According to a recent study, Gen X and late baby boomers are on track to replace only about half of their current income when they reach retirement — which means they’ll need to seriously downgrade their lifestyles. Most financial planners recommend replacing, at the very least, 70% of one’s income.
For all the talk about inequality over the past two decades, scholars have known surprisingly little about what Americans think about the growing class divide and what they'd like to do about it, if anything.
Next month the Obama Administration will begin a nation-wide campaign to encourage low-income Americans to take advantage of the health insurance options that will come with the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion. Sounds like a great idea, right? A long overdue publicity campaign for an important piece of legislation.
The Nation has an interesting cover story this week by a young radical named Bhaskar Sunkara, an editor at In These Times and a founder of Jacobin, a new neo-Marxist magazine.
Sunkara's basic point is hard to argue with and it boils down to this: liberalism won't get far without a radical movement that presses for more fundamental change:
It was just yesterday that I wrote about why Democrats and Republicans alike should be able to get behind bigger investments in infrastructure. One point I made is that it's cheaper to fix small problems now than big problems later.
At a time when the mere phrase “high-frequency trading” makes some investors queasy, Brazil’s stock exchange is putting out the digital welcome mat. [...]
Wallace C. Turbeville, a senior fellow at Demos, a research group in New York, said most offers made by high-frequency trading firms were “illusory”: they exist not to be executed, but to measure, distort and exploit market sentiment, increasing volatility and costs for other investors.
Today, 23 May, is the annual general meeting (AGM) of financial speculator Goldman Sachs, the archetypal villain of the global economic meltdown, bailed out by US taxpayers to the tune of $5.5bn.
Republicans and Democrats may never see eye-to-eye on certain types of government spending, such aid for the poor. But bipartisanship is more possible when it comes to other roles for the public sector. For instance, as I noted here a few weeks ago, President Obama's new federal initiative to map the human brain has received widespread support from Republican leaders, who have often backed increased science spending in the past two decades even as the GOP has made room for anti-science kooks like Senator Jim Inhofe.
The latest version of immigration reform proposes a long and winding road to citizenship, including a "Registered Provisional Immigrant" status nearly 11 million immigrants will fall under should the bill pass. Many of those 11 million new almost-Americans will need access to the same kinds of social services and financial assistance programs that existing low-income Americans are elligible for, including the Earned Income Tax Credit.
In response to today’s White House announcement of intended appointees to the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, Demos President Miles Rapoport released the following statement.
Most people don't think about them until they're gone.
They pick up your trays at the food court and empty the trash bins at the National Air and Space Museum. They make uniforms for the military and drive truckloads of federally owned goods. In other words, they quietly keep things running smoothly at federal buildings in Washington, D.C. and around the country.
But the two million or so low-wage workers who work for private companies on behalf of the federal government say they aren't recognized or compensated fairly, and they're sick of it. [...]
As the capital is engulfed in scandals, advocates of campaign finance reform are intensifying their pressure on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, urging him to persuade the Legislature to rewrite state elections law in the hope that change in New York could have an influence nationally.
“I work at Quick Pita in the food court of the Ronald Reagan Building. I work nearly 12 hours every day serving lunch to the thousands of people who work in the building. But I am not here to tell you how hard I work. I am here to tell you that my employer does not follow the law,” testified Antonio Vanegas before a hearing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus yesterday.
Melissa Roseboro has worked at the McDonald's outlet at the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. for nearly a year. The 53-year-old grandmother said she just got a raise—of 8 cents.
That brings her hourly wage to $8.33 an hour and was the reason she joined 200 other federal contract workers in the nation's capital to stage a one-day walkout Tuesday, forcing several food outlets in the city to shut down for the day. [...]
Today’s strike follows the release last week of a report from the progressive think tank Demos estimating that at least 1,992,000 workers receive $12 per hour or less while doing jobs backed by public funds.
Hundreds of low-wage employees of federal contractors walked off the job on Tuesday morning, demanding that President Obama sign legislation or an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay higher wages. The Washington, D.C., strike is led by a new campaign called Good Jobs Nation, formed earlier this month.
A handful of food-service workers walked off their jobs in the food court of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Tuesday morning as part of a day-long protest of low wages paid to federal contract employees.
The series of protests, dubbed “Good Jobs Nation,” was in support of the contract workers who clean the offices, serve the food and take care of the museums and landmarks in the federal city, some of whom said they make less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. [...]
Groups of workers employed in service jobs at federal buildings around D.C. are picketing this morning outside the landmark sites at which they are employed over their low wages. The protest, organized by a new group calling itself Good Jobs Nation, includes people who work at federal building food courts, loading docks, memorabilia shops, and facilities that manufacture uniforms for the military.[...]
Good Afternoon. My name is Amy Traub and I am a senior policy analyst at Demos. We are a public policy organization working for an America where we all have an equal say in our democracy and an equal chance in our economy. I would like to thank the Progressive Caucus for this opportunity to provide testimony on our recent research.
