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Critics of the fast-food worker strikes don't just make the mistake of relying on industry-backed research to argue that higher wages are unaffordable (see Jillian Kay Melchior's slanted and shallow piece in NRO) and ignore the real-live examples of U.S. states that have raised their minimun wage
Blog
David Callahan
Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the labor market has built up little steam over the course of the year, with July job gains that put us on course to reach full employment in 2020. For young adults, waiting another 7 years just to get on track means
Blog
Catherine Ruetschlin
Low wage workers and their advocates have been pushing for a paid sick leave bill for almost eight years in Massachusetts, where it’s still legal for an employer to fire workers for taking time off due to sickness or injury. The latest bill, introduced by Democratic State Senator Dan Wolf was
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Ilana Novick
The fast food worker strikes have become an occasion to repeat age-old arguments that raising pay for low-skilled jobs will result in fewer such jobs. In effect, the advice to fast-food workers—many of whom work full-time but still live in poverty—is to endure low wages because lousy pay is better
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David Callahan
Business is booming. Employers are hiring. Job growth is soaring. Profits are near record levels. All true, at least in the retail and restaurant industries. New jobs numbers released Friday show that 47,000 jobs were added in retail in July, and 38,000 jobs were added in food and drinking places
Blog
David Callahan
Seventy years ago, when leaders like James Conant were pushing for a meritocratic education system, they argued that narrow and entrenched privilege was the enemy of prosperity. Why? Because it gave the best opportunities to unexceptional rich WASPs while leaving America's best human capital off the
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David Callahan
It's time for the real estate industry -- one of the true 900-pound gorillas in U.S. politics -- to join the battle to reduce student debt burdens. Why? Because the bread-and-butter of that industry, young people who buy new homes, is increasingly threatened by soaring college loans which leaves
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David Callahan
Our personal information is compiled, traded, analyzed and sold off as never before. Not only do business and government track us online, but retailers trace our cell phones through stores, and vast, little-known databases can keep us from getting jobs, qualifying for loans, and opening bank
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Amy Traub
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Smiling Black father and child on a swing
Crime is a component of poverty, opportunity, & proximity, not a racial pathology.
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Michael Jackson
The Senate Finance Committee wrote an open letter last month to the rest of the Senate calling for tax code reform suggestions. The due date for proposals was this past week. Among other parts of the code, the charitable tax deduction faces potential overhaul.
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Jack Grauer