As the nation’s trillion-dollar student debt continues to rise, a new analysis of public higher education’s funding finds dwindling state support is the key factor driving rising tuition costs and deepening student debt. According to Demos, a public policy organization advocating economic opportunity and inclusive democracy, over the last two decades state support for higher education funding shifted to a new paradigm.
It's all well and good that President Obama announced yesterday that his administration would crack down on the repugnant practice by employers of calling all sorts of front-line workers "managers" so they can evade overtime laws. Workers are being systematically cheated out of billions of dollars in pay and it's great that we have a president who wants to do something about that, and make good on the hallowed ideal of the 40 hour work week, one of the central pillars of labor law.
But let's not kid ourselves.
Paul Ryan triggered a firestorm of recrimination this week. Speaking recently on Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio program, the Wisconsin Republican and self-styled budget wonk linked poverty to “this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.”
Kelli Jo Griffin will stand trial next week in Iowa for registering to vote. Unfortunately, Griffin happens to live in a state where such activity is illegal for people like her with a past felony conviction. When she registered to participate in an election last year in her small town of Montrose, she checked on the form that she was not disqualified from voting due to a felony.
Anyone wearing an "assistant manager" name tag knows that the job carries a nice title but doesn't necessarily come with commensurate pay.
One of the biggest issues for assistant managers and other white-collar workers is unpaid overtime. That's because those employees are often expected to work 60 or 70 hours a week, pushing their pay down to minimum-wage level once all their hours are included.
I grew up just outside Detroit and have felt an ache in my heart for this bleeding city for so many years now. It's long been one of the country's designated loser cities, beginning in the 1960s, when change hit it hard. The phrase at the time was "urban blight," a social cancer with unexamined causes that, in the ensuing years, has gotten progressively worse.
Adolph Reed, Jr., has a dispiriting essay in the current issue of Harper's on the "long, slow surrender of American liberals." He argues there is no longer a "dynamic left" and charts the decline of a forceful alternative progressive vision over the past half century.
In theory, Congress should pass laws and legislation (which hit a record low in 2013)—and in a representative democracy, its members should listen to constituents and reflect their concerns and priorities.
In an economic address last year, President Obama declared that his highest priority would be addressing economic inequality and reversing the long erosion of middle-class security. “Whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I'll use it,” the president announced. He wasn’t kidding.
Anyone who wonders how employers managed to so completely rig the labor market in their favor should familiarize themselves with the research of David Weil, a professor at Boston University who's been nominated by President Obama to lead the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor.
The unprecedented bankruptcy proceedings for Detroit lay bare the witch’s brew of fiscal devastation caused by the Great Recession and poor policy decisions that plague state and local governments throughout the land.
A recent ProPublica article points to a number of pending lawsuits aimed at restoring key federal protections against racial voting discrimination. Up until last summer, certain states and jurisdictions with histories of preventing African Americans from voting were forced to have all election changes cleared by the federal government before implementation.
Whenever new jobs data is published, as it was today, I take a quick look at the unemployment rate for construction workers. No group of workers got whacked harder by the housing crash and financial crisis, and it's only when these people are back on their feet can we say that the worst is over.
Economist Kenneth Boulding famously said, “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” But it's not just economists who believe that anymore. Such ideas are still widely accepted by thought leaders, journalists, and politicians who, together, form a strong consensus that the U.S. recovery should be bolstered by natural gas exploration and production.
Biola Jeje, 22, graduated Brooklyn College last May with a degree in political science and a mission: Force lawmakers to address the $1.2 trillion student debt crisis. [...]
Jeje left college with $9,500 in student loans, less than half the $29,400 national average for four-year college graduates. She and her fellow activists are mobilizing support to march on Albany, New York state’s capital, to deliver a message to legislators. [...]
A coalition of progressive groups on Thursday formally began a new campaign aimed at curbing rising student debt and reducing the price of college.
The group of think tanks, student organizations, consumer advocates, and unions is targeting the country’s “increasingly dysfunctional system of higher education,” said Anne Johnson, executive director of Generation Progress, the youth division of the Center for American Progress, which is an organizer of the campaign. [...]
The new budget put out by the Obama administration has been depicted by Republicans as a liberal wish list, filled with endless spending paid for by higher taxes.