Economy

While the man who coined the "Two Americas" term left politics in disgrace, that message has never been more important or apparent than in the debate over raising the minimum wage. After adjusting for inflation, minimum wage workers earn 25-percent less than they did 45 years ago—despite upper-echelon employers raking in a bigger slice of the pie than ever before.

The deficit is now down 60 percent as a percent of gross domestic product. It is down more than deficit hawks Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles asked for. This rapid reduction is seriously hurting the economy and jobs, but demands for cuts continue. It is time for Congress and the President to “pivot” to focusing on our real problems: the jobs gap, the wage gap and the trade gap.

House Republicans are scheduled this week to put forward a student lending bill called the “Smarter Solutions for Students Act.” But the label is misleading. A more appropriate name would be the “Making College More Expensive Act.”

As multinational corporations continue a global stranglehold on international tax laws, the focus of every day citizens and their warranted angst are increasingly focused inwards at the individual other rather than the companies that skirt their patriotic duty.

Progressive Change Campaign Committee co-founder Adam Green was on MSNBC’s The Ed Show yesterday, explaining how Democrats shouldn’t embrace politically disastrous cuts to Social Security benefits and instead should follow the lead of Sens. Tom Harkin (D-IA) Mark Begich (D-AK) and talk about expanding benefits.

TPP is a “trade” agreement between several Pacific-rim countries that is actually about much more than just trade. It will be sold as a trade agreement (because everyone knows that “trade” is good) but much of it appears to be (from what we know) a corporate end-run around things We, the People want to do to reign in the giant corporations — like Wall Street regulation, environmental regulation and corporate taxation.

Republicans are determined to "fix" everything except what is really wrong with America. While trying yet again to repeal Obamacare and obsessing over every imagined scandal in the book they are refusing to pass a jobs bill to provide relief to working Americans. Worse yet is their obsession with the deficit. Sadly for Republicans, that "crisis" is over.

The damage caused by the relentless corporate drive for profits has become more clear in recent years. In the most important areas of American life, devastating changes have occurred.

USA Today has put together a list of the eight companies that most owe their workers a raise. The list was determined based on actual numbers not anger, sympathy or any other completely reasonable thing to feel in the face of rampant income inequality.

Washington remains focused on a “deficit problem” when there is no deficit problem. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the 2013 budget deficit will be down 60 percent as a share of gross domestic product from President Bush’s fiscal year 2009 deficit (from 10 percent to 4 percent of GDP).