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+7 +1
Trump’s Tax Cut Was Supposed to Change Corporate Behavior. Here’s What Happened.
Nearly a year after the tax cut, economic growth has accelerated. Wage growth has not. Companies are buying back stock and business investment is a mixed bag. The $1.5 trillion tax overhaul that President Trump signed into law late last year has already given the American economy a jolt, at least temporarily. It has fattened the paychecks of most American workers, padded the profits of large corporations and sped economic growth.
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+31 +1
The robots are coming. Let’s help the middle class get ready.
Are U.S. workers now threatened by a new and powerful form of automation that could displace tens of millions from their current jobs and dislodge them from the middle class? If so, are college-educated or professional workers at the upper range of the middle class as much threatened as those with fewer such credentials at the lower end? And can policy do much to protect the middle class status of either group?
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+17 +1
Are Stock Buybacks Starving the Economy?
Stock buybacks are eating the world. The once illegal practice of companies purchasing their own shares is pulling money away from employee compensation, research and development, and other corporate priorities—with potentially sweeping effects on business dynamism, income and wealth inequality, working-class economic stagnation, and the country’s growth rate.
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+20 +1
The Truth About the Gig Economy
The workforce is getting Uberized. The gig economy is taking over the world. Independent contractor jobs are the new normal. In the post-recession years, this became conventional wisdom, as more and more Americans took jobs—well, “jobs”—with companies like Postmates, Fiverr, TaskRabbit, and Lyft. But the gig economy was then and is now a more marginal phenomenon than it might have seemed.
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+3 +1
U.S. added 213,000 private-sector jobs in January, ADP says
Companies in the U.S. boost employment by 213,000 jobs in January, another strong reading that suggests little letdown in steadily growing economy, according to payroll processor Automatic Data Processing.
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+8 +1
Billionaires who hate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's 70% tax on the superrich are adamant it will hurt the economy — but history suggests otherwise
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York first unveiled a plan to hike taxes for the superrich, the outrage was harsh and swift. The proposal — which calls for the marginal tax rate on income above $10 million to be increased significantly, to 70% — faced immediate opposition from high-ranking Republican officials. Other pundits on social media used intense rhetoric in an attempt to discredit her proposition.
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+3 +1
The US national debt just topped $22 trillion for the first time in history
The US national-debt load surpassed $22 trillion on Monday, according to the Treasury Department. It's the first time that the total outstanding public debt has topped that threshold. A little less than $16.2 trillion of that debt was held by the public in the form of Treasurys, while the other $5.8 trillion was intragovernmental holdings.
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+7 +1
Debt-clogged world close to tipping point of recession
The risk of global recession has suddenly jumped several notches, as the accumulated damage from US President Donald Trump's trade wars and worldwide monetary tightening is taking a bigger toll than hoped. A mounting weight of evidence suggests the world is one shock away from a contractionary vortex that would be extremely hard to control.
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+19 +1
How robots became a scapegoat for the destruction of the working class
Should workers fear the robots? You don't have to look far to find lots of people shouting "yes." Magazines and newspapers blare headlines like "Welcoming our new robot overlords," "When your new co-worker is a robot," and "You will lose your job to a robot — and sooner than you think." Studies suggest anywhere from 9 percent to 47 percent of American jobs could be automated in the next few decades. In 2017, Bill Gates proposed a "robot tax" to address the problem.
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+15 +1
Americans are working harder these days. Their paychecks don’t show it.
Americans are working harder these days, but it’s not paying off like it used to. In the first three months of 2019, employees got so much more work done that they smashed productivity forecasts. Labor productivity in the non-farm business sector (the biggest part of the US economy) grew 2.4 percent compared to the same period last year, according to new estimates from the US Department of Labor.
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+4 +1
Middle Class Wealth Is Still at Lower Levels Than Before the Great Recession
Although President Trump touts the current economy as an unprecedented success, the benefits are not being felt for most Americans. Most of the wealth lost during the 2007 to 2009 economic crisis has not recovered. Many pundits and analysts have been praising the current economy, even if they are against President Trump. The economy has repeatedly been called 'strong,' with fears of a recession diminishing. However, could it just be that our expectations have completely plummeted? By any estimate, the economy today is anemic, producing little benefits for the vast majority of Americans.
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+20 +1
Quarter of Americans are 'worse' now than before Great Recession: survey
Roughly 25% of people that were adults during the Great Recession a decade ago are "worse now" than they were before, despite the economy making great strides.
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+22 +1
America's Hot New Job Is Being a Rich Person's Servant
“Wealth work” is one of America’s fastest-growing industries. That’s not entirely a good thing.
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+6 +1
The Rich Can’t Get Richer Forever, Can They?
Inequality comes in waves. The question is when this one will break.
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+21 +1
Low unemployment isn’t worth much if the jobs barely pay
We should look at individuals—not national averages—as the unit of analysis, and ask: Are wages adequate for full-time workers?
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+15 +1
People no longer believe working hard will lead to a better life, survey shows
A growing sense of inequality is undermining trust in both society's institutions and capitalism, according to a long-running global survey. The 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer - now in its 20th year - has found many people no longer believe working hard will give them a better life. Despite strong economic performance, a majority of respondents in every developed market do not believe they will be better off in five years' time.
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+7 +1
The typical US worker can no longer afford a family on a year's salary, showing the dire state of America's middle class
The American economy may be booming, but its middle class is struggling. The median male US worker now has to earn more than a year's salary to afford the annual expenses for a family of four, according to "The Cost of Thriving Index" published by the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and previously reported by The Washington Post.
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+3 +1
Middle class marriage is declining, and likely deepening inequality
Over the last few decades, family formation patterns have altered significantly in the U.S., with long-run rises in non-marital births, cohabitation, and single parenthood – although in recent years many of these trends have leveled out.
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+9 +1
1 in 4 American workers have filed for unemployment benefits during the pandemic
More than 40 million Americans have filed for first-time unemployment benefits since the coronavirus pandemic forced the US economy to shut down in March. One in four American workers has filed for unemployment insurance.
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+17 +1
Japan's middle class is 'disappearing' as poverty rises, warns economist
As poverty rises in Japan, the country’s middle class is slowly eroding away, according to a recent report by Oxford Economics’ Shigeto Nagai. “After the bubble burst in the 1990s, income has declined across the income percentiles, and the share of low-income households has risen as those of middle- and high-income groups shrink,” Nagai, who is head of Japan economics at the firm, wrote in the report.
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