The rationale behind the ban is simple: it’s unfair and useless to use a person’s credit history, which is often inaccurate or misleading, when assessing their job qualifications.
The lack of retirement security for middle-class and low-wage workers is a growing crisis that Washington has refused to address, even though it demands immediate attention.
While income is distributed unequally in the country, what few people know is how much more unequally wealth, financial assets and inheritances are distributed.
Black culture and the role racism plays in black American history are discussed at length in the national dialogue around race relations. We regularly debate use of the “n-word,” for example, and the impact of historical racism on outcomes for black Americans.
The missing link in the inequality debate is not financial stability, but financial domination of the broader economy, what has come to be called “financialization.” Financialization, as a new Demos report demonstrates, is not only measurable by risk and volatility or by the mere expanding volume of financial activities; rather, it should also be measured by how the non-financial economy—the economy of jobs and wages, production and enterprise growth—is increasingly dist
Millennials have an average credit score of 625 (based on the Experian VantageScore 3.0 credit score), compared to 650 for Generation X and 709 for those over 50 years old. They also use an average of 43 percent of their credit limits—compared to 34 percent nationally—and their average debt (excluding mortgages) totals 77 percent of their income, compared to 49 percent nationally.
In the 2016 presidential election, we are approaching a singular and momentous crossroads in our nation’s history. Will we, or will we not, make a serious effort to achieve a low-carbon future for our children and our planet? The fossil fuel magnates and the GOP say no, because we can’t or shouldn’t, but more than 75 percent of Americans want our leaders to take significant steps to fight climate change, according to a poll released in January 2015 by the New York Times, Stanford University, and Resources for the Future.
The co-counsel in the case, Jenn Rolnick-Borchetta of Demos, a progressive policy organization, told POLITICO New York, the need to give information to people who have been stopped by the police “has been ordered, but what that is going to look like isn’t yet figured out.”
“The pilot form has a blank space for officers to fill in their information," said Borchetta, who said that creates a potential problem because “we know officers don’t give their info, or the right info.”
Consumer advocacy groups have long complained that there is no link between bad credit and job performance. They argue that such checks lead to discriminatory hiring.
The system is profitable but imperfect, and for decades critics have attacked it for all sorts of offenses. In 1969, Columbia University legal scholar Alan Westin testified to Congress that the companies violated Americans’ right to privacy and that their inaccuracies damaged lives.
Demos applauds the work of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who today introduced The Equal Employment for All Act, legislation that would prohibit the widespread use of pe
Bill Clinton's interview provoked Wallace Turbeville, a former lawyer and investment banker turned financial reform advocate, to contradict him.
"His statement is flat wrong," Turbeville wrote in a blog post for the liberal think tank Demos. "The Graham-Leach-Bliley Act that President Clinton signed had everything to do with the crisis."
“Super PACs likely encouraged more candidates to get into the 2016 GOP presidential race,” said Jay Goodliffe, a political science professor at Brigham Young University. “Even if their polls were not initially good, or there were other setbacks, the super PAC could help keep them afloat.”
Over the last decade, an increasing number of cities and states passed laws limiting the use of credit checks in hiring, promotion, and firing. These laws have been motivated by the reality that personal credit history is not relevant to employment and that employment credit checks prevent otherwise qualified workers with flawed credit from finding jobs, and that unemployed workers and historically disadvantaged groups, including people of color, are disproportionately harmed by credit checks.
Today, six in ten employers say that they check the credit histories of some or all prospective employees before making final hiring decisions. This traps many jobseekers in a devastating catch-22.