Friedrichs v. CTA, is ostensibly about one teacher’s right to not join her teachers union, but that choice is already available to any worker everywhere in America. This case is really just another attack on workers’ ability to join together and make their voices heard.
Bernie Sanders rang in the New Year with a rally in downtown Manhattan renewing his call to break up the big banks and jail executives who break laws. He also distilled the damage done by a predatory unconstrained economy into a single theme: for a long time, the rich have been getting richer as everyone else is mired in wage and wealth stagnation or worse.
Robert Hiltonsmith, a researcher at the think tank Demos, has estimated that the average household loses $155,000 in potential gains as a result of unnecessary fees.
“We’ve already had a lot of states use student debt relief as a carrot to entering certain professions,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at Demos, a left-leaning think tank. “Now that most professions have student debtors in them you’re going to see broad-based relief plans,” like New York’s, he said.
New York’s is it’s linked specifically to income, so anyone making a relatively low salary — whether it’s an artist working out of a loft space in Bushwick or a nonprofit researcher toiling away in midtown — qualifies.
Last month, President Obama inaugurated yet another way to encourage Americans to save for retirement. In the new myRA accounts, workers can save up to $15,000 in a low-fee investment plan that, like a government savings bond, guarantees the principal. The accounts are a small step toward helping households save, but they are not an effective solution to the coming retirement crisis.
Starting in 2020, the numbers of very low-income elderly will rise sharply as the retired population soars to almost 56 million.
Now that’s a holiday gift! On Tuesday, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that approximately 20,000 employees of New York City would be guaranteed paid parental leave—giving mothers and fathers critical time off to bond with a new baby, adoptee, or foster child without giving up a paycheck.
Nia Mirza, an international student from Pakistan, organized a petition earlier this year demanding NYU lower the cost of attendance after the annual price tag of attending the school suddenly rose from $64,000 to $71,000.
Although the Paris Climate Deal certainly represents a step forward for the international community, there are still many potential pitfalls to addressing climate change. New data suggest that the overwhelmingly white donor class may be one such obstacle.
Advocates of automatic voter registration won two legislative battles in Oregon and California this year, and lost another in New Jersey when GOP Governor Chris Christie vetoed automatic registration legislation last month.
The elections board said registration activity is back to levels from previous odd-numbered years. Part of the issue, the board said, was local social service agencies had been printing registration forms that were not coded as coming from these agencies. Issues related to DMV's online address updates also are being addressed, Strach said.
Unfortunately, more and more retirees are falling into debt at the exact point in their lives when they should be free from financial worries. Whereas older people paid off their mortgages in generations past, now nearly half of all senior citizens still owe a house note.
But for many, even landing a job was not enough to make ends meet: of those 5 million job openings, nearly half paid less than $15 per hour, leaving only 2.7 million that paid $15 or more per hour. And for workers able to secure only part-time employment, wages were even more inadequate: in 2014, more than one in five part-time workers wanted full-time employment but were unable to find it.
The core finding: there are not enough living wage jobs to go around. And women and people of color are especially impacted by low wages and part-time work.
In my latest at Salon I explore a new working paper by political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Brian Schaffner, the most comprehensive examination of voters and nonvoters that has ever been performed. As I note my piece, studies of non-voters have been difficult because of small samples and because people often misrepresent whether they voted.
Mark Huelsman, a policy analyst for the liberal think tank Demos, which is pushing for debt-free college, said the state efforts are important because much of the rise of undergraduate student debt is a result of state budget cuts. And, he said, "We know big policy change in every arena requires good, smart and bold state policy, either to provide an example for the federal government or in partnership with the federal government."
The IWPR study also offers a window into the way race affects a borrower’s’ experience with student debt. Studies show that black students are more likely to borrow for school and tend to borrow more than their white counterparts, likely because the gap in wealth between black and white Americans means black students have fewer resources to draw from to pay for college.
“Alabama’s recent settlement with the Department of Justice doesn’t address the state’s photo ID law,” Lisa Danetz, the legal director for Demos, which before the deal played a leading role in raising concerns about Alabama’s compliance with Motor Voter, confirmed. “Instead, it relates to the federal requirement that the state must provide voter registration during driver’s license transactions.”