In the last four parts of this series, I have discussed the problems of our current student loan system, the potential for an income-based repayment system, and the difficulties of a graduate tax. This leaves us with another proposal: universal free undergraduate public higher education. [...]
New York – At a time when anti-government ideology is driving policy making in Washington, a refresher course on the concrete benefits and products of a robust public sector is needed. The programs, infrastructure, and services that have make America great are possible due to an often dreaded source: our taxes.
“The very rich,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “are different from you and me.”
It turns out he was right. According to a new study by the think-tank Demos (PDF), the affluent tend to hold a different vision of a just society than the public at large, and it is that vision which tops the political agenda in Washington and in state houses across the country.
The US Chamber of Commerce has been one of the most influential lobbying groups in our political system, in part due to the sheer volume of its spending. In the last year alone, the Chamber spent over $95 million lobbying and over $36 million on the last election cycle.
Wednesday night’s first presidential debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney was live-blogged or live-tweeted by almost every think tank. The depth of the commentary ranged from appearance to proposal. After a little time to process, think tank experts are weighing in with analysis beyond 140 characters.
Last week, my colleague Joe Hines analyzed how impossible it was to live on the budget McDonald’s outlined for its employees. Among many issues, McDonald’s budget assumed each employee had a second job to help ends meet.
New York, NY — Anticipating a razor-thin election Nov. 2, many election officials and political commentators are making alarmist and inaccurate claims that "new" voter registration procedures will enable voter fraud.
However, election fraud is at most a minor problem across the 50 U.S. states, and does not affect election outcomes, according to a 2003 study being re-released today by Demos, titled "Securing the Vote: A Report on Election Fraud."
To hear the media tell it, all eyes are on the fiscal cliff. Which side is compromising and which side isn't? Which side's numbers add up? How can votes in the House and the Senate be structured for maximum political gain? What will the deal ultimately be? And, most important, which side will win and which side will lose? Is this great drama gripping the entire nation? Actually, only Washington and the media are transfixed.
David Tepper topped the list of best paid hedge managers for last year, pulling in $3.5 billion. That's an astonishing amount of money for one person to make in a single year -- and is larger than the annual GDP of 35 countries.
You probably haven’t seen the terms of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal currently being negotiated by the Obama Administration. Unless you’re one of “600 trade ‘advisers,’ dominated by representatives of big businesses, who enjoy privileged access to draft texts and negotiators” the deal is secret and we know its terms only through select leaks, according to Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
David Brooks writes today in the Times about how few Americans identify as "liberal" -- noting that twice as many Americans now identify as conservatives -- and concludes that over the last forty years, "liberalism has been astonishingly incapable at expanding its market share."
I've been writing about economic inequality for over a decade and, at this point, it's pretty hard to be shocked by new data. But David Cay Johnston has just crunched some numbers that will surprise even the most jaded observers of the widening gap between the Haves and everyone else.
As the government shutdown continues well into the second week and we rapidly approach our debt ceiling, it’s hard not be cynical about the political process and our government, generally. After all, Congressmen are still getting paid while thousands of government employees are not. And, it’s not just government employees.
If the Great Depression went down in history as the great equalizer (by razing the incomes of the wealthy), the Great Recession may be known for having the opposite effect. According to a new report issued by the Congressional Research Service, the share of wealth owned by the richest 1 percent of Americans grew from 2007 to 2010 to 34.5 percent. The only time, in the last two decades, when this group had a greater share of wealth was in 1995, when the World Wide Web was first commercializing.
Dear Senators:
We the undersigned organizations write to oppose the confirmation of John K. Bush to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and Damien Schiff to the Court of Federal Claims due to their troubling views on the issue of money in politics.
David Brooks is no economist and that shows in his recent column about private equity, in which he claims that private equity firms have pushed corporate America to get leaner and smarter. As Paul Krugman pointed out today, nothing of the sort happened -- because, in fact, productivity has not been higher since the advent of LBOs and private equity, starting in the 1980s.
Anyone who wonders how employers managed to so completely rig the labor market in their favor should familiarize themselves with the research of David Weil, a professor at Boston University who's been nominated by President Obama to lead the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor.
