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Economic Justice and Inequality
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 and the Chicago Neighbors Who Won It How a West Side Chicago homemaker and a coalition of block clubs forced Congress to make banks disclose where they lend, then lend where they take deposits. How Social Security's Trust Funds Work and the Choices Ahead Where Social Security's money comes from, what the trust funds hold, what the trustees project for the 2030s, and the real menu of benefit and revenue choices Congress has to close the gap. How to Dispute a Medical Bill and Keep It Off Your Credit Report A step-by-step guide to itemized bills, insurance appeals, hospital charity care, payment plans and credit report disputes, built on the 2022 change in how the credit bureaus treat medical debt. Ida May Fuller's First Check and the Building of Social Security A retired Vermont legal secretary got the first monthly Social Security check in 1940. How a narrow 1935 law grew to cover workers it first left out. Seattle's $15 Vote and the Studies That Argued Over It Seattle voted for a $15 minimum wage in 2014, and two university teams reached opposite verdicts on it. What each study found, why they disagreed, and what economists now mostly agree on. The Case for Lifting the Social Security Payroll Tax Cap In 2023 both parties stood in the House chamber to promise no cuts to Social Security. Here is the argument that keeping that promise means taxing high earnings the way all other wages are taxed. The Federal Minimum Wage Has Been $7.25 Since July 2009 Why the federal wage floor has not moved since 2009, how much inflation has taken from it, how states and cities raised their own, and who is still paid the federal minimum. The Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 and the 1999 Repeal Still Argued Over Roosevelt signed the law separating ordinary banking from Wall Street dealmaking in June 1933. What it did, how it was dismantled, and what its 1999 repeal did and did not have to do with 2008. The New Jersey Fast Food Study That Rewrote the Minimum Wage Debate How two Princeton economists phoned hundreds of burger restaurants on both sides of the New Jersey-Pennsylvania line in 1992, found no job losses from a raise, and changed how economics is done. The Sixteenth Amendment and the Birth of the Federal Income Tax How the income tax was struck down in 1895, revived by a constitutional amendment that conservatives expected to fail, and ratified in 1913 by reformers who wanted the rich to pay. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 Was a Bipartisan Deal Worth Studying How Ronald Reagan, Bill Bradley and Dan Rostenkowski traded lower rates for closing tax shelters in 1986, why the deal worked, and how the bargain came apart in the decades after. The Year Child Poverty Fell by Nearly Half, and Why It Came Back In 2021 a monthly child tax credit drove child poverty to the lowest rate on record; when the payments stopped it more than doubled. Here is the case for bringing it back for good.