Yesterday I listened to a training session at work in which the presenter described the work being done in another part of the company on helping clients encourage their employees to save more for retirement; one interesting thing that more employers are doing, apparently, is moving beyond retirement savings to provide encouragement, online tools, and in-house sessions on money management more generally. And I started thinking about this:  whether wages have stagnated, regressed, or proceeded to climb depends on one’s... Read more

So, what should we do about women in poverty and/or the pay gap? I don’t have time to wade into this issue right now; it’s too complex.  But feel free to have at it! Read more

I have a few paragraphs drafted up and a few ideas I want to flesh out and am trying to force myself to wait ’til the weekend for this, but thought I’d solicit your input: Currently the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts in the U.S. are very different programs:  Boy Scouts focuses on character development and life (especially outdoor) skills; Girl Scouts focuses on “girl empowerment” and causes such as environmentalism — though from what I’m told (from facebook friends... Read more

That’s Ted Cruz’s proposal: Imagine a simple flat tax that lets every American fill out his or her taxes on a postcard. and, as reported at cbsnews.com, it’s tied to his vision of a flat tax. Now, I’d earlier said that a flat tax is not a particularly worthy goal.  Even in the days of tax tables rather than tax software, it wasn’t a big deal to look up your income range on a table to see what the tax... Read more

I’m still mulling over the issues I worked through in my prior post on the minimum wage, living wage, and welfare benefits (and, yes, I need catchier titles). Here’s the trouble:  when you look at living wages, as calculated, for example, with the calculator at MIT, the hourly wages they calculate as necessary to support a family are not just a modest amount above minimum wage; they are so much higher that it’s hard to fathom someone making the case... Read more

Here’s a piece that appeared in the Wonkblog at the Washington Post last week, “Closing the gender wage gap could pull half of working single moms out of poverty.” My first reaction:  bad math. Some time ago, I had played around with census figures, and learned that, at the lower end of the pay scale, women’s earnings are much closer to men’s than at the top. Here’s my table: Women’s pay as % of men’s, 2013 1st decile    ... Read more

Hillary Clinton has now made it official, declaring her candidacy in a youtube video and heading off on a “road trip” to Iowa (no, she’s not driving herself).  And the media is all over the story. The tagline on her website:  “Everyday Americans need a champion. I want to be that champion.”  But, poking around that website, there’s no real content to it.  No policy positions.  No campaign promises.  Just a bio, and a request for donations and volunteer help in... Read more

Here’s the latest in the ongoing series of articles on the working poor, in this case, from the New York Times:  “Working, but Needing Public Assistance Anyway.”  I hardly need to tell you what the article is about:  it features single moms working at minimum wage jobs, who despite working full-time, are nonetheless recipients of federal aid, in the form of food stamps, Medicaid, child care subsidy or other government programs.  This is, really, nothing new — and ought to... Read more