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It's hard to read statistics about how much most Americans have in retirement savings without seeing that this country is heading toward a major social crisis. As a new study by Senator Tom Harkin noted on Friday:

Half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in savings, and nearly half of the oldest Baby Boomers are at risk of not having sufficient retirement resources to pay for basic retirement expenses and healthcare costs.

It's no secret that many large employers pay near-poverty wages even as they rake in record profits. They get away with this thanks to a weak labor market and even weaker unions, which now speak for less than 8 percent of private sector workers.

The newest GDP release shows an increase of 1.5 percent in the second quarter of 2012, down from a 1.9 percent growth in the first quarter and three percent growth in 2011. But, as Demos continually asks in our Beyond GDP work: What exactly is GDP measuring?

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a civil rights law protecting people with disabilities from discrimination in public spaces and work places, among others. In 2010, nearly 1 in 5, or 56.7 million, Americans had a disability, according to a report released by the Census Bureau yesterday.

SANTA FE— A new report released today reveals how New Mexico’s economy is at risk for serious damage as the climate change crisis grows graver. New Mexico, the report explains, is particularly vulnerable to water shortages and increased forest fires due to the impacts from climate change.

Earlier this summer, New Mexico suffered through record-breaking forest fires that consumed over 170,000 acres. It marked the second consecutive year of record-breaking fires. As a new report released by Demos today shows, increased forest fire risk and intensity is just one of the many impacts that New Mexico will face from climate change.

Here are the things that are standing in the way of small businesses hiring more employees in order of priority: economic uncertainty, uncertainty over what Washington is going to do next, lack of sales, requirements of the healthcare bill, too much regulation. In fact, 29 percent of small business owners listed economic uncertainty as the number one obstacle to more hiring, 22 percent listed lack of sales, and just 8 percent said it was too much regulation.

People who think about breaking the law often engage in a risk-benefit analysis, looking at how big the gain is from cheating against the possible downsides of getting caught.

Too often, on Wall Street, that calculus has favored cheating: The rewards can be astronomical and the penalties can be relatively minor. Witness how many key figures in the subprime mortgage disaster -- in which investors were routinely misled about the health of such securities -- walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and have faced no criminal charges.