This report makes the case that we should create jobs for the unemployed directly and immediately in public employment programs that produce useful goods and services for the public’s benefit.
A Maryland Partnership Bank will generate new revenue for Maryland, save local governments money, and make our businesses less dependent on the Wall Street banks.
A picture of the current state of the private retirement system, why this picture bodes ill for the future of retirement in the country, and why that system needs reform.
Social Security remains our nation’s key source of retirement income for most Americans. The program’s overall health is sound and with relatively modest tweaks to the program’s financing, we can strengthen the system for generations to come.
How the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Actwill bring greater security to American consumers, investors and Main Street businesses.
Young adults have an enormous stake in the financial regulatory reform debate. They have paid a high price for a banking crisis caused by lax regulation, and their economic futures will depend on rebuilding strong public structures for financial regulation going forward. This briefing paper addresses some of the key reforms and the impact of both the banking crisis and unregulated lending practices on young Americans' financial futures.
Comprehensive and meaningful systemic risk reform must undo many of the ill-advised deregulatory measuresof the past 20 years, including the four key changes wrought by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Part of a Demos series of reports on deregulation showing that often the most significant impact is on the quality and reliability of work — in this case, on port trucking.
The bottom half of American households now controls less than 5 percent of our total net worth. Our republican founders could not have imagined a distribution of wealth so concentrated, nor a democracy so threatened by the rule of property.
Today's 20-somethings are likely to be the first generation to not be better off than their parents." This is the first line of Economic State of Young America, a report released by Demos, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in New York City. And that's a troubling thesis for a generation that grew up being told they can do and be anything.
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.
Senior Fellow Algernon Austin and Jared Bernstein discuss how the "bad culture" arguments about African-Americans are misguided at best and destructive at worst. By creating an erroneous causal link between "bad culture" and black poverty, the "Cosby consensus" prevents the country from recognizing success and building on it to create the economic opportunities that are missing for too many African-Americans.
Robert Frank, an economist at Cornell University, for instance, found that in counties with the widest income gaps, rates of personal bankruptcy and divorce rates were higher than average.