Here's something alarming to imagine: One day, your investment advisor at Merrill Lynch doesn't show up to his job. No warning, no nothing. He just doesn't show.
We probably don’t need to be reminded that the economy is a critical problem. Yet the nation’s political conversation still founders on the question of what it is about the nation’s economic performance that is holding back the middle class and people trying to work their way into it. Into the fray steps the Economic Policy Institute, with straight-forward, clarifying data in a new study that should help to focus the political debate.
The post-recession party line at the American Bankers Association (ABA) is something like, “Hey Jane/Joe Briefcase. We're just as mad at gosh darn Wall Street as anyone. But only some bankers are evil. A lot of us are honest and work hard, just like you.” Maybe. But this isn’t a reason to lose track of ABA’s political agenda and who pays to set it: Wall Street, coincidentally.
In June, five Supreme Court Justices rolled back the Voting Rights Act, widely considered the most effective tool in preventing discrimination in our nation's history. Section 5 of the act required that certain states and localities "preclear" proposed election changes with federal officials to ensure the changes were not discriminatory. The Court ruled that the formula used to determine which jurisdictions needed to get preclearance was outdated and unconstitutional. For those of us who care about voting rights, the question now is how do we respond?
While a college degree may give graduates a leg up in their careers, students who graduate with high student loan debt can find that ticket to be a costly one.
According to a study by the public policy research organization Demos, student loan debt may be more detrimental to your financial future than was previously thought.
It’s high drama and riveting politics these days as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s most thoroughly red-state retailer, charges deep into blue-state territory in its efforts to expand beyond its comfortably established realm in rural America and suburbia by moving into the often hostile territory of inner cities.
The case for raising the pay of low-wage workers usually focuses on the here and now: The biggest low road employers have plenty of profits to spare and sharing them more equitably with their workers would do a load of good, including for the economy as a whole by stimulating more spending and growth. But cast an eye out into the future and you'll see an equally compelling case for upping pay: To avoid an unprecedented poverty crisis among tomorrow's seniors.
The Wall Street Journal’s opinion page is often an exercise in how to completely misinterpret policy and/or data. Monday’s attack on Hillary Clinton’s speech on the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County is no exception.
Many Americans in these cash strapped times can relate to incurring an overdraft fee or bouncing a check. Ii's happened to nearly all of us and, mostly, we don’t expect it to impact our financial choices for the next five years to seven years.
Raising the pay of low-wage workers is becoming one of the top priorities of the progressive movement -- and a crucial test of that movement's strength. If Occupy Wall Street was a sprawling, diffuse howl against the new Gilded Age, the push to raise wages for retail and restaurant workers is a super focused manifestation of the same outrage at how skewed U.S. prosperity (and political power) has become. Occupy spotlighted the problem; the low-wage strikes are offering the solution, or at least one solution.
About two-thirds of the 20 million people who attend college every year borrow money to do so. We’ve heard a lot about how growing educational debt loads — the average student borrower now graduates owing $26,600 — can be a detriment to someone just starting out in life, and to the health of the broader American economy. Student debt loads are crowding out other things that young people historically spend money on, forcing them to delay marriage, home ownership, auto and other big-ticket purchases, investments in start-up businesses, and retirement savings.
“Whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I’ll use it,” announced President Obama in last month’s landmark economic address in Galesburg Illinois. Now consensus seems to be building around one thing President Obama can indeed use his executive powers to do to boost hundreds of thousands of workers into the middle class: raise their wages.
For decades, the dictators of the Middle East basically gave the following rap to any westerner who questioned their tyrannical rule:
You may not like us, but we're better than the alternatives. We're better than a democratic government that will inevitably be hijacked by Islamists. And we're better than the sectarian or tribal civil war that will erupt if we don't keep a lid on things.
In the wake of the Detroit bankruptcy, there has been no shortage of finger pointing, blame, and calls for “shared sacrifice.” On a personal note, I love hearing the phrase “shared sacrifice” because what usually follows is a lot of sacrifice that is rarely shared. And, the case in Detroit is no exception.
The controversy over an unpaid intern listing at LeanIn.org, the new nonprofit created by Sheryl Sandberg, has been welcome, because it spotlights a growing consensus that unpaid internships are bad. All sorts of organizations will think twice after this episode about paying people nothing to do work.
Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are facing heat for handing over their customers’ call records to the government. But it isn’t the only way that these phone companies are frustrating their customers – they also waste time and money by extending their prerecorded voicemail instructions.
Sluggish sales at major retailers paint a grim picture of an uneven economic recovery that has low- and moderate-income households reluctant to buy anything beyond the bare necessities.
Three years out from the worst recession in generations, many Americans are still contending with unemployment or stagnant wages that limit their disposable income. This group has also been disproportionately squeezed by the restoration of the payroll tax and rising gas prices, economists say.