Advocates of automatic voter registration won two legislative battles in Oregon and California this year, and lost another in New Jersey when GOP Governor Chris Christie vetoed automatic registration legislation last month.
As Black Friday approaches, retailers nationwide are waiting anxiously to see whether the nation’s busiest shopping day will deliver a boost in profits. But perhaps no company has more at stake than Walmart, the shopping behemoth that was the world’s largest retailer until Amazon supplanted it in that role this summer.
Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen is living in a bubble because the Fed just doesn’t see that. Perhaps the Fed wants to put the brakes on an economy already struggling up a hill on low fuel? Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos, believes the Fed’s interest-rate hike is a “small step toward slowing down the economy.”
Last month, President Obama inaugurated yet another way to encourage Americans to save for retirement. In the new myRA accounts, workers can save up to $15,000 in a low-fee investment plan that, like a government savings bond, guarantees the principal. The accounts are a small step toward helping households save, but they are not an effective solution to the coming retirement crisis.
Starting in 2020, the numbers of very low-income elderly will rise sharply as the retired population soars to almost 56 million.
Robert Hiltonsmith, a researcher at the think tank Demos, has estimated that the average household loses $155,000 in potential gains as a result of unnecessary fees.
Amy Traub, senior policy analyst at Demos, a New York-based nonpartisan public policy research organization, told Bloomberg BNA Jan. 20: ‘‘It’s really striking the way the growing protests we’ve seen by Wal-Mart workers, and increasing public pressure, has really pushed the world’s largest employer to raise wages and improve [work] schedules. It’s a huge victory for Wal-Mart workers [and] will ultimately benefit the company itself as employees have increased buying power.’’
America’s growing inequality is well-documented. Less discussed is its intersection with another of the country’s defining trends, growing diversity.
Racial disparities in wealth are vast. And addressing inequality now and in the years ahead, means thinking seriously about the racial wealth gap and the steps we can take to ameliorate it.
The idea of a property-owning democracy is no longer the reality in the United States. Edward Wolff finds that the wealthiest 10 percent own 90.9 percent of all stocks and mutual funds, 94.3 percent of financial securities but only 26.5 percent of the debt. For the middle class, their home makes up 62.5 percent of their limited wealth.
The 2016 election is the first Presidential election that will occur since the Supreme Court struck down key provisions in the Voting Rights Act. Partially because of the weakened VRA, 10 states passed harsh new voting restrictions that will be in full force for 2016, including seven new voter ID laws. New studies suggest that the motivation of these laws is suppressing non-white voters, and worryingly, that they will be successful at doing so.
But as Demos senior policy analyst Amy Traubpoints out in a blog post on Friday, "[b]eing paid less for doing the same job is just one aspect of the pay gap."
Amy Traub, senior policy analyst at Demos, a public policy organization, told the Public News Service that the vast majority of people who work in New York would benefit from paid family leave.
Political scientists who have studied voter registration have found generally that young and highly mobile people are the ones least likely to be registered. They tend to have lower incomes as well.
For example, in a 2015 report, ‘Why Voting Matters,’ a research associate at Demos, Sean McElwee, found that “white Americans, and particularly affluent white Americans” are much more likely to vote than “people of color, low-income people, and young people.”
The 2016 election is the first Presidential election that will occur since the Supreme Court struck down key provisions in the Voting Rights Act. Partially because of the weakened VRA, 10 states passed harsh new voting restrictions that will be in full force for 2016, including seven new voter ID laws. New studies suggest that the motivation of these laws is suppressing non-white voters, and worryingly, that they will be successful at doing so.
The advocates' letter threatens legal action if the state doesn’t cooperate.
Scott Novakowski, an attorney with Demos, said the groups hope to come to an understanding with the state and map out short-term and long-term solutions for the problems.
Nevada still is mired in a lawsuit filed in 2012 by some of the same groups concerning a different part of the law, which requires public assistance agencies to register people to vote.
"There are no other countries that we would think of as advanced that don't offer some paid maternity leave," said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning public policy group. "So many countries started guaranteeing maternity leave as more woman started to enter the workplace, and the U.S. just has been a laggard."