the working class and the economy

5 min read 2022-05-23 19:51:41

Envisioning a 21st-Century Worker-Centered Social Compact

On June 2-3, 2022, my colleagues at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor & the Working Poor will host the next installment

5 min read 2022-04-25 20:26:16

Joe Biden was right to propose free Pre-K education for 3- and 4-year-olds and free community college in his initial legislative package, rather than

3 min read 2022-04-11 21:29:39

Democrats and Republicans these days agree on almost nothing. They rely on separate sets of facts and hold wildly divergent world views. Yet they

5 min read 2022-03-28 19:07:29

It seems impolite to say “we told you so,” but the working class and labor unions were so unjustly maligned more than two decades ago—when they

3 min read 2021-12-20 19:52:03

I have always been skeptical of the use of labor statistics. In 2009, I began to write in Working-Class Perspectives about the de facto unemployment

1 min read 2021-11-29 19:05:06

As we await U.S. Senate action on President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, it is worth reflecting on what the past few tumultuous months have

1 min read 2021-11-01 18:47:34

Current negotiations over the second infrastructure bill may remind a lot of people of Mike Rowe’s oddly popular series Dirty Jobs. Which makes

1 min read 2021-10-25 18:19:39

One of my favorite media criticism works is British journalist and media professor Brian Winston’s “On Counting the Wrong Things.” He argues

1 min read 2021-10-18 00:33:49

In Netflix’s must-see new series, Maid, Alex (Margaret Qualley) flees a violent boyfriend with her two-year-old in tow, only to discover the

1 min read 2021-10-11 19:18:25

Hurricane Ida in Louisiana in August and the historic wildfires in the West and Midwest are the latest reminders that too much water, or too little,

1 min read 2021-09-20 18:22:04

Linda Porter as Myrtle in Superstore In the US sitcom Superstore (2015-2021), one of the characters, Myrtle, is an elderly store assistant who is

1 min read 2021-09-13 18:59:06

In the new Showtime series, American Rust, set and filmed outside of Pittsburgh, PA, and based on the 2009 novel by Philipp Meyer, we see the

1 min read 2021-08-16 19:01:08

Chautauqua’s Hall of Philosophy I spent part of last week at the Chautauqua Institution, which a friend described as “summer camp for adults.”

1 min read 2021-07-12 18:45:22

If Biden’s American Family Plan becomes law as he proposed it, my grand-niece Harri will finally have a “modest yet adequate” standard of

1 min read 2021-06-28 18:40:48

The long-awaited infrastructure bill is slowly coming into focus. Last Thursday, President Joe Biden stood alongside of Republicans and Democrats to