The Yahoo Finance show "The Daily Ticker" uses its latest episode to lay out the case for why labor unions are important, particularly in the current economy. Really. The show isn't exactly pro-working families—and it runs through a litany of false and misleading attacks on unions—but the hosts, Aaron Task and Henry Blodget, argue that owners and management have gone too far in accumulating wealth and power and it's important for unions to counter-balance that. They argue that not only are growing inequality and exploitation of workers bad for society, they're bad for business.

“For progressives and people of color, it’s hard to imagine a worse choice” than Mitt Romney’s selection of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his running mate, writes Imara Jones on the blog Colorlines today. He says the pair:

represent a retread of 40 years’ worth of Republican ideas on economics, race and the role of government. Not content to let failure remain dormant, they want to reanimate bankrupt concepts and take them to a whole, new level.

In the past generation, the rich did get richer and the poor did get poorer, according to a new report from the Pew Center on the States. Project manager Erin Currier of Pew's Economic Mobility Project says the report, "Pursuing the American Dream: Economic Mobility Across Generations,"

calls into question the quality of the opportunity Americans believe exists in the United States.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) and Columbia University Professor Dorian Warren both say the best way to solve the nation’s economic crisis is to grow the middle class rather than allowing wealth to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands. Unions, they say, will play a vital role politically and economically in building a strong middle class.

O'Malley and Warren spoke on a conference call with reporters Friday to counter recent attacks by Republican lawmakers on workers and their unions.

In a broad statement today at its annual winter meeting in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., on “How to Fix What Is Wrong with Our Economy,” the AFL-CIO Executive Council details the step-by-step policy decisions by business and government and the rise of corporate power over the past decades that brought the economy to its knees and outlines ways to fix the economy for the long term.

Every wonder why it’s so hard to get a millionaires’ tax passed?

We all know that the gap between 1 percent and the rest us has grown to obscene proportions. Their wealth has soared while ours has stagnated or fallen over the past decade and more.