As Black Friday approaches, retailers nationwide are waiting anxiously to see whether the nation’s busiest shopping day will deliver a boost in profits. But perhaps no company has more at stake than Walmart, the shopping behemoth that was the world’s largest retailer until Amazon supplanted it in that role this summer.
Nia Mirza, an international student from Pakistan, organized a petition earlier this year demanding NYU lower the cost of attendance after the annual price tag of attending the school suddenly rose from $64,000 to $71,000.
The Democrats need young black voters. But the political party of our parents doesn’t seem to know how to reach us — the black millennials they can’t afford to lose — this time around.
Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen is living in a bubble because the Fed just doesn’t see that. Perhaps the Fed wants to put the brakes on an economy already struggling up a hill on low fuel? Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at Demos, believes the Fed’s interest-rate hike is a “small step toward slowing down the economy.”
⌗BlackLivesMatter is a young movement, literally and demographically. Democrats need young black voters, a key part of “the rising American electorate” that twice propelled Barack Obama into the white house. As Donovan X.
Heather McGhee, the president of the leftist think tank Demos, kicked off the proceedings. “You ain’t seen nothing yet from the Working Families Party,” she said. “We’re electing leaders, we’re winning on issues, and most importantly, we’re changing what’s politically possible.”
Last month, President Obama inaugurated yet another way to encourage Americans to save for retirement. In the new myRA accounts, workers can save up to $15,000 in a low-fee investment plan that, like a government savings bond, guarantees the principal. The accounts are a small step toward helping households save, but they are not an effective solution to the coming retirement crisis.
Starting in 2020, the numbers of very low-income elderly will rise sharply as the retired population soars to almost 56 million.
“We’ve already had a lot of states use student debt relief as a carrot to entering certain professions,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. “Now that most professions have student debtors in them you’re going to see broad-based relief plans,” like New York’s, he said.
New York’s is it’s linked specifically to income, so anyone making a relatively low salary — whether it’s an artist working out of a loft space in Bushwick or a nonprofit researcher toiling away in midtown — qualifies.
America could elect its first woman president next year, but even that would be a hollow sign of progress in a country mired in gender inequity.
The Supreme Court may well gut Roe v. Wade. Access to abortion and contraception has regressed dramatically, and clinics face increasing intimidation. The pay gap is stubbornly broad.
When diversity activists began campaigning a few years ago for tech companies to disclose their employee demographics, the truth was revealed. What resulted was a lot of handwringing over the state of diversity in tech and some commitment from companies, including Twitter to do better. Sadly, few companies have moved the needle. But for Twitter, that failure could be its undoing. Worse, for would-be tech workers, if a company with Twitter’s user profile can’t get diversity right, there’s little hope for the sector overall.
Robert Hiltonsmith, a researcher at the think tank Demos, has estimated that the average household loses $155,000 in potential gains as a result of unnecessary fees.
The explosion of “dark money” spent in the political system in the United States threatens racial equity in the United States making it harder for Blacks and other minorities to gain a foothold in the middle class and fully participate in the democracy, according to a recent report by Demos, a public policy group.
The fourth quarter of the Obama presidency has been relatively active when it comes to higher education. Last year alone, the Administration announced a proposal to make two years of community college tuition-free, finalized and released a treasure trove of data on earnings and loan repayment data by college as a substitute for its once-vaunted plans for a College Ratings system, came out with a Student Aid Bill of Rights, and issued regulations intended to streamline the confusing set of student loan repayment options.
Amy Traub, senior policy analyst at Demos, a New York-based nonpartisan public policy research organization, told Bloomberg BNA Jan. 20: ‘‘It’s really striking the way the growing protests we’ve seen by Wal-Mart workers, and increasing public pressure, has really pushed the world’s largest employer to raise wages and improve [work] schedules. It’s a huge victory for Wal-Mart workers [and] will ultimately benefit the company itself as employees have increased buying power.’’
America’s growing inequality is well-documented. Less discussed is its intersection with another of the country’s defining trends, growing diversity.
Racial disparities in wealth are vast. And addressing inequality now and in the years ahead, means thinking seriously about the racial wealth gap and the steps we can take to ameliorate it.
The idea of a property-owning democracy is no longer the reality in the United States. Edward Wolff finds that the wealthiest 10 percent own 90.9 percent of all stocks and mutual funds, 94.3 percent of financial securities but only 26.5 percent of the debt. For the middle class, their home makes up 62.5 percent of their limited wealth.
“Super PACs likely encouraged more candidates to get into the 2016 GOP presidential race,” said Jay Goodliffe, a political science professor at Brigham Young University. “Even if their polls were not initially good, or there were other setbacks, the super PAC could help keep them afloat.”
