If you're wondering why issues favored by a majority of Americans such as raising the minimum wage, gun control and net neutrality get scarcely any attention in the halls of Congress, the Citizens United case is the reason.
Six years after America sank into the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s, the jobless rate has fallen to 5.9 percent, the lowest since July 2008. But one demographic group — African-American men — seems to be stuck in a permanent recession.
Two new studies by political scientists offer compelling evidence that the rich use their wealth to control the political system and that the U.S. is a democratic republic in name only.
Mayor Bill de Blasio's vision for the five boroughs is to move past the "tale of two cities," to create "a city where everyone has a shot at the middle class," he said during his State of the City address earlier this month.
But just who is part of New York City's middle class? It is not an exact science. Here's why. [...]
A City Council report from 2013, however, expanded the definition of middle class upward to a family earning roughly $200,000.
When Congress narrowly missed another government shutdown in December by passing the “cromnibus” bill, much of the press coverage focused on Capitol Hill’s ongoing dysfunction. However, buried inside the bill was yet another blow to campaign finance regulations, dramatically increasing the amount of money donors can give to political parties. A single couple can now give up to $3.1 million to a political party over a two-year election cycle, a six-fold increase.
In America, there is a strongly held conviction that with hard work, anyone can make it into the middle class. Pew recently found that Americans are far more likely than people in other countries to believe that work determines success, as opposed to other factors beyond an individual’s control. But this positivity comes with a negative side — a tendency to pathologize those living in poverty.
If black families had the same opportunitites that white families have to increase their incomes through investments, retirement plans, and other asset-building measures, it would reduce the wealth gap between the two groups by nearly $45,000, or 43 percent, according to a report out Tuesday. For Latino families, it would reduce the gap by more than almost $52,000, or 50 percent.
The yawning racial wealth gap in the United States is no accident, but rather, driven by unjust public policy decisions—from the re-segregation of education to the redlining of home ownership to poverty wages, according to a new analysis by Brandeis University and the public policy organization Demos.
Owning a home, then equal pay for equal work, and then having a college degree are the three factors that can make the biggest difference in closing the racial wealth gap, which is how non-whites in America are vastly less wealthy than most whites.
If blacks and Latinos owned homes as widely as whites, then median black household wealth would grow by $32,113, and median Latino wealth would grow by $29,213, a new study by Demos, a progressive think tank, and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University has found.
Owning a home, then equal pay for equal work, and then having a college degree are the three factors that can make the biggest difference in closing the racial wealth gap, which is how non-whites in America are vastly less wealthy than most whites.
If blacks and Latinos owned homes as widely as whites, then median black household wealth would grow by $32,113, and median Latino wealth would grow by $29,213, a new study by Demos, a progressive think tank, and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University has found.
<
When discussing race, the conservative argument is best expressed by the famous words of Chief Justice John Roberts: “The best way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Translation: America has done bad things in its history, but those bad things are gone now, so we should move past those horrors and look forward.
Conservatives believe that if blacks and Latinos simply work hard, get a good education and earn a good income, historical racial wealth gaps will disappear.
The median white household has $111,145 in wealth holdings, compared to $7,113 for the median black household and $8,348 for the median Latino household, according to a recent study called The Racial Wealth Gap: Why Policy Matters. [...]
“Put some mustard on it.” That’s the advice that Chicago McDonald’s worker Brittney Berry allegedly received from her manager after suffering a scalding burn on her arm from the grill used to make eggs. And this was no minor burn – she was eventually taken to the hospital in an ambulance, and had to miss work for six months.
Protesters are angry that the Oak Brook, Ill., company won't improve wages for employees at franchises, which make up 90% of McDonald's roughly 14,000 U.S. stores. Even for the 90,000 workers at company-owned stores who will see their paychecks increase to at least $1 above local hourly minimum wages starting July 1, the concession is too small.
A recent report titled “The Racial Wealth Gap” examined, in conjunction with other factors, the role education plays in the persistent wealth gap between minorities and their White counterparts in this country.