In the aftermath of the financial crisis, plenty of Americans have seen their credit scores tank. But can that really affect your ability to get a job? Yes, because employers increasingly are relying on workers' credit histories in screening applications.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday that next term it will hear McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a challenge to limits on the amount of money that a single person may contribute to all federal candidates and parties over a two-year election cycle, known as aggregate contribution limits.
Despite millennials' lingering reputation as financial delinquents, it turns out not everyone drowning in credit card debt has a newly-printed college diploma and a stack of student loan bills.
Harsh, an IT professional from Tuscola, Illinois, is 62, around the age at which a lot of people start actively planning to retire to a white-sandy beach with a frozen margarita in hand.
Harsh's debt snuck up on her as she helped her two daughters with college and living costs. She went back to school after a divorce and dealt with unexpected expenses such as big dental bills. Now she has about $300 a month in minimum payments, spread across three credit cards, and the balance never seems to go down because of all the interest she is paying.
If you consider yourself part of the middle class, you could be forgiven for not standing at the ready after President Obama called for you to be reignited.
New York, NY -- In his State of the Union last night, President Obama hit on four key issues where Demos is engaged and where progress is long overdue: voting reform, the minimum wage, universal pre-K, and higher education.
On the bipartisan voting commission, Brenda Wright, Vice President of Legal Strategies:
We should be done by now with the idea that a corporation is a single thing. Corporations contain a multitude of conflicting interests and are much more like miniature governments with their own governance structures and election systems than is commonly recognized. While these structures are far more hierarchical and undemocratic than we require of our public institutions, Americans should not be resigned that this is the best or the only way the private sector can be structured.
Which is better for a country’s well-being: $10 million spent constructing a jail, or $10 million spent producing a line of smartphones? How about clear- cutting rain forests to produce $10 million in lumber? Or a storm that requires $10 million in repairs?
It falls into the good-luck-with-that category, but nevertheless the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group and nine other organizations have announced they’re forming a coalition aimed at getting the Wisconsin Legislature to put an advisory referendum on the ballot about the growing problem of unlimited campaign spending.
Washington, DC: Today, a petition on the White House website urging President Obama to “use the State of the Union to call for a constitutional amendment to get big money out of politics” exceeded the 25,000 signatures necessary to guarantee an official White House response. The petition, launched by the groups Free Speech For People, Avaaz, People For the American Way, and Demos on January 8 took less than two weeks to cross the threshold.
When was the last time you contributed $1,000 to a political candidate or cause? For the majority of donors to Senate candidates, the answer is "very recently."
It took just 32 billionaires and corporations giving Super PACs an average of $9.9 million apiece to match every single dollar given by small donors to Romney and Obama in the 2012 election cycle, according to new report.
Not since the years before the Watergate scandal has a small cadre of mega-donors influenced our elections as much as wealthy givers such as casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, Texas homebuilder Bob Perry, and Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner did in 2012.
A recent survey by Demos found that middle-income Americans 50 years of age and older have more credit card debt, on average, than younger Americans, a finding opposite of that reported in a 2008 survey.
The report revealed that older American households had an average credit card balance of $8,278 in 2012, while households with members under age 50 carried an average credit card balance of $6,258.
New York, NY — New York activists will rally for democracy under the banner “Money Out, Voters In” on Saturday, January 19, the weekend marking civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday and the anniversary of the damaging Citizen’s United Supreme Court decision. People in over 65 cities and 32 states are rallying to demand lawmakers pass measures that limit the corrosive influence of money in politics and expand democratic participation at the polls.
Elderly Americans are carrying more credit card debt, according to a new survey.
The survey reports the main reason is due to job loss and medical bills, not because of a lack of financial responsibility.
The study looked at 997 middle-income households that were carrying credit card debt for at least three months. Of the respondents, households age 50 and older had an average credit card balance of $8,278 compared to an average debt of $6,258 for households under age 50.
WHAT: Telephone press conference to demand an end to the growing threat to our democracy posed by voter suppression and unlimited corporate and special interest spending in elections. Momentum is growing nationwide, with more organizations, policymakers and citizens calling for change. On the call, groups will preview rallies and demonstrations being held nationwide on or around Saturday, Jan. 19, to coincide with the third anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision (Jan. 21), Martin Luther King Jr.