Immigration reform is likely to mean higher wages for workers at the bottom of the economic ladder—both foreign and native born.
The reason is that the large number of undocumented workers in the U.S. exerts a downward drag on wages because employers routinely exploit such workers by paying them below the minimum wage and flouting other labor laws.
A firm announces a plan to build a new facility, but where? Local and state development officials compete to attract the firm with ever-more-generous tax breaks and subsidies.
If it were up to you, how would you split up income between the top 10% and the other 90%? How should a country's wealth be distributed, and why? And, if more Americans truly understood the impacts and extent of income inequality, would they be moved to do anything about it?
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously warned in 1996 that welfare reform was a huge gamble and that the result could be extraordinary human suffering.
Those predictions came to seem extreme as the years passed. The boom of the late 1990s and then the credit fueled prosperity of the Bush years ensured a steady supply of low-wage jobs and, for a long time, it seemed that TANF was not the disaster many predicted.
When employers check credit as part of their hiring it creates a vicious cycle: out-of-work Americans can’t pay down their debts because they don’t have a job, but they can’t get a job because would-be employers hold their consumer credit history against them.
Today the Supreme Court put another nail in the coffin of the withering body of consumer rights. In the Italian Colors case, the Court held that a plaintiff cannot bring a class action to a court or arbitration when it has agreed to a boilerplate contract waiving its right to litigation or class arbitration, even where the cost of bringing the case as an individual is so prohibitive as to preclude the vindication of important statutory rights.
One of the most pernicious myths of the past half century is that guaranteeing healthcare for all Americans would strike a mortal blow against this country's system of free enterprise.
Investment negotiators from Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries met secretly last week in Vancouver for their 18th round of talks regarding the expansive agreement. Frantic protestors, who caught wind of the conference through the Peruvian media, tried unsuccessfully to locate the talks and instead decided to hold a demonstration outside of the offices of Pacific Rim — a Canadian mining corporation.
When people talk about corporations spending money in politics, it’s commonly assumed that the corporation is a single thing with a clear position on any given issue. This masks the fact that corporations are complex, state-created entities with their own governance structures and a multitude of conflicting interests.
Last week, I explored the question of whether federal contracting wastes tax dollars. But that post missed at least one key part of the equation -- the high costs of having no institutional memory.
A top government research scientist wrote me in response to the post to make this very good point:
Last week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a report on how the City could prepare for the rising sea levels that will result from climate change. A Stronger, More Resilient New York is a 438-page blueprint for climate adaptation that covers everything from coastal protection to built infrastructure, like buildings and telecommunications, and community rebuilding and resiliency. It is an ambitious plan, to say the least, and the vast majority of it, if implemented, will be under the next Mayor.
If the NSA leak had happened twenty years ago, Edward Snowden would have been defended by lots of progressives and a few libertarians here and there. But it's unlikely that any major leaders in the Republican Party or the mainstream conservative media would have come out as Snowden cheerleaders.
The current version of immigration reform already includes a decade-plus path to citizenship, not to mention potential fees and fines, but it's progress -- more than Congress has made in years. Unfortunately, some senators have decided that the proposed long and winding path to citizenship wasn't hard enough, and one of them, Marco Rubio (R-FL), is backing away from his own bill, calling it merely "an excellent starting point."
CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler has often said that weak rules on regulatory jurisdiction across borders could blow a hole in the bottom of financial reform. He is right. In a recent speech on the subject, he said: “All of these common- sense reforms Congress mandated, however, could be undone if the overseas guaranteed affiliates and branches of U.S. persons are allowed to operate outside of these important requirements.”
Philadelphia requires city-subsidized organizations to give employees health benefits, a living wage of $10.88 an hour and paid sick leave. But the ordinance only applies only to “businesses with direct city contracts,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, and excludes subcontracted employees at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL). Philadelphia Councilman Wilson Goode Jr.
Since the Rana Plaza building collapse killed more than 1,100 people in April, retailers have faced mounting pressure to improve safety at Bangladesh garment factories and to sever ties with manufacturers that don't measure up.
The world's largest retailer, Walmart, last month released a list of more than 200 factories it said it had barred from producing its merchandise because of serious or repeated safety problems, labor violations or unauthorized subcontracting.
Is the National Security Agency wasting tax dollars by paying Booz Allen to handle routine intelligence tasks, such as the systems administration work that 29-year old Edward Snowden was doing for $122,000 a year? It sure seems that way.
Evelyn Coke was a Jamaican-born, single mother of five who worked for decades providing care for sick and frail people in their homes. She came to the United States in her thirties and ultimately brought her children to live with her in New York City.
First, the American Pediatrics Association noted that poverty was the number one danger facing children today. If that wasn’t bad enough, it seems the elderly are just as vulnerable, especially in the light of potential entitlement cuts.