American workers are being ripped off by excessive retirement plan fees — which may force them to work longer or live less comfortably in their golden years, according to a recent study.
For the average US household, the high fees drain about $155,000 from their 401(k) accounts over their lifetimes, the study found.
In one example highlighted in the study, a two-wage-earner household with a median income for their age group contributed an average of 7 percent a year to their 401(k) plan over 40 years.
Malloy wrote in his veto message that he believed parts of the bill to be unconstitutional, potentially infringing on individuals' free speech protections under the First Amendment. Other parts of 5556, he argued, "represent poor public policy choices." He went on, "While I have advocated for transparency in the elections and campaign finance process for a long time, and could certainly support sensible reform in this area again, I cannot support the bill before me given its many legal and practical problems."
New York, NY -- Today, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy vetoed House Bill 5556, which would have strengthened Connecticut’s laws on disclosure of political spending. In response, Demos President Miles Rapoport, a former legislator and Secretary of the State of Connecticut, issued the following statement:
Screengrabs of Spokeo.comIn today’s economy, it’s hard enough to land a job without companies secretly compiling inaccurate dossiers of information about you, then aggressively selling them to employers, who – based on the false or simply irrelevant data – decide not to hire you.
Dimon’s testimony yesterday before the Senate Banking Committee -- the week of the anniversary of the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933 -- is ironic, to say the least. He objected to the Volcker Rule’s prohibitions against proprietary trading by federally insured banks (acting like hedge funds, in the words of Senator Merkley), characterizing the re-instatement of a separation of commercial banks and trading markets as an imprudent act taken by Congress in anger.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering allowing hydraulic fracking on a limited basis in towns that approve drilling for natural gas. New York currently has a temporary moratorium on all fracking while an environmental review is conducted.
Many high school and college grads face a tough rode ahead, given high unemployment and record levels of student debt. But the future is especially bleak for undocumented students graduating from high school, the so called Dreamers, in reference to the DREAM Act, a bill stalled in Congress for close to eleven years that would allow this population to regularize their status and access a path to citizenship if they meet certain conditions.
Citing clear evidence that low-income Arkansas residents have been denied the opportunity to register to vote, attorneys from voting rights groups Project Vote and Demos sent a pre-litigation notice letter to Secretary of State Mark Martin, the Arkansas Department of Human Services, and the Arkansas Department of Health, regarding the state’s non-compliance with the federal requirements of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).
Ahead of Rio+20, advocates are coalescing around the idea that we need to change the way we measure what is important to achieve true sustainable development. Currently countries measure economic growth, which is often equated with progress, through GDP. However, growth in GDP is increasingly not resulting in progress.
One of the most often-cited reasons for the STEM achievement gap is a lack of skilled and trained STEM teachers. The greatest percentage of under-qualified teachers at the K-12 level is found in STEM disciplines – 40 percent of high school math teachers and 20 percent of science teachers in high needs areas lack a higher education degree in the subject they instruct.
The Washington Post has a long story today that offers a horrifying glimpse into how one of America's largest banks systematically stripped wealth from the some of the poorest people in the nation. It details the sordid career success of a former star subprime loan officer at Wells Fargo:
The recent Fed report on household wealth contains yet more evidence of how distorted and unequal the U.S. economy has become.
The big headline around the study, which comes out every three years, has been that the household wealth of Americans dropped by 40 percent between 2007 and 2010, and is now basically where it was in 1992, adjusting for inflation.
NEW YORK— As members of the Class of 2012 join the work force or look to higher education, a new report illuminates the connection between poor STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teacher retention rates and young Americans’ chances of being relegated to low-wage, low-skill jobs that offer little economic security or opportunity.
Citing clear evidence that Alabama public assistance agencies are violating their federally-mandated responsibilities to offer tens of thousands of public assistance clients opportunities to register to vote, today attorneys from Demos, Project Vote, and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law sent a pre-litigation notice letter to the Alabama Secretary of State on behalf of the Alabama State Conference of the NAACP.
Here's a statistic that I found surprising and also troubling: Roughly 730,000 master's degrees will be awarded this spring. And it's estimated that another 2.2 million master's degrees will be handed out over the next three years.
