a new jolt of momentum to the growing push for new measures of progress going “beyond GDP.” In prepared remarks for the 32nd general conference of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (IARIW), held this week in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Bernanke noted the failure of conventional market indicators in capturing the severe household impacts of the Great Recession and the continuing distress for many families and individ

A little-noticed CBO report yesterday, part of their Monthly Budget Review, found that the US has raised substantially more revenue this year than the last, while federal spending remained about the same. Whereas last year, the budget totaled $1.1 trillion by July, this year it’s only $975 billion. The deficit’s been cut by an unexpected spike in tax revenue.

The United States has two problems when it comes to jobs: There aren't enough jobs, as we all know; and a great many jobs are lousy -- a problem we hear about far less. A lousy job is one with low wages, minimal benefits, and few opportunities to move up.

About a fifth of jobs in the U.S. fit this description. And given how many workers that is -- people who work but are barely making it -- turning bad jobs into good jobs is arguably as important as creating more jobs.

It’s become a truism, but the evidence continues to mount that the Ryan budget plan would disproportionately hurt the young, sick, and poor. A new Center on Budget Policy Priorities report explores the impact of the $3 trillion dollar deficit-reduction plan on state and local governments. The cuts to state and local governments would be much more severe than those incurred by sequestration, three times greater in 2014 alone.

Demos’ twelve-year history of working to build a robust democracy in which every American has a voice has included, since 2004, state-by-state efforts to ensure the enforcement of the NVRA at public agencies across the country.

“American workers should have paid sick leave,” announced the New York Times in a staff editorial on Sunday, “and New York City could set a standard for the rest of the nation.” With that, the nation’s newspaper of record waded into the long fight for what most Americans already say is a basic workplace right: the chance to recuperate from sickness without l

In the wake of Love Canal, the EPA’s Superfund program was established to clean up toxic waste sites. For a while, a tax was placed on polluting industries, like the oil and chemical industries, with the money going into a cleanup trust fund. That tax expired.

This week brings yet another revelation of misconduct by a major bank, with a top New York State regulator reporting that the British bank, Standard Chartered, circumvented laws aimed at stopping Iran from using the U.S.