Media clips
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5. If you’re not officially poor, you’re doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America’s cities and regions.
Mother Jones March 27, 2014 -
The graduation rate among U.S. high schools is now at 80 percent, the highest rate on record, the report said, adding that about 40,000 schools have used the grants.
But the initiative has been criticized by some organizations, such as the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, that said that some of the gains cited by the administration may be due to other factors.
“The policy agenda put forth by Race to the Top is a severe mismatch for the opportunity gap that drives the achievement gap that Race to the Top wants to close,” said Elaine Weiss, national coordinator, of the Broader Bolder Approach to Education Campaign, a program of the institute.
She said the grants may benefit schools that are already performing at high levels, while not doing enough to help some troubled schools.
Reuters March 27, 2014 -
Job searching “was like playing the lottery”, says Sharone, an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Israelis believed that if they kept up the hunt, eventually their number would come up.
But not Americans. They experienced a “more insidious and deep kind of discouragement” in which lost job opportunities were personal failures, he says.
And because they thought it was their fault, they were more likely to stop trying.
Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, argues there’s nothing wrong with current US job seekers as a group other than their “misfortune of being jobseekers during the worst labour market downturn this country has seen in 70 years”.
But that misfortune shows no signs of ebbing as labour markets continue to shift.
BBC News March 27, 2014 -
And more people are finding themselves in that situation more often these days. Here are three things that have happened in conjunction in America over the past decade: Debt loads have increased. Real earnings have stagnated. And payday lending has exploded. Debt loads have come down, but are still elevated. (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
The Washington Post March 27, 2014 -
It’s not hard to see why. The primary goal of the Better Off Budget is to close the “output gap” that opened after the financial crisis—that is, to tap the economic resources that have been idling for the last few years, leading to higher unemployment and lower wages. Obama’s budget seeks to do the same thing, but wouldn’t close the gap by nearly as much. Ryan’s budget would more or less ignore the gap altogether. In 2013, the gap—measured as potential gross domestic product versus actual gross domestic product—stood at $790 billion. The CPC budget closes it in three years by investing in infrastructure, state aid and a government jobs program. By 2017, the Economic Policy Institute estimates, it will create 8.8 million new jobs.
New Republic March 27, 2014 -
In a hearing this week, Labor Secretary Thomas E. Perez said the Department of Labor would study both raising the wage threshold and overturning the 2004 rule that made certain salaried employees exempt from overtime because they perform some managerial duties.
“There are two issues we are working on in the regulation,” Perez said. “Number one, what should the threshold be, and secondly, how does the test work.”
Perez also said the current structure of the managerial exemption keeps deserving workers frozen out of overtime. “You can work 1 percent of your time in a management function and 99 percent of your time stocking shelves and you will be an exempt employee under the current regulation,” he said.
Workers who now make more than $455 a week, which adds up to less than $24,000 a year, cannot receive overtime pay. That level was set in 2004, when President George W. Bush raised it from $155 a week. That increase gave overtime pay to roughly 400,000 workers, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.
Roll Call March 27, 2014 -
Unemployment at a post-recession low in 30 states, but the news isn’t all good. “Unemployment rates in 30 states are the lowest they’ve been since the recession ended, according to the Labor Department. But beneath that headline statistic, the state of the state labor markets is far from recovered….In the vast majority of states, long-term unemployment — a particularly intractable problem — is at or near record highs. In many states, the income gap between the poorest and richest has widened. And, as the Economic Policy Institute recently reported, low-wage workers in nearly every state have seen their wages drop (see chart below).” Niraj Chokshi in The Washington Post.
The Washington Post March 20, 2014 -
After the tea party “wave” election of 2010, corporations used their army of lobbyists to push legislation in states aimed to lower living standards and undermine workers’ rights. Here are some of their most outrageous attacks on working people.
Buzzfeed March 20, 2014 -
The simplest way to think of the current account deficit is as a gap. It’s the value of all the stuff and money the U.S. sends overseas, minus what it imports. Right now the U.S. is importing $81.1 billion more in goods and services than it is exporting. But this is $215 billion less than the peak in 1999.
The main reason, says economist Robert Scott at the Economic Policy Institute, is that the economy is weak and therefore interest rates are low. That means the U.S. is paying less to foreign countries that hold U.S. Treasuries. That means less cash leaving the country, headed overseas.
A weak economy also means a weak dollar, which makes U.S. products more attractive to foreign countries, so they are buying more American goods. Another big reason for the deficit drop is the U.S. energy balance. “In recent years the U.S. has had a boom in unconventional energy production domestically, gas but also oil,” says Gian Maria Milesi-Feretti , deputy director of research at the International Monetary Fund.
Marketplace March 20, 2014 -
Advocates for continuing the extended benefits argue that while the economy has improved, there’s still a widespread long-term unemployment problem. Before the Great Recession, long-term unemployment peaked at 26 percent in June 1983. But during the Great Recession, that record was obliterated. It rose to about 45 percent nationally during the recession and has fallen, but remained above 26 percent in 41 states last year, as the map below shows.
The Washington Post March 20, 2014