WASHINGTON -- Low-income families, veterans, senior citizens and disabled individuals waiting for assistance under the federal housing voucher program...

A key reason that it's relatively easy to scaremonger about predictions regarding Social Security's finances decades in the future is that the language often used to talk about Social Security's finances isn't immediately comparable to anything else that most people can relate to.

The right pushes a delusional narrative of a country divided between "makers and takers" -- productive go-getters versus welfare-hungry sloths. But it's all too clear who the real takers are: the ones who make it harder for everyone else to make a living.

The positive news is that the safety net, bolstered by temporary expansions enacted during the recession, has helped hold the line against poverty and hardship in the past few years. But the safety net also has significant holes.

We're glad the governor is expressing support for a safety net and for fixing it if it needs repair. Yet his own budget proposals would tear gaping holes in the safety net and damage it severely.

Our series of posts this week describing trends in income inequality has prompted a natural question: what has caused the sharp rise in inequality over the past three decades or so?

To provide some historical context to the current public discussion of income inequality, we're releasing a series of posts this week that examine trends in income inequality in recent decades and outline different data sources to examine the issue.

If Congress backs away from the automatic cuts in defense that the Budget Control Act calls for, the GOP will have little incentive to negotiate a balanced deficit-reduction deal. Their top priorities, tax cuts and defense programs, will both be protected

Poverty rates rose in 2010 under a variety of poverty measures, as the economic downturn continued and long-term unemployment hit record highs.

Every paycheck in America will shrink unless Congress acts to extend, and preferably expand, the payroll tax holiday by the end of the year.

A super committee agreement that locked in unaffordably low tax rates and made it more difficult to raise additional revenues in the future would set back the cause of deficit reduction.