The existence of the U.S. middle class is in peril. Young people between the ages of 18 and 34 are living in a more fragile economic environment than 30 years ago. If something isn't done to help them lead more economically stable lives, they'll never make it into the middle class.
That's the conclusion of a new report "The State of Young America" from Demos, a combination think-tank and advocacy organization based in New York.
Occupy Wall Street has, in the words of John Paul Rollert, “come to embody a common sense that something is wrong with American capitalism.” The problem Rollert points to is not with capitalism itself, but with a particular American version that has ceased to work for broad cross-sections of its population. Given America’s Depression-level income inequality and near-record levels of public and private indebtedness, it is extremely tempting to focus on bad outcomes as the problem.
Do Republicans in Congress care about creating jobs -- which polls say is the number one issue for voters -- or about ideological purity? The ongoing debate on Capitol Hill over President Obama’s $447 billion jobs package offers a crystal clear answer to that question.
Demos just released new comprehensive polling about the opinion of young adults. Politically the most interesting data point that stuck out for me is their finding that an overwhelmingly 68 percent of young people say it is harder for them to make ends meet now than it was four years ago. From the poll results:
Their employment prospects are dim, their debt is high, their lives are on hold and a stunning number are living with their parents, even into their 30s.
The jobs crisis and rising healthcare costs have left millions of young Americans without healthcare coverage but the health reform law is turning things around, according to a new report from the liberal groups Demos and Young Invincibles.
White youths are more pessimistic about their economic future than young minorities, though black and Hispanic youth are more likely to be in a worse financial position right now.
As President Obama dusts off his 2008 theme of “hope” in anticipation of his reelection campaign, he has a problem to get around: Among young voters, one of his most crucial constituencies, hope is, like, so yesterday.
I wrote last month about how the economy could shift the youth vote more toward a GOP candidate. A report out today by Young Invincibles and Demos, called "The State of Young America," finds that even though young people are still optimistic about their future, they are the first generation to be worse off than their parents in many respects.
While the expansion of health insurance to young adults has been one of the consistently positive stories around the ACA, a new report points out the news isn’t all that good. The rate of full-time workers between 18 and 24 years old with employer-sponsored insurance dropped 12.8 percent over the past decade, while dropping 8.5 percent for workers ages 25 to 34.
The report’s first chapter, Jobs and the Economy, explores how long-term trends and the current tumultuous economic environment has taken a toll on young Americans’ employment prospects, paychecks, and ultimately their earnings for years to come. Unemployment and underemployment rates for young Americans remain dangerously high, and almost 60 percent of employed young people say they would like to work more hours. At the same time, there is also a clear wage pay gap, gender pay gap, and education pay gap.
All sorts of big life decisions are postponed as well, especially within minority groups. Almost half have delayed purchasing a home, a third have delayed moving out on their own or starting a family and a quarter have delayed getting married.
Today, the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary passed, on a party-line vote, one of the most sweeping attacks in decades on government protections.
The Rules from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) bill would require that any major regulatory rule issued by a federal agency be affirmed by a majority vote in both the House and Senate. The vote would have to take place within 70 days.
A two-hour “teach-in” Monday afternoon prompted by the Wall Street protest produced an array of ideas from economists and their students about how to counter big-monied interests and nurture a more egalitarian society that values genuine wellbeing over raw growth.
The forum, organized by the Gund Institute of Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, drew more than 200 people to the Ira Allen Chapel and offered a mix of rousing rhetoric and lower-key policy-speak.
Here's one more reason to be puzzled by the GOP's animus toward green jobs: It turns out that the clean economy is disproportionately fueling economic growth and opportunity in states that tend to send Republicans to Congress -- states that are also struggli
Last month, the White House introduced a program that would effectively overhaul the tax code and, as Robert Kuttner put it, "locked [Obama] in as a defender of social insurance and working Americans." The five-pronged tax plan would cut rates and inefficient and unfair tax breaks, increase investment and growth in the United States, reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years and -- most contentiously -- institute the "Buffett rule."
In their new book, "Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone," Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman argue that the United States needs to worry about not just creating millions more jobs but also ensuring that the jobs are good ones.