Unions were instrumental in creating the American middle class, and today they continue to empower millions of Americans to bargain for wages and benefits that are capable of sustaining a middle-class standard of living.
Home ownership is commonly understood as the quintessential marker of having arrived in the middle class: a family’s home is often the single largest asset that they own and has traditionally served as an important vehicle for wealth accumulation and economic security.
The United States needs to be reimagined. A recent study from the Pew Research Center tells us that in economic terms the middle class "has suffered its worst decade in modern history." It's shrinking.
With jobs scarce, wages declining and the nation's wealth concentrating ever more intensely at the top, the middle class has shrunk in size for the first time since World War II.
The last few weeks have not brought good news for those of us wanting a future powered by clean energy. Thesouthern portion of the TransCanada pipeline is under construction. On top of that, New York State will lift its moratorium and allow fracking to occur in the state.
A new report from the New York Fed suggests that even while the rest of household debt improved since March, driven by decreasing credit card and housing debt, student loans have worsened.
Recall your last voting experience: chances are you were packed into a school cafeteria, shuttled along to a table where someone checked your name off a long list of registered voters, and you cast your ballot before rushing to work.
PHILADELPHIA – On Wednesday, the Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) and ACTION United entered a Court approved Settlement Agreement with the Secretary of the Commonwealth Carol Aichele, Secretary of Public Welfare Gary D. Alexander, and Secretary of Health Dr. Eli N.
Many Florida families have been paying up to 25 percent of median income for public in-state college costs — out of reach for some middle-class parents who have taken recent pay cuts or lost jobs, according to a new study.
In a speech at the University of Kansas in February of the tumultuous year 1968, Robert F. Kennedy spoke of the plight of the poorest Americans, those struggling in devastated rural areas, and on Indian reservations and in the tenements and housing projects of the inner cities. He was blunt. “We must begin,” he said, “to end this disgrace of the other America.”
MIAMI – In just three years Florida’s higher education funding per student decreased 40 percent, according to a new report by national public policy center Demos and the Florida-based Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy (RISEP). As a direct result, Floridian families now spend 25% of median income on the cost of a single year of attendance at a public four-year college. The situation is only looking grimmer, with the recent $300 million cut to public four-year universities.
Some eight years ago, I was at a presentation by Vanguard founder Jack Bogle at a business journalists' conference in Denver, and when his PowerPoint crashed, and he had to use transparencies on a vintage 20th-century overheard projector. After the presentation, he let me keep them, and they still serve as a sort of Rosetta Stone for me for enlightened investing.
Investors who were paying attention got a cold slap of reality this spring when the progressive think tank Demos released a study showing that the median household could expect to pay more than $150,000 in 401(k) fees over the course of a working lifetime, or about a third of potential investment returns. What's more, about two-thirds of 401(k) investors had no idea that they were paying such fees.
Summertime in an election year in Colorado always has a certain excitement. Candidates marching in parades, petitioners gathering signatures at festivals ... some years we even get regular visits from the presidential candidates. Coloradans experience democracy in action well before Election Day.
Washington, DC - The United States Student Association (“USSA”), the nation’s oldest and largest student-run, student-led organization, yesterday filed a brief amicus curiae supporting the constitutionality of the University of Texas’ undergraduate admissions program, which is being challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas, No. 11-345. USSA is comprised of more than four million students with diverse backgrounds who are currently enrolled in American colleges and universities.
When I was a student, my English-major friends warned me that economists were people who didn’t have enough personality to become accountants. It seemed like a terrible accusation at the time. Today, I worry less about the personality than the efficacy of both professions.
It seems there is little real relief on the horizon.
“If you’re coming out of college with an average number of $20,000 to $25,000 in debt and there’s no job out there, you’ve got a real problem,” said John Quinterno, a researcher who has studied the consequences of student debt.
A group responsible for development of the Willets Point space next to Citi Field said Walmart wouldn’t be a part of its conception.
Late last week, the Daily News reported that Walmart quietly lobbied city officials to include them in the development of the area near Citi Field that currently houses auto body shops. Regardless, according to the group responsible for the development project, Walmart’s lobbying efforts are news to them.
Representative John Dingell (D-MI), the longest-sitting member of Congress, introduced a bill Thursday designed to force the Supreme Court to reconsider its Citizens United decision. Along with at least ten co-sponsors, Dingell's Restoring Confidence in Our Democracy Act, would ban corporations and unions from making independent political expenditures. It would also subject Super PACs to the same contribution limits that exist with other PACs.
Americans are, for the most part, completely unaware of just who -- or what -- is funding the 2012 presidential campaign.
Just 25 percent of likely voters say they have heard "a lot" about outside spending this election cycle, according to a new poll from the Pew Research Center, while a huge majority said they have either heard little or "nothing at all" about outside expenditures by groups not associated with the candidates or campaigns.