Search Demos.org

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.

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:

Quick: What federal expense costs more than food stamps and unemployment insurance combined—and nearly as much as Medicare? No, it's not Medicaid. 

In November, Congress failed to renew the 2009 stimulus provision allocating additional funds to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).  This removed a much-needed $5 billion from an already underfunded public program tasked with keeping 47 million Americans from going hungry. 

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.

Today, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Rosa DeLauro introduced the Family Act, a bill that would grant every employee in the country access to up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. It’s a move that’s been long in coming. Really long.

I was almost a member of the United Auto Workers union. At the turn of the millennium, I was a graduate student working as a teaching assistant at Columbia University. While I had expected the low pay, the arbitrariness of some university decisions making left me eager for a greater voice at work. I joined other graduate student workers organizing with UAW Local 2110, which ably represents the office and administrative employees at the university. But it was not to be.

The Aspen Institute hosted an event today on the familiar challenge of closing the skills gap. The people at Aspen, including Melody Barnes, have some good ideas on how to do this -- and also some serious funding from JP Morgan Chase, which has a major initiative on closing the skills gap.

80 percent of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour. 

 Why does Obama well lag behind Clinton, who he has far outstripped in legislative accomplishments, and find himself only eight points higher than Nixon, a president heading fast toward resignation? 

The New York Times reported last week that New York State’s health plans are set to fall 50 percent in cost, which prompted a fierce debate between right wing critics of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its defenders. But missing from the conversation was the fact that insurance companies, who are driven not by the public’s interest but by profits, still control the market.

Job security, with good wages and durable industries. A good education. A home to call your own. Affordable health care when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you’re not rich.

President Obama laid out a compelling vision for rebuilding the middle class yesterday, but he largely sidestepped the all-important question of whether U.S. workers can compete, long-term, with lower paid workers in places like China, India, and Mexico. 

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.

Are we ready for the next Citizens United? Can our democracy, and Americans’ faith in government, take another body blow from the Supreme Court?

If you grew up in an upper-middle-class American family, there's a good chance that you are now doing worse than your parents. That is one of the findings of the big new study on economic mobility that has gotten so much attention this week. 

Many people on public assistance do not know that it is federally mandated—under the National Voter Registration Act—that they receive the opportunity to register to vote every time they visit a public assistance agency.