Demos conducted a nationwide survey of low- and middle-income households in early 2012. The findings in this brief summarize the relationship between college costs and credit card debt, and its impact on students and their parents.
Fast food companies keep employees at poverty-level wages while reaping billions of dollars in profits. It drives inequality, slows growth, and lowers living standards.
If nearly 70 percent of graduates are borrowing, 30 percent (including 35 percent of public college graduates) are not. Who are these students? What type of family or financial resources do they have at their disposal? What are their work habits? In short, what does it take to graduate debt-free these days? This brief answers these questions.
Public policies can either fuel or ease racial disparities in wealth. This report marks the first-ever systematic analysis of the impact of different policies, highlighting the policies that could help erase the racial wealth gap.
The Government By the People Act increases the power of the small contributions that ordinary citizens can afford to give, providing incentives for congressional candidates to reach out to average constituents, not just dial for dollars from wealthy donors.
This report makes the case that we should create jobs for the unemployed directly and immediately in public employment programs that produce useful goods and services for the public’s benefit.
For four decades, the Supreme Court’s flawed approach to money in politics has gutted common-sense protections against the power of special interests and wealthy individuals. This defies our core democratic values.
“For let it be agreed that a government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has an equal voice in the direction of its concerns…” Thomas Jefferson Letter to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816