Economy
Blog Posts
Many of us and our families have felt the pinch of stagnant wages during the past several years, and a
new study shows
that while real wages (adjusted for inflation) fell by 2.8% across the board between 2009 and 2012, low- and middle-wage workers—especially women—took the brunt of the hit.
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Escalating CEO compensation is a major contributor to income inequality. Along with financial sector pay, growing CEO compensation has helped more than double the
income share of the top 1 percent
over the past three decades. Moreover, the fact that CEO pay has risen so quickly since the end of the Great Recession is an indicator that the top 1 percent is doing far better than ordinary Americans in the recovery.
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The nation’s economy added 195,000 new jobs in June and the jobless rate remained at 7.6%, according to
figures released this morning
by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).But economists say the growth rate is far too slow to fuel a healthy jobs recovery.
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The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has released a lot of important research about the economy in the last few weeks. Here's a look at some of the key pieces it uncovered about the U.S. economy.
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Check out UAW President Bob King's new editorial in
The Detroit News
on the future of the worker-employer relationship. King says it’s time for foreign automakers to grant workers at their American factories the same right to form unions and collectively bargain that workers have in the automakers' home countries.
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Congress to students: Celebrate the 4th! Student loan rates just doubled!
The June 30 deadline for action by Congress came and went. In a shocker, Republicans obstructed efforts to keep student loan rates from doubling. Now is the time to
call your senators and representatives
and raise a ruckus. Republicans insist that the country make a profit off of the students, but how does it help a country and an economy to make it so expensive to get a higher education?
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Over at AlterNet, Richard Eskow has
a great article
highlighting hard-to-believe facts about American corporate tax dodging that will probably make you angry. For instance, did you know that corporate tax rates are at a 60-year low at the same time that corporate profits are at a 60-year high? Or, that as part of the extreme lengths companies go through to avoid paying taxes in the United States, one building in the Cayman Islands is the officially registered headquarters for nearly 19,000 corporations?
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As Congress left Friday for a weeklong vacation for the Independence Day holiday, a July 1 deadline passed without congressional action on
student loan interest rates
. New subsidized federal Stafford loans issued after that date will incur a new rate of 6.8%, up from the current 3.4% students pay. Time still exists to fix the rate increase, however, as most students don't sign their loan paperwork until early August. Without legislation to reverse the increase, some 7 million students will see rates on their subsidized loans double at a time when student loan debt has reached more than $1 trillion and more and more economists are saying the massive student loan debt problem is becoming a drag on the economy.
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