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Despite near-record levels of economic inequality, many politicians and pundits still don't think this widening chasm is much of a problem in a country supposedly dedicated to egalitarian ideals.

Inequality, the logic goes, is a natural result of different degrees of work and creativity. Some people strive harder and have better ideas, as well as take more risks, and giving them outsized rewards is a good thing, since it encourages others to emulate this behavior and makes us all wealthier in the end.

Back in March, I wondered why states would willingly lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Internet sales tax. After all, the amount of money left on the table is staggering:

In a presidential campaign of substance, one great question that the candidates -- and nation -- could debate is this: How much does economic success stem from individual initiative and talent, versus the collective support offered by society?

If individuals are all-important, smaller government and fewer public supports might make sense. But the opposite is true if it is society that structures opportunity.

A new report released this morning by Senator Harkin, “ For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success,” would be the final nail in the coffin for for-profit colleges.

One of the main arguments against the Keystone XL pipeline is the damage that would be done to surrounding areas in the case of oil spills, particularly to sensitive environmental areas like the Ogallala aquifer. And, it turns out Keystone's opponents are right to be worried.

It's hard to read statistics about how much most Americans have in retirement savings without seeing that this country is heading toward a major social crisis. As a new study by Senator Tom Harkin noted on Friday:

Half of all Americans have less than $10,000 in savings, and nearly half of the oldest Baby Boomers are at risk of not having sufficient retirement resources to pay for basic retirement expenses and healthcare costs.

It's no secret that many large employers pay near-poverty wages even as they rake in record profits. They get away with this thanks to a weak labor market and even weaker unions, which now speak for less than 8 percent of private sector workers.

Today marks the 22nd anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, a civil rights law protecting people with disabilities from discrimination in public spaces and work places, among others. In 2010, nearly 1 in 5, or 56.7 million, Americans had a disability, according to a report released by the Census Bureau yesterday.

Earlier this summer, New Mexico suffered through record-breaking forest fires that consumed over 170,000 acres. It marked the second consecutive year of record-breaking fires. As a new report released by Demos today shows, increased forest fire risk and intensity is just one of the many impacts that New Mexico will face from climate change.

Here are the things that are standing in the way of small businesses hiring more employees in order of priority: economic uncertainty, uncertainty over what Washington is going to do next, lack of sales, requirements of the healthcare bill, too much regulation. In fact, 29 percent of small business owners listed economic uncertainty as the number one obstacle to more hiring, 22 percent listed lack of sales, and just 8 percent said it was too much regulation.

People who think about breaking the law often engage in a risk-benefit analysis, looking at how big the gain is from cheating against the possible downsides of getting caught.

Too often, on Wall Street, that calculus has favored cheating: The rewards can be astronomical and the penalties can be relatively minor. Witness how many key figures in the subprime mortgage disaster -- in which investors were routinely misled about the health of such securities -- walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and have faced no criminal charges.

As early as today, the Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives will be bringing H.R. 4078, the so-called “Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act” up for a vote.  Like so much of what passes for legislation in Congress these days, this legislation is more a statement of philosophy than a thought out piece of policy.

As we pointed out a few weeks ago, man-made climate change will make extreme weather events much more likely going forward and we are facing a pretty serious one now. More than half of the continental U.S.

In case you haven't been paying attention, a concerted effort has been underway for more than a year to depict low-income workers as tax freeloaders. Most taxes are paid by the rich, the argument goes -- the "job creators" -- while workers at the bottom are paying less and less.

As part of a commitment to measure well-being and happiness alongside GDP, Britain’s Office of National Statistic conducted a wellbeing population survey that compared happiness and anxiety levels by several demographic factors, including sex, age, and ethnicity. The study included four subjective well-being questions:

Work as a hotel housekeeper isn’t an easy job under any circumstances. For more than 400,000 predominantly female and immigrant workers, the work means lifting heavy mattresses, stretching to clean high surfaces, and often scrubbing bathroom floors on hands and knees. Full-time workers earn just $21,000 a year, on average.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Department of Education released a new report detailing the private student loan market.  As the report states, private student loans mushroomed over the last decade, fueled by the very same forces that drove subprime mortgages through the roof: Wall Street’s seemingly endless appetite for new ways to make profit.

If you are aware of some of the specific derivatives and securities that are traded by banks and other financial services firms, you know that actual transactions in many of them occur infrequently. Prices based on what a willing buyer would pay a willing seller are difficult to come by. Let’s say you are a risk manager at one of these firms or perhaps a regulator curious about market exposures of a bank that you are tasked to monitor. How do you ascribe a value to a derivative or security if you cannot find a price in the market?