One of the most profitable corporations in America is having a holiday food drive. Sounds good -- it's the least Corporate America can do for those struggling to make ends meet while big companies rake in record profits and give so little back. But wait... there's a catch. The food drive is for the company's own underpaid, poverty-stricken workers. You really can't make this stuff up.
Older Americans are disproportionately likely to be in debt. A 2012 Demos survey found that citizens 65 and older typically carried $9,300 on their credit cards, the most of any age group. Debt burdens are increasing, too.
A new report says declining revenues and bad Wall Street deals—not out-of-control spending or generous pension benefits--contributed the most to Detroit’s bankruptcy.
Detroit's debts are a fraction of the $18bn lawyers pushing for bankruptcy say they are, and their costs are "irrelevant, misleading and inflated," according to a report released Wednesday.
A former Wall Street investment banker is taking Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to task for blaming the city’s financial collapse, in part, on escalating pension and retiree health insurance costs.
The official story about Detroit goes something like this: Decades of mismanagement and out-of-control spending have left the city with a crushing $18 billion in debt.
At the new Walmart superstore in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles, a Thanksgiving turkey costs a little over $30 (£19). The shop is kind enough to distribute ready-made holiday shopping lists to its customers, reminding them to buy cornbread mix and cranberry sauce, ground ginger and pumpkin pie. Yet not everyone can afford to stock their cupboards with each provision on the list – least of all Walmart’s own employees.
Wall Street bankers, bad decisions made by elected officials and the Great Recession should be blamed for contributing to Detroit's fiscal crisis -- not the pensions of workers and retirees.
Walmart has gotten a lot of bad press this week over news of an Ohio store holding a food drive for its own workers, who were unable to buy Thanksgiving groceries on the retail giant's paltry wages. The store managers deserve credit for their thoughtfulness, but wouldn't it be better if Walmart simply paid its workers enough to feed themselves?
Declining revenue, a drop in employment and large, risky Wall Street deals are the real causes of Detroit’s bankruptcy, according to a report by Demos, a liberal public policy organization.
Pension debt gets a bad rap in Detroit, but it isn’t the true cause of Detroit’s financial problems, said Wallace Turbeville, author of the Demos report.
Pension fund liabilities are not to blame for Detroit's descent into Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, according to a report released Wednesday by Demos, a public policy advocacy group.
Detroit's bankruptcy was caused by a decrease in tax revenue due to a population decline and long-term unemployment, “not an increase in the obligations to fund pensions,” said Wallace C. Turbeville, a Demos senior fellow, and the author of “The Detroit Bankruptcy” report.
On Wednesday, Walmart workers called out or walked off the job at seven stores in Dallas, according to OUR Walmart activists, the group that has been organizing strikes and protests against the company. The company says that these were not independent actions but the result of activists being bussed between different store locations. [...]
Walmart can easily afford to raise pay for its low-wage workers by $5.83 an hour, to an average wage of $14.89, a new report from progressive think tank Demos concludes. All the retail giant has to do is stop its massive stock buybacks—which only serve to enrich a shrinking pool of shareholders, not to improve productivity—and put that money toward its workers.
Walmart spends $7.6 billion a year buying back shares of its own stock:
Wal-Mart could afford to hike every U.S. employee’s hourly wage to at least $14.89 an hour just by not repurchasing its own stock, according to a new report from the progressive think tank Demos.