The fifth annual MetLife survey of American value ideals shows a significant shift from prioritizing achieving professional success and material wealth to having a greater sense of personal fulfillment, particularly among younger generations. Millennials preferred a sense of personal fulfillment over having enough money by a margin of 28-20. Nearly a third of Millennials surveyed thought it was more important to have close family and friends than a roof over their heads.
The 2011 fourth quarter GDP numbers released today show a 2.8 percent growth in economic activity, due in part to the increase in spending around the holidays. But, what do GDP numbers really show? A new report from Demos, Beyond GDP, looks at the flaws in our dependence on GDP as the sole measure of progress and highlights important economic and social measures that are not captured by GDP.
For decades, GDP has enjoyed supreme status as the predominant benchmark of our economic and social progress. In reality, GDP obscures or ignores essential aspects of Americans’ economic and social welfare, as well as important social and environmental dimensions of our national welfare and future well-being.
NEW YORK – On the eve of the release of new GDP numbers, Demos is publishing a new report challenging the dominance of GDP in the nation’s economic and policy debates. Beyond GDP: New Measures for A New Economy illuminates the limits of a measurement that shows economic growth, as the 2011 numbers will likely indicate, against the backdrop of an ongoing national economic crisis.
The Corporate Reform Coalition – made up of institutional investors managing a combined total of $800 billion in assets, as well as public officials, legal scholars, good government groups and CEOs – will hold a telephone press conference to discuss a petition calling on the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to issue rules on corporate political spending.
The Montana Supreme Court in Helena stands just off the main drag, dramatically called Last Chance Gulch Street. The picturesque setting is fitting for an institution that has just challenged the U.S. Supreme Court to a legal showdown on the enormously important question of whether corporations should have an unfettered right to dominate elections or whether citizens have the right to adopt commonsense protections to defend democratic government from corruption. Get the kids off the streets, because this could be an epic confrontation.
We can’t afford to let Wall Street keep taking us for a ride: Americans need a strong Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to bring fairness and accountability to the financial sector.
Despite what critics say, the DoE’s guaranteed loan program is a successful program and government investment to further develop clean energy is the right thing to do.
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.
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
ALBANY — Cleanup of hard-hit areas in New York from Tropical Storm Irene is expected to take months because roads and bridges have to be rebuilt, farms restored and infrastructure reconstructed.
While experts say the flooding was impossible to prevent, the storm that ravaged upstate wasn't initially expected because most of the original focus was on New York City and its suburbs, which ultimately didn't get hit as badly as rural areas.
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In the past 15 years the ramifications of poor credit have grown, as credit score "mission creep" has set in, said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst with the New York-based think tank Demos and author of the recently released report "Discrediting America." Credit scores determine not just the interest rates paid on material goods, such as a cell phone or car, but also the pricing of utilities and insurance. Approximately 60 percent of employers use credit reports to screen job applicants.
Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at watchdog group Demos, says that credit-based insurance scores hurt lower-income people more because they are more likely to have lower scores. She noted a study that showed while those with lower scores made more claims because they couldn't swallow the costs, the cost of those claims were not necessarily greater.
In its bombshell of a report “Discrediting America,” the nonpartisan public policy research group Demos sums up the problem for black and Latinos:
Credit reports largely mirror racial and economic divides, with African Americans and Latinos disproportionately likely to have lower scores. In turn, these communities are more likely to be offered high-priced loan products, which may contribute to more defaults, maintaining and amplifying historical injustice.