The soaring pay of corporate chief executives is spurring efforts to pass laws to limit their compensation and close the widening gap in earnings between workers and top executives.
Such laws have been proposed in at least three states, including Massachusetts, as well as in Switzerland. Proponents have yet to succeed in enacting these measures, but they vow to keep pressing the issue. [...]
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.
Last night, I had the honor of attending an Intelligence Squared debate on the proposition that, “Income Inequality Impairs the American Dream of Upward Mobility.” It was an engrossing debate.
That’s how Walmart spokesperson Kory Lundberg described the concerns of Walmart workers and their allies who protested the mega-retailers low wages and poor employment policies in New York City last Thursday. “Wal-Mart doesn’t have any locations in New York City,” explained Lundberg, trying to reach those of us still too silly to grasp the fact.
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.
The Supreme Court said Saturday that, for the first time, it is allowing a voting law to be used for an election even though a federal judge, after conducting a trial, found the law is racially discriminatory in both its intent and its impact, and is an unconstitutional poll tax. It is not only not a good look for the court, it is an abdication of the federal responsibility to protect every American voter from racially discriminatory voter suppression.
For a moment last week, it looked like Walmart CEOs were getting enlightened. The company promised to “end minimum-wage pay” for its lowest-paid sales workers and touted a plan to ‘”invest in its associate base” and maybe even offer more bonus opportunities.
Today, Vice President Biden and others from the Obama administration, are meeting with human-resource executives from companies that are part of the president’s effort to address the problem of long-term unemployment, including Citigroup Inc., CVS Caremark Corp. and Boeing
Last week, AT&T agreed to pay $80 million to customers who had been overbilled for charges they had not authorized. This was an all-too-rare case of a perpetrator brought to book: In recent decades, Americans have increasingly been hit with fees they know nothing about, which have contributed to a crisis of consumer debt. We must hope we are entering a new era of regulatory activism that will shine a light on hidden fees.
The New York Timeseditorial was unequivocal: “the [New York City] Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio should unite behind this worthwhile bill” to ban the discriminatory practice of employment credit checks. After all, as the Times pointed out, “The worst of the recession is behind us, but the damage lives on for millions of Americans who are hobbled by bad credit… Does membership in the club of beleaguered borrowers inevitably make someone a risky hire or an unreliable employee? Hardly.
Today’s Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Professor Jean Tirole for his work in industrial organization, and how to best regulate such industries that are dominated by powerful firms, like finance and technology. It’s an important recognition of this work, because the economics profession has long relegated industrial organization, and the study of oligiopolistic markets, to a theory that, sure, it exists in practice— but who cares about practice?
Just a month before the election, voting rights have been on a wild ride. The Supreme Court began its term by reinstating voting restrictions in Ohio and North Carolina after federal appeals courts put these laws on hold for unfairly burdening voting rights, particularly for people of color.
Six years after America sank into the deepest economic downturn since the 1930s, the jobless rate has fallen to 5.9 percent, the lowest since July 2008. But one demographic group — African-American men — seems to be stuck in a permanent recession.
Deportations reached another record high last year. This is a striking development in light of the fact that illegal immigration and Border Patrol apprehensions have been falling for over a decade, and when — despite intransigence among some House Republicans — for several years there has been broad support for a fundamental restructuring of deportation policies.
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?
Despite Friday’s unemployment rate dropping to 5.9 percent nationally, New York City is still home to the dead-end kids.
Half of the city’s 600,000 recent college graduates are either underemployed or out of work, according to New York Fed researchers.
Most of this 50 percent are working in jobs they are overqualified for — no college degree required — and that are often low-pay, part-time and without benefits. It’s a vast jobs wasteland out there for this Millennial generation. [...]
On Tuesday, Montgomery County Council unanimously enacted a public financing bill that will both encourage participation from small donors in the county and allow civic-minded individuals to run for county office without needing big contributions. Starting in 2015, the county will match small donations from in-county donors for candidates who opt in to the program, demonstrate local public support, and agree to accept only individual donations between $5 and $150.
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.
This American Life’s broadcast of recordings made by a former New York Fed employee has generated a wave of interest in the issue of regulatory capture of the Fed, a sort of “Stockholm Syndrome” that affects regulators who identify with the businesses that they regulate, in this case the big banks. Regulatory capture affects many agencies and is particularly concerning in light of the power of big banks, the potential for harm if oversight fails and the physical location of supervisors in the offices of the banks.
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. [...]