On Tuesday, Sallie Mae reported that student debt over the past four years has been rising faster than blood alcohol levels at a beer pong tournament. Student debt shot up 44 percent over the past four years, with the average senior now carrying a $4,100 load. It only looks to be getting worse. The average freshman already has $2,000 worth of red. That's on top of the roughly $20,000 they'll have in other college-related debt.
Dear Representative and member of the Financial Services Committee:
The undersigned consumer, civil rights, small business, investor, community and labor organizations representing tens of millions of Americans strongly urge you to vote for H.R. 627, the Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights Act (Rep. Maloney), when it is brought to a committee vote as early as this Wednesday, 1 April 2009. The bill passed the House on an overwhelming 312-112 vote, as HR 5244, in September 2008. It enjoys broad public support.
The moral question is, who owns knowledge? Or who should own knowledge? Put another way, if most of our wealth comes from inherited knowledge — not what we do "today" — then isn't this part of our wealth, this knowledge, something which rightly should belong to everyone as a common inheritance?
Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly provide progressives with some welcome and fresh ammunition for fighting back and for justifying a redistributionist agenda in their new book, Unjust Deserts. Alperovitz and Daly are attempting nothing less than to shift the entire framework for our thinking about distributive justice.
But with so many women joining the work force, other expenses have skyrocketed for middle-class families, who have bid up prices for things like a home in a safe neighborhood with good schools. Other expenses in a dual-earner family -- including child care, an extra car for mom to go to work and rising college costs -- have gobbled up nearly all of the gains in salary, some argue.
Demos submitted this testimony from Demos President Miles Rapoport to the House Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, highlighting the denial of voter registration opportunities for low-income voters and veterans, and underscoring the continued systemic problems with the voter registration in the U.S.
Young adults between ages 19 and 29 make up the largest portion of uninsured in the United States, totaling about 13.2 million in 2007. That's right--young adults make up more than one-fourth of uninsured Americans.
This important cover story from the Detroit Metro Times sheds light on the predicament faced by so many young adults.
Allegra Chapman, Counsel in the Democracy Program, delivers testimony on the benefits of Election Day Registration before the Senate Education, Health, and Environmental Affairs Committee of the Maryland General Assembly.
Allegra Chapman, Counsel in the Democracy Program, delivers testimony on the benefits of Election Day Registration before the House Ways and Means Committee of the Maryland General Assembly.
Demos President Miles Rapoport delivers testimony, highlighting Iowa's turnout for the 2008 General Election was the highest in state history largely as a result of EDR recently enacted in the state, EDR states have little to no instance of fraud related to EDR and election officials in EDR states support its efficacy as pro-voter legislation that opens access to the polls and limits the need for provisional ballots, before the Nebraska Senate Committee on Government, Military and Veterans Affairs.
Demos President Miles Rapoport delivers testimony before the Connecticut Joint Legislative Committee on Government Administration and Elections urging support for a bill introduced by Representative Andy Fleischmann to enact Election Day Voter Registration (EDR) in Connecticut.
Each year, many talented students from low-income areas and families either choose not to attend college at all or drop out under the pressure to keep a job.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, brainchild of the Microsoft mogul, is out to change that. The organization recently unveiled an initiative to double the number of degrees earned by low-income students by the time they reach age 26.
As President Obama takes office, and the nation reflects on the historic moment and its significance, Demos Senior Fellows John Schwarz and Lew Daly remind us that America is more than just “common blood, or race, or ethnic background or religion.” America is about freedom, they argue, and its up to government to help establish the conditions for economic independence that have become central to the ideals of American freedom.
IF THE conservative era now collapsing around us had a reigning idea, it was best expressed by Margaret Thatcher when she declared with Bourbonesque flair that “there is no such thing as society.” In their new book Unjust Deserts: How the Rich are Taking our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take it Back, Gar Alperovitz and Lew Daly turn Thatcher’s premise on its head and with it the whole individualistic worldview that ruled our politics for the last three decades.