Apart from our Republican-dominated federal government, no single entity boasts more lawsuits against it than Wal-Mart. Class action suits in motion at the moment read like a pamphlet from the nascent worker's rights movements of the early 20th century. They include: gender discrimination, racial discrimination, unpaid wages, exploitation of undocumented workers, pressure to work overtime or off the clock, and denied lunch breaks. And those are just the class action suits.
Cindy Zeldin, Federal Affairs Coordinator for the Economic Opportunity Program, writes that mega-retailer's abandonment of traditional health insurance in favor of high-deductible health insurance takes the benefits squeeze to a whole new level: it puts a dagger through the heart of the very concept of insurance.
Gen Y is the first generation to really bear the weight of college expenses through loans instead of grants and other financial aid. This, combined with credit card debt, is leaving cash-strapped college grads in bleak financial situations ... often ending in bankruptcy.
Americans in their 20s - those broadly defined as ‘Generation Y' - are supposed to be more concerned about weighty issues like world affairs, local politics, and the environment than their ‘Gen X' predecessors. But they've also distinguished themselves another way: They're the most leveraged generation in American history, and they have, for the most part, the cost of their college education to thank for that distinction.
Many college graduates worry about their finances as they begin their professional careers in the red - a place where if they don't get a hold of their debt they may stay for years to come.
Draut is one of the experts who claims the problem has reached "epidemic" proportions - yet the issue continues to worsen as more and more graduates and young people find themselves drowning in debt.
As more and more young people get in too deep, students, parents, educators and lawmakers are proposing solutions. The seeds of a grassroots activist movement against debt are being sown. But is it too little, too late?
For too many grads, though, "the 'debt for diploma' system" makes starting-out responsibility, financially speaking, very difficult, says Draut. The shift from free grants to loans since the early '90s has more than doubled the debt burden of grads who borrow to go to school. That's why it's important to learn to calculate for the real world so you can fulfill the high expectations that motivated you to go to college in the first place.
Draut estimates 25 cents out of every dollar earned by indebted graduates goes to pay off credit cards or loans, for a total debt load of about $20,000 per person.
A recent study by Demos, a public policy group, broke down the budget of a sample college graduate. With a monthly after-tax income of $2,058, $797 goes to rent and utilities, $456 to food and groceries, $464 to transportation, and $307 to school and card debt payments.
Senior Fellow Jennifer Wheary discusses how gaps in homeownership and equity levels are due to serious flaws in the opportunity infrastructure — namely lending practices that create barriers for African-Americans and Latinos who want to buy homes.
The HUD report says race-based discrimination makes up nearly 40 percent of housing complaints. Housing discrimination in any form is unacceptable. But continuing discrimination with regard to race could cost the country its future.
The report notes: "What distinguishes low- and middle-income households with relatively high levels of credit card debt from those with lower levels of debt is chance and misfortune."
"Elections are the backbone of democracy, and New Yorkers should be able to have faith that the people who run our elections are able to fairly and fully apply the law," said Scott Novakowski, program associate in the Democracy Program at Demos. "This report proves that voters are not only misinformed about their eligibility, they are subject to unnecessary, burdensome and illegal documentation requirements for voter registration.
The problem, according to all three books, is that for today's young adults, those lean early years -- the Top Ramen phase -- may never give way to the stability and prosperity enjoyed by their boomer parents. A number of factors are blamed, chief among them student loans, credit cards, wage stagnation, the rising costs of health care and home ownership, the disappearance of pensions and the likely collapse of Social Security under the weight of all those retiring boomers.
According to a riveting study by a pair of national not-for-profit, nonpartisan organizations, about one-third of all U.S. households categorized as low-income or middle-income are racking up credit card debt to pay for basic living expenses.
Michael Lipsky and Dianne Stewart, Senior Program Director and Director of Public Works at Demos, call for nonprofit groups to lead an effort restore widespread appreciation of the critical role of government as a protector of public values and as a place where Americans come together to solve our most pressing problems.
And much of that debt has been accrued covering everyday items. Seven out of 10 households reported using their credit cards to pay for car repairs, basic living expenses or house repairs, in effect using debt as their "safety net," according to that same study. One out of three families reported using credit cards to cover basic living expenses for on average four of the last 12 months.
Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell University, for instance, found that in counties with the widest income gaps, rates of personal bankruptcy and divorce rates were higher than average.
Draut argues that "with the possible exception of having a larger array of entertainment and other goods to purchase, members of Generation X appear to be worse off by every measure" than prior generations.
According to the advocacy group Demos, the average balance among lower- and middle-income households is $8,650.
"World News Tonight's" special series "Credit Crunch" aims to help you get on the road to becoming debt free.