Will you drive on over to your local Wal-Mart on Black Friday morning, only to find yourself confronted by capitalism's misdeeds, in the form of protesting Wal-Mart workers demanding something approaching a living wage? Here is a list of planned Wal-Mart Black Friday actions around the country.
With the holiday shopping season fast approaching,Demos has released a new report showing how raising wages in the retail sector would benefit not just workers but the economy as a whole. The study looks at what would happen if the lowest-paid retail employees earned $25,000 a year (the current average is $21,000 for retail sales people and just $18,500 for cashiers).
Walmart executives worried about the recent spate of labor activity against the retailer would probably tell you that they cannot possibly offer higher wages to their employees while maintaining their brand identifier of low prices. They offer what the market will bear in terms of wages, they would say, and anything more would represent a loss for their business, and would impact shoppers on tight budgets. It’s just not possible.
Retail companies don't have to choose between high wages and high profits, argues a new report from the researchers at Demos.
In Retail’s Hidden Potential, policy analyst Catherine Ruetschlin says that higher wages across the retail industry would create jobs and reduce poverty without cutting significantly into employers’ profit margins.
Black Friday has heaped new pressure on big box stores to bump up worker pay, with a group of Walmart employees plotting a walkout on the country’s biggest shopping day and the think tank Demos releasing a study Monday that touts the benefits of higher wages.
Henry Ford famously decided in 1914 to pay many of his workers the then incredible sum of five dollars a day, which was substantially higher than the prevailing wage at the time.
No doubt the new International Energy Agency (IEA)'s latest World Energy Outlook will be cause for celebration for the fossil fuel industry. In it, IEA points to the strong oil and gas production in the U.S. and predicts that by within a decade or so, the U.S. will become the world's largest oil producer, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. By 2030, North America could be a net oil exporter and, around the same time, the U.S. will likely be energy independent.
The last presidential debate not only continued the silence on climate change, it also advanced the false narrative that we have to choose between economic growth and action on climate change. While the candidates focused on how to keep gas prices down, increase energy independence, and create jobs, they never addressed how we can use our energy plan to fight climate change. By refusing to address climate consequences, both candidates reinforce the idea that we either focus on economic growth or we focus on the environment, but not both.
In politics, there inevitably comes the dreaded time when politics and politicking run into reality. It is the point at which you can no longer appease two opposing parties and a decision must be made that chooses one party's interests over the other. I imagine politicians hate this moment because it shows their true character, for better or worse.
A study by Demos, a liberal research center, found that a median-income couple that invested in 401(k)’s for 40 years with fees averaging 1.6 percent a year would achieve $354,850 in assets at average savings rates, but only after paying $154,794 in investment fees.
Many Florida families have been paying up to 25 percent of median income for public in-state college costs — out of reach for some middle-class parents who have taken recent pay cuts or lost jobs, according to a new study.
Some eight years ago, I was at a presentation by Vanguard founder Jack Bogle at a business journalists' conference in Denver, and when his PowerPoint crashed, and he had to use transparencies on a vintage 20th-century overheard projector. After the presentation, he let me keep them, and they still serve as a sort of Rosetta Stone for me for enlightened investing.
Investors who were paying attention got a cold slap of reality this spring when the progressive think tank Demos released a study showing that the median household could expect to pay more than $150,000 in 401(k) fees over the course of a working lifetime, or about a third of potential investment returns. What's more, about two-thirds of 401(k) investors had no idea that they were paying such fees.
It seems there is little real relief on the horizon.
“If you’re coming out of college with an average number of $20,000 to $25,000 in debt and there’s no job out there, you’ve got a real problem,” said John Quinterno, a researcher who has studied the consequences of student debt.
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?
How will Marissa Mayer’s pregnancy play out? Will the new Yahoo chief executive find that it’s not so easy to power through a maternity leave? Or will she spend just a few short weeks at home — working all the while, as she promised in an interview — and thus set the bar high for future pregnant executives of Fortune 500 companies? What should the new “it” mom-to-be do?
One of the big questions environmentalists struggle with is whether there should be a price on nature. For some things, like the cost savings that are realized through cleaner air or water, there is a rote calculation that can be done to price out environmental and health benefits. But, if you think of nature as an independent entity having a worth beyond what it can provide to humans, how do you put a price on it? How much is the Amazon River or the Himalayan mountain range worth?
The think tank Demos has been doing a really stellar job commemorating the anniversary of Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” — as mentioned in my poverty charts post yesterday — and their best item so far is this series of beautiful interactive charts illustrating the state of poverty in America: