What is the single biggest economic problem facing people early in this century? It is not the budget deficit or national debt. It is the eroding and disappearing of good jobs. People with good jobs -- jobs that provide decent pay and benefits and the flexibility to be able to...

The question we must ask today, as we remember the Works Progress Administration is: Why isn't there the political will to take dramatic steps to address today's jobs emergency?

Let's start with the obvious; there was a far greater share of Americans unemployed in the Great Depression. In...

The whining from some fast-food chains that they won't be able to afford paying for their employee's health coverage under Obamacare have gotten a lot of press. But what is more troubling is the recent news that some big chains are concluding that the costs won't be nearly as high...

I know you are not supposed to write in hyperbole, but sometimes the truth needs to be told. Paul Ryan's budget, which kills Obamacare and cripples Medicare and Medicaid, would kill tens of thousands of people. Every year.

I have trouble with putting policy glosses on proposals that would deny...

The headlines -- "Many States Say 'No' to Health Insurance Exchanges," to take one example -- make it seem like bad news. But it's not. It is good news that half the states are refusing to have anything to do with the new health insurance marketplaces being set up...

Massachusetts Congressman and Senate candidate Stephen Lynch is scurrying around to explain away his vote against Obamacare. On a recent MSNBC appearance, he said he opposed the final legislation because it was not as good as the legislation passed earlier by the House. In fact, his opposition to...

Two years ago, frustrated by a conservative resurgence in the 2010 election, a group of progressive activists, economists, communicators, and pollsters came together to write a compelling story about our view of the economy (as Mike Lux relates). Our goal was to write a story that people could easily...

Two potential candidates for president in 2016, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, have taken opposing positions on raising the minimum wage in their states. The debate between the two governors draws a sharp distinction between competing economic visions: trickle-down vs. middle-out economics. At the...

Four years ago, I stood in the cold listening to President Obama's first inaugural address. I remember it leaving me cold. This year, in the warmth of my den, the president's clear projection of progressive values as core American values warmed my heart.

I just looked back at Obama's

President Obama must remember the message of election night and back away from cutting Social Security benefits.

That didn't last nearly as long as I had hoped. I put on my Obama baseball cap -- the one I picked up from a street vendor walking to the inauguration four years...

This election was ample reminder of the myriad ways we urgently need to fix our democracy. As Justice Brandeis wrote a century ago, "We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." The...

The very next day after the election, Congressional leaders held dueling press conferences in Washington to start the stampede to the fiscal cliff. But December 31st is not a cliff; it's a slope. Actually, the better metaphor is a showdown between two different visions for the country -- a showdown...

Four years ago, my wife and I planted an oak tree on Election Day -- our Obama Oak -- at the front of our house. The remarkable thing about the tree is how long it holds on to its leaves. I see it from my window, now doubled in height, still holding...

As Romney aimed to prove that he cared about the 100 percent in last night's debate, part of the stream of accomplishments he listed in his final answer was his audacious claim that "as governor of my state, I was able to get a hundred percent of my people insured...

There's a lot of talk these days about the way Mitt Romney is once again shifting his political principles. He's Etch-a-Sketched himself from the hard-right-winger in the primaries into a reassuring centrist in the debate last week. But for me, Mitt Romney has always had one firm guiding principle: Mitt...

Yesterday the U.S. Census Bureau reported that family income in the U.S. dropped to its lowest level in 16 years. The key thing in this news is that the drop is not just over the last three years, during the Great Recession. The squeeze on the middle class...

In his acceptance speech, Mitt Romney tried hard to communicate how much he empathizes with the economic squeeze on middle-class families. Last Thursday in Tampa, he talked about a symbolic worker who lost one good paying job and replaced it with "two jobs at nine bucks an hour...

We all know that the key to our economic future is a more educated workforce, right? Here, for example, are the "Guiding Principles" of President Obama's education policies:

Providing a high-quality education for all children is critical to America's economic future. Our nation's economic competitiveness and the path to...

That was a shout of joy followed by an enormous sigh of relief you just heard. And a tear you can't see in my eye. Today the Supreme Court refused to sign the death warrant for tens of thousands of people. And tomorrow a Koch brothers-funded group will put up...

On the eve of the Supreme Court's decision, after numerous lower court opinions and treacherous questioning by conservative justices, the overwhelming consensus in the legal community remains that the requirement in the Affordable Care Act to buy health insurance is unquestionably constitutional. As recently as mid-June, Bloomberg News asked law...