"For the sake of millions — people watching their rents go up while their wages don’t, parents who need support in tackling the ever-rising cost of child care, and seniors who regularly must decide whether they can afford their bills or their pills — the Senate must pass this legislation.”
This case study highlights how New Economy Project and the Public Bank NYC coalition are pressing for the creation of a public bank for New York City, as part of a broader vision for economic and racial justice.
With 25 million people still unable to find full-time jobs and unemployment insurance close to running out, it's shameful that Republicans in Congress waged ideological warfare over what is typically a pro forma exercise of the Congress.
New York, NY — The Inequality Matters conference kicks off on Thursday, June 3rd at New York University (NYU), with keynotes by Bill Moyers and Barbara Ehrenreich.
The conference will raise an alarm about the explosive growth in economic inequality in the U.S., examine its causes, and create a forum to press for solutions to this national crisis.
Key facts:
° The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently released new figures showing that the income gap in the US is now the widest in 75 years.
Dēmos has measured the comparative effectiveness of five leading fiscal proposals. We evaluate the plans in eight categories: jobs and public investment; health care affordability; Social Security income; education; defense policy; fair and adequate revenues; and long-term debt reduction.
This week has delivered two economic surprises that illustrate the right way and the wrong way to respond to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression.
First, the euro zone economy shrank more than expected in the past three months, moving France back into a recession. That's what happens when you implement an austerity policy that serves to undermine economic demand.
Over the past decade or two, top transnational corporations -- including Apple, GE, and Google -- have figured out how to sidestep national tax collection systems, depriving governments of billions of dollars in revenues.
The Senate Finance Committee wrote an open letter last month to the rest of the Senate calling for tax code reform suggestions. The due date for proposals was this past week. Among other parts of the code, the charitable tax deduction faces potential overhaul.
It's no secret that sales taxes are a regressive way to raise revenues. And the heavy reliance on such taxes across the country explains why state tax systems tend to clobber the poor while asking little of the rich.
Beth Simone Noveck and Carl Malamud are pushing the IRS to publicly disclose more data on tax-exempt groups, make it more accessible in electronic form, and to do so more promptly. Count me among the effort’s biggest cheerleaders. If this push succeeds, we'll have a better handle on a key sector in U.S. society—although we'll still be in the dark about crucial details of how nonprofits are funded.
There are a bunch of good, practical arguments for giving low-wage workers a pay hike -- like the fact that putting more money in the pockets of these workers would spur consumer demand and economic growth.
But here's another strong point that you don't hear much about: Reducing wage inequality is crucial to meeting America's long-term fiscal challenges.
Fiscal hawks love to remind us that interest payments on the national debt will be a major driver of future U.S. budget deficits. Just last week, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) published a doom-and-gloom paper that noted that interest payments were the single fastest growing part of the U.S. budget and the most volatile area of future spending.