That Texas' discriminatory and partisan voter ID law was allowed to continue is evidence of the Supreme Court's failed understanding of its constitutional responsibilities.
Connecticut’s investment in higher education has decreased considerably over the past two decades, and its financial aid programs, though still some of the country’s most expansive, fail to reach many students with financial need.
This past Friday, in a speech to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, the Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen, spoke out on the evils of economic inequality in the United States. She noted that the steady growth in inequality over the past several decades represents the most sustained rise since the 19th century.
For decades, free high-school education helped strengthen the middle class and generate prosperity. So isn’t it time to extend the same thinking to college?
Public colleges and universities took in $62 billion in tuition in 2013. These are schools that educate three of four American college students, and eliminating that entirely could be done just by rearranging what we already spend on student financial aid.
When people like me write about the middle class, it has nothing to do with envy or class warfare—two shopworn epithets that should be retired from the political lexicon. The condition of the middle class—its size, income and self-confidence—reveals the extent to which economic growth increases opportunity. When the middle class is shrinking, when incomes of middle-class families are stagnating and when the heart of American society is losing hope in a better future, then the U.S. economy is in trouble. And so is the political system. [...]
The FDIC estimates there are 10 million people living in the U.S. who do not have a bank account — that’s one out of every 13 households. Nearly 33 percent of people living in Starr County, TX can’t write a check. In one census district in Savannah, GA, over 42 percent of residents are unbanked. The unbanked are usually poor, often minorities, and find themselves shunned by banks that can’t make money off them. Typically, they end up turning to predatory check cashers and payday lenders. Many also feel a great sense of social division between themselves and those who have bank accounts.
On September 12 2014, the Massachusetts legislature sent the United States Census Bureau a resolution adopted by both chambers, calling on the Census Bureau to reform its outdated practice of enumerating incarcerated persons as “residents” of the prisons in which they are temporarily incarcerated.
On Election Day, Montana will host one of the country’s key voting rights battles as voters decide whether to preserve or eliminate the state’s Election Day Registration (EDR) law, which permits citizens to register (or update their registration if they’ve recently moved) when they show up at the polls.
Democrats in tight races have found a new villain this election cycle: student debt.
“It totally limits your options of what you can do,” said one student in an ad from Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes, who accuses Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of having “turned his back on the students” for blocking Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s student loan refinancing bill.
By offering low-fee checking accounts, Walmart dares to go where most big banks won't. Few major financial institutions are willing to give lower-income Americans checking accounts these days -- without exorbitant fees.
But, unlike the big banks, Walmart really needs low-income customers.
While the de Blasio administration and the City Council work through the details of a bill that would prohibit employers from reviewing the credit histories of potential hires, liberal advocates are pushing for passage of the strongest possible version of the legislation.
(New York, New York) — As the country struggles to find remedies for its growing student debt problem, the national public policy organization Demos has released The Affordable College Compact, a new a proposal for a federal-state matching program to alleviate this burden for students and address many of the contributing factors of rising college costs, most notably state disinvestment.
When the Senate went to college, they paid an average of just over $11,443. If they attended the exact same institutions today, they’d pay an average of $32,279.
It’s the classic Catch-22 of the doomed job search: How do you get a job? You need experience. And how do you get experience? Get a job. But for many, the unemployment cycle gets further twisted when it intersects with the debt cycle. When prospective employers run credit checks, a bad report becomes a financial scarlet letter. ...
A bill that aims to “prohibit discrimination based on one’s consumer credit history” by banning employers from doing credit checks on job applicants will be the subject of a City Council hearing set for 10 a.m. Sept. 12 at City Hall. [...]
According to an article by Amy Traub titled “Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers Out of a Job,” the practice of checking credit on prospective employees is legal under federal law.
It’s hard to make broad causal inferences about student debt and homeownership among recent graduates, because there are simply too many factors in play.