It Costs $21,000 More to Ignore the Homeless Than It Does to Give Them a Home

Even if you don’t think society has a moral obligation to care for the least among us, a new study underscores that we have a financial obligation to do so.

Late last week, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents pay $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the ... Read more »

We’re at a critical moment in our economic recovery that requires real leadership and people power to ensure true economic democracy in our country. There is incredible work being done to build a strong antipoverty movement, and spaces like these are fundamental to encourage an open dialogue about our strategies and tactics as well as our successes and failures.

As corporate profits keep soaring, workers’ wages continue to stagnate, creating the widest income inequality gap our nation has seen in modern times. At Jobs With Justice we still believe that in America, people who work hard should be paid enough to live with dignity and raise a family. Today, millions of people ... Read more »

Toxic bankers, captive regulators: Everything you think about the housing market is wrong

We know what caused the housing crash: Reckless banks, shoddy regulation, rampant greed. Let's lay out the truth

The news cameras kept recording after the power failed. Complete darkness. Then a heavy red curtain was swept aside, allowing a bit of sunlight to stream into the woodpaneled hearing room. This natural illumination had a strange effect on Alan Greenspan, the day’s first witness. He was seated b ... Read more »

A New Poor People’s Movement Must Have Leadership From Poor People

Imagine if the US women’s suffragette movement had been led entirely by men and its rank-and-file had been mostly male. The movement would surely have been far less galvanizing and assertive. American women might still  be denied the vote.

While some white activists made the ultimate sacrifice – their lives – on behalf of equal rights for African-Americans, had the civil rights movement been led and populated primarily by white people, that campaign would also have been far less passionate, insistent and effective. The Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts might  still be languishing in Congress.

... Read more »

How Thomas Piketty and Elizabeth Warren demolished the conventional wisdom on debt

Those who fall into debt are shamed for spending irresponsibly. But the truth of the matter is much more alarming

Elizabeth Warren, Thomas Piketty (Credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts/Charles Platiau)

Congratulations, class of 2014: You’re totally screwed

College costs more and more, even as it gets objectively worse. Only people worse off than indebted grads: adjuncts

The Power of Imagination

By Chris Hedges

Those in the premodern world who hoarded possessions and refused to redistribute supplies and food, who turned their backs on the weak and the sick, who lived exclusively for hedonism and their own power, were despised. Those in modern society who are shunned as odd, neurotic or eccentric, who are disconnected from the prosaic world of objective phenomena and fact, would have been valued in premodern cultures for their ability to see what others could not see. Dreams and visions—considered ways to connect with the wisdom of ancestors—were inte ... Read more »

CREDIT: Shutterstock

The size of your bank matters more than what you do with it, according to a new analysis. The chief executives of the country’s largest banks will always make far more than their counterparts at smaller banks, regardless of how well they do their jobs.

Shareholders in the eight largest American banking companies have seen a median return of about 38 percent since 2009, while the the next-largest ones offered a median return of over 100 percent. But even though smaller bank CEOs outperformed their bigger rivals by about two-and-a-half times, the heads of the the largest banks earned about 2.6 times what their better-performing colleagues were paid.

“There is strong ... Read more »

401(k)s are retirement robbery: How the Koch brothers, Wall Street and politicians conspire to drain Social Security

The decades-long tale of how the Kochs, Reagan, Wall Street and even Democrats have tried to gut Social Security

On the eve of the Reagan presidency in 1980, Milton and Rose Friedman published “Free to Choose,” a proposal for gradually phasing out Social Security. The entitlements of retirees would be honored as would the accumulated credits of contributors who had not yet retired. But no new payroll taxes would be collected. The final elimination of Social Securit ... Read more »