Robert Hiltonsmith, senior policy analyst at Demos, a progressive think tank, expects the positive trends to continue -- even if Tuesday’s survey suggests employers overall aren’t relenting on tough and irregular scheduling demands. “I think it’s a slow burn, but the pressure’s mounting,” he says.
The demonized banking industry must make the case it is morally noble. That may jar some ears, but surely enabling retirees to earn a return on their savings and funding business expansion creating jobs and wealth, improving Americans’ quality of and opportunities in life is morally noble. — Eric Glover, the Washington Times, September 24, 2015
The hyperactivity of the presidential election has raised the level of discussion of financial regulation, at least in terms of noise if not enlightenment. Mr.
The significance of National Voter Registration Day has never been clearer to me than when I found myself in Tulsa, fighting for the voting rights of Oklahomans.
But, rising rents may shift that balance—making widows or single senior women particularly susceptible to market trends. And, as one Federal Reserve Bank of Boston report notes, 84% of single senior households—mostly senior women—are financially vulnerable.
That figure is derived from the Senior Financial Stability Index, administered jointly by the public policy think-tank Demos and Brandeis University. The most recent data, from 2011, notes that among single senior women only, 47% were deemed “insecure” in 2011, up from 35% in 2008.
Among mortgage professionals, it is widely held that owning a home is how many Americans build wealth. As the private mortgage market has failed to make loans available to Black homebuyers, our community suffers from a limited ability to create wealth through this reliable and proven method.
I propose a far-reaching agenda to fix Quarterly Capitalism, equal to the task of shifting traderscorporate America away from an obsession with short-termism and toward creating shared productivity. These proposals are complementary and non-exclusive, but the problem of Quarterly Capitalism and short-termism is so embedded in the economy that a layered approach is needed.
Not that many people vote in midterm elections. While 57.5 percent of eligible voters cast ballots in the 2012 presidential race, a mere 41.9 percent did in 2014, according to data from the Census Bureau. Midterm turnout isn’t just low, though. It’s falling. It tumbled from 47.8 percent in 2006 to 45.5 percent in 2010 before falling yet further to 41.9 percent in 2014.
But praise for Clinton fades to disappointment because her solution to quarterly capitalism, an adjustment to capital gains tax rates, holds little promise of getting the job done. What’s needed are new restrictions on Wall Street and changes to how corporations do business, territory occupied so far by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The fact is that we have all knuckled under to Wall Street so that we have an economy that increasingly is based on finance without even asking whether Wall Street is investing in us.
Bill Clinton's interview provoked Wallace Turbeville, a former lawyer and investment banker turned financial reform advocate, to contradict him.
"His statement is flat wrong," Turbeville wrote in a blog post for the liberal think tank Demos. "The Graham-Leach-Bliley Act that President Clinton signed had everything to do with the crisis."
Wal-Mart recentlymadeheadlines for increasing the starting salary of workers from $9 to $10 an hour, which would boost the wages of 500,000 employees, along with other boosts in specialized sections.
Last year, Demos started a high school summer internship program. We select a rising senior from a New York City school in a lower income community. The student, paid the Demos minimum wage, spends the summer supporting the legal and administrative teams and meeting with staff to learn about careers, colleges, and the work we do.
During the program, students write a blog post about a Demos topic that interests them. Below is the post by the 2015 high school intern, Astia Innis, who starts her senior year at a Bronx public high school today.
Heather McGhee, President of Demos, said: "Incredibly, working a full-time job is no longer a guarantee that you will be able to afford basic necessities—much less provide for your family. We applaud Governor Cuomo’s leadership in calling for a $15 minimum wage, and the community and labor groups who have worked tirelessly to make this a reality. This proposal will lift the living standards for the many families who have been struggling to stay afloat and will bring us one large step closer to a more equitable New York.”
Nevertheless, Walmart has had to make concessions to the pressure upon the business, mostly from OUR Walmart. It is in the process of enacting a series of wage hikes, starting with boosts to $9 an hour this year and $10 next year for a half-million of its lowest paid workers (out of 1.4 million), changes in scheduling policy, more accommodating pregnancy policies (after OUR Walmart’s “Respect the Bump” campaign).
Walmart's raises to $9 an hour in 2015 and then to $10 an hour in 2016 is a positive step forward, but it still falls short of giving workers the wages they need.
Over the summer, the call to return the United States to debt-free college has been loud and clear. To fulfill the promise of our higher education system, we must ensure that today’s students, the most racially and socioeconomically diverse college class in American history, have the same opportunities as generations past.
The 2008 financial crisis was no accident. It was the result of a decades-long deregulation effort, lobbied for by the financial industry and executed by our political institutions. Now, as the facts of the financial collapse fade from memory, some would rather rewrite their part in history than keep history from repeating itself.
“There’s an assumption out there that because community and technical colleges and workforce retraining programs are lower cost than elite Ivy League institutions that borrowing isn’t an issue for those students, but it’s precisely the opposite,” said Mark Huelsman, a senior policy analyst at think tank Demos, who studies student debt. “These are students who have fewer financial means to begin with, they’re more likely to borrow, and if they borrow it’s just a fundamentally different prospect.”