Here’s a policy idea that should be as uncontroversial as they get: America should stop doing business with chronic lawbreakers. If a company repeatedly exposes their employees to dangerous working conditions that have triggered serious OSHA penalties, we should think twice before signing another contract with that company to do work for the federal government. If a contractor can’t bother to pay the minimum wage and follow other basic employment laws, we can surely find someone else to run government call centers and carry out public construction projects.
President Obama calling economic inequality the premier challenge of our time is notable for two reasons: first, he is acknowledging the weakening of the America middle class as one of the greatest threats to America's future. But perhaps more telling, he is making this declaration at THEARC - a community center in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Washington, D.C.
There's a lot of speculation about how the Affordable Care Act is likely to play out in coming months and years. But lately few voices are pushing the point that Obamacare is likely to spur the economy -- both in the near and long term.
In earlier times, before the dawn of modern American prosperity, it was common for hard pressed families to take in boarders. Watch some old movies if that era has slipped your mind. Then good times arrived, and renting out rooms to survive was no longer a widespread imperative. Images of the quirky boarding house were supplanted in the media by the sprawling suburban home or spacious urban apartment.
The much-anticipated final regulations implementing the Volcker Rule will be released today and, almost miraculously, it seems to be significantly stronger than the proposed text publicized more than a year ago. We will all have to await the actual wording since this is an area in which the devil is truly in the details.
But the all-important limitation on insured banks betting on the trading markets with depositors’ money is rumored to do a few key things:
You don't hear deficit hawks talking much about inequality, which is no surprise, since many solutions to inequality involve more federal spending. In truth, though, deficit hawks should be deeply worried about the big gaps in income and wealth for at least five reasons.
The Trayvon Martin case and subsequent focus on Stand Your Ground laws brought the right-wing group, ALEC, into the mainstream. ALEC pushes legislation and policy at the state level advocating for limited government, free markets and federalism. For decades, ALEC operated somewhat under the radar and managed to push right to work, Stand Your Ground, and anti-environmental legislation at the state level. But, it was never clear the extent of its success.
If anyone still suspects that National Public Radio has a consistently liberal bias, listen to Robert Siegel's interview with Brigid Flaherty, organizing director for the Alliance for a Greater New York, a labor advocacy group, on Wednesday's All Things Considered.
Americans aren’t incredibly concerned about the wide income gap between the very rich and the very poor, even though it's bigger issue in the United States than any other advanced economy. And it's growing.
The Volcker Rule is a requirement in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 that is sometimes referred to as a “mini-Glass-Steagall.”
Don't use that post-surgery fog as an excuse to ignore medical bills, even if you're still contesting them with your doctor or health insurer. Otherwise, your credit score will need to heal, too.
Medical debt is the most common type of collection account, representing nearly half of all reported collections. Almost one in six credit reports contain a medical debt collection, according to the Federal Reserve. And about two in five Americans reported a lower credit rating last year due to unpaid medical bills. [...]
Even though it had been expected, I was jolted when I got the phone call with the news that after many long decades the defiant fire of resistance had gone out and Nelson Mandela had died. He was the only truly great public figure I’d ever covered, an authentic revolutionary who refused to cower in the face of the most malignant of evils.
Once you know something about America's economy, the jobs data released monthly by the government always feels depressing, even when the news is supposedly good, like it was this morning.
That's because so many of the new jobs that get created in the U.S. today are lousy and don't offer a real path into the middle class.
Credit cards can be a useful stop-gap until payday, but when paychecks aren’t enough to cover the basics and balances roll over, credit cards become an expensive way to make ends meet. Past research from Demos shows that 40 percent of indebted low- and middle-income households have used their credit cards as a plastic safety net when incomes, assets, and shrinking public programs did not afford enough to meet basic needs.
The holiday season is upon us. Sadly, the big retailers are Scrooges when it comes to paying their workers. Undergirding the sale prices is an army of workers earning the minimum wage or a fraction above it, living check to check on their meager pay and benefits.
The same day that Illinois’ Legislature approved a $160 billion “restructuring” of public workers’ pensions, a federal judge ruled that pension protections in Michigan’s state constitution could be overridden as part of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy. Along with fury from unions, that double blow inspired a new round of “I-told-you-so’s” from pundits — like “Morning Joe’s” Joe Scarborough — who frame Detroit as a morality play about politicians who lack the backbone to force cuts on public employees.
President Obama gave an extraordinary speech about inequality yesterday, offering his most in-depth critique yet of why the growing chasm of income and wealth is so bad -- and offering a sweeping agenda for closing that chasm. That agenda included universal pre-K, raising the minimum wage, strengthening retirement systems, bringing back good manufacturing jobs, and more. All good ideas. But here's a question to ponder: Does this agenda square with what the public wants to do about inequality?
Every time a political leader argues—as President Obama did yesterday—that more education can reduce inequality, I nod my head in agreement, thinking of all the ways that one's life chances in America are shaped by educational opportunity. I grew up in an affluent Westchester town and went to great public schools.
