NEW YORK-- Recent repeal of the long-term care provision in the Affordable Care Act, has brought renewed importance to the economic security of many vulnerable Americans, particularly seniors. A new research brief, “Rising Economic Insecurity Among Single Senior Women,” published today by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy and the national policy center Demos, sheds light on the dire financial state of single women who are most in need of long-term care supports due to their higher life expectancy.
Almost half of single women over the age of 65 face the real crisis of outliving their financial resources. Most have very limited resources and are forced to make daily trade- offs between paying bills, forgoing home maintenance or medical needs. New research shows that economic insecurity among single senior women is on the rise. Between 2004 and 2008—even before the full impact of the Great Recession had been felt—economic insecurity among this population subgroup increased by one-third, from 35 percent to 47 percent.
Economic mobility is a tricky subject and it helps to do your homework before offering opinions in this area. Case in point is the recent speech by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan at the Heritage Foundation.
Critics love to beat up on government for its screw-ups and misfires -- as if these mistakes prove the point that the public sector can't do anything right. Exhibit A of late is the failed loan to Solyndra, which has been seized on as evidence that Washington can't create green jobs or do industrial policy more generally.
Today the average college grad leaves school with just over $24,000 in debt, an amount that eats up $276 every month if you stretch the payments out over ten years and it’s a government loan with a 6.8 percent interest rate. Of course, one out of five students also carries more costly private loans, where interest rates are in the double digits and fees add to the balance. This debt-for-diploma system is what counts as opportunity in America today.
One of the most frustrating things about the present moment is that public distrust of government is surging at exactly the moment when we need a bold and effective public sector. Worse, while Americans now seem ready to tackle the biggest problem of recent decades -- rising inequality -- it's easy to derail such action in the face of widespread distrust of government.
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.
NEW YORK— On Wednesday, November 2, policy center Demos and youth advocacy organization Young Invincibles will release a new report revealing the profound economic challenges facing America’s young people – and how these challenges threaten the future of the middle class. “The State of Young America” also includes the results of an exclusive national poll of young people on their economic outlook, conducted by Lake Research Partners and Bellweather Research & Consulting.
They say it's tough to make predictions, especially about the future. But a month or two from now, I expect media outlets to look at their outlays for coverage of Herman Cain's campaign -- the thousands of dollars shelled out for plane fare, rental cars, hotels and so on -- and be appalled. In the age of contraction, political coverage is increasingly a zero sum game.
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.
It's no secret that the technology industry is gung-ho about a corporate tax repatriation holiday. After all, many big tech firms do a huge amount of business abroad and have piled up a mountain of foreign profits that they are now itching to bring home during a one-time holiday where they would pay a fraction of the usual tax rate. In fact, no other industry now holds more cash overseas.
Thank you, Members of the Minnesota Judicial Special Redistricting Panel, for providing the opportunity to submit written testimony. Dēmos is a national, non-profit, non-partisan research and policy organization. The Dēmos Democracy Program works to ensure high levels of voting and civic engagement, and supports reforms to achieve a more inclusive and representative democracy.
Here's a data point that slipped under the radar when the U.S. Labor Department released its latest job numbers earlier this month: Layoffs of public sector workers accounted for the biggest chunk of pink slips handed out overall in September.
The latest attack on green jobs attempts to portray the U.S. Department of Labor’s green jobs training program as a failure and claims that President Obama failed on his promise to create 5 million green jobs by the end of the decade.
AUGUSTA-- This week, national voting rights organizations, the ACLU and Demos, as well as the local ACLU of Maine call upon the Secretary of State to cease and desist actions that threaten and intimidate legitimate voters, particularly students singled out by the Maine Republican Party earlier this year. The ACLU and Demos expressed concern that Secretary of State Charlie Summers has violated the United States Constitution and federal laws, including the federal Voting Rights Act.
