Detroit Free Press

Christopher Hayes of The Nation magazine was interviewed on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann show last week and pointed out what he called “the ...

A lot of people are angry at the Detroit Three automakers, including many members of Congress. And why not?

GM, Ford and Chrysler seem still too bloated and old-fashioned, their workers too pampered. For too long the carmakers have failed to design and bring to market the smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles we now want to buy. Yet it is important to put the blame where it really belongs, not on management or labor, but on Congress.

Rising living standards are part of the American story. Over the past century, the steady growth created the middle class, defused economic unrest and helped the nation absorb millions of working-class and immigrant families into the mainstream.

Against this backdrop, Jacob Hacker, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley who studies the risks facing Americans, says he sees a broad decline in the economic security of most Americans.

"The unemployment rate or the inflation rate doesn't capture the degree to which people are at risk of losing… more

On the "Today" show, Obama acknowledged he might have to phase in some parts of his program, though he later said that middle-class tax relief must occur, and quickly. Maya MacGuineas, with the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said she thought Obama's suggestion that the economic problems could delay some of his program was a "very promising step for his campaign to make." LINK

Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget -- and a McCain adviser in the 2000 election -- has heard lots of promises from both candidates for new initiatives and lower taxes.

What she hasn't heard enough of from either is what will be cut or what taxes will be raised to pay for new programs.

Her group looked at all promises both campaigns have made. The gap between promises and money to pay for them is more than $300 billion each.

MacGuineas said she… more

Full article

. . . Len Nichols of the Washington-based New America Foundation, a public policy institute, said at a panel discussion on health care in Washington last week: "If we could just agree to cover everyone, we could talk about how." . . .

Nichols said the quickest way to get Congress to create a Medicare-like plan for all is to suggest that big employers don't have to offer health insurance. In other words, workers wouldn't stand for… more

My Dad has never been much of one for giving advice, but one piece he offered many years ago stuck: Pay yourself first...

Pay yourself first is a short way of saying set some money aside every paycheck, before you start paying everyone else...

It is along those lines that Reid Cramer, a policy analyst and research director of the Asset Building Program at the nonpartisan New America Foundation, has been trying to get official Washington to listen to a new… more

WASHINGTON -- Talks about Social Security will heat up in January when Democrats take majority control of Congress. But the discussion will be different from how it was in 2005, when President George W. Bush pushed for personal retirement savings accounts.

Momentum for that idea, which would have funded voluntary retirement savings accounts for younger workers by diverting a portion of current payroll taxes, died as Republicans in Congress failed to take up Bush's initiative amid opposition from a variety of… more

I just paid off the last of my student loans. Today, I start saving for my children's college education, and I'm already behind. Like millions of Americans, by the time I retire, I will have spent over 75% of my life either paying or saving for college. It shouldn't be this hard.

The College Board recently reported that tuition and fees at public four-year colleges are up more than 37% in non-inflation-adjusted terms just since this year's senior class… more