Tag: Education

Bad Things about the Good Place and How to Pretty It Back Up

~ Karen Petrou ~ 2 Comments

By Karen Petrou

  • Pre-COVID inequality evidenced itself instantly in post-COVID consumer-finance extremis.
  • A unique construct of ground-up recovery policies is an essential, urgent response.
  • Regulatory revisions would help and long-overdue equitable liquidity facilities would do still more.
  • New public guarantees are critical.

Ever since the U.S. economy crept out of recession, the Fed has represented its slow, inequitable recovery as a “good place.”  Its own 2018 economic well-being survey contradicted this and the latest data released on May 14 are no better before COVID came and a lot worse thereafter.  These data make it still more clear that the Fed must quickly reorient its trickle-down rescues to move money starting at ground level, but even that won’t be sufficient given the magnitude of COVID’s economic impact.  The combination of macroeconomic harm and financial-system hurt also requires a reset in which new public guarantees for prudent private financing fully recognized by new rules play a major part. Continue reading “Bad Things about the Good Place and How to Pretty It Back Up” →

American Millennials: The Generation the Recovery Left Behind

~ Karen Petrou ~ 1 Comment

By Karen Petrou

In our last blog post, we chronicled the continuing demise of the American middle class.  Now, we turn to the equality disaster evident in the most recent U.S. demographics.  A new General Accountability Office (GAO) study confirms that millennials (those aged 18-37) are rapidly losing any chance of doing better than their parents and trends are extraordinarily inauspicious for NextGen followers.  Inter-generational economic mobility was once as much a hallmark of America as its robust middle class – in 1970, 92 percent of 30-year-olds made more money in inflation-adjusted terms than their parents did at similar ages even though the 1970 economy was considerably weaker than the prewar boom.  Now, millennials are far, far behind their parents.  Looking at wealth share,* baby-boomers owned 21 percent of U.S. net wealth when they turned 35 (1990 on average). Continue reading “American Millennials: The Generation the Recovery Left Behind” →

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in American Well-Being

~ Karen Petrou ~ 4 Comments

By Karen Petrou and Matthew Shaw

Yesterday, FRB Vice Chairman Clarida said that the U.S. economy is in “in a good place.”  However, The Fed’s new study of American economic “well-being” shows that huge swaths of the United States are struggling harder than ever before to make ends meet.  All but the most affluent Americans asked about how well they’re doing don’t feel anywhere near that good about it.  Combine this with new data on the evaporating American middle class and an ugly picture quickly merges.  In it, the prosperity in which the Fed takes such comfort rests thinly atop millions – indeed a hundred plus million – of Americans who are barely getting by at the height of the business cycle following a record-breaking “recovery.”  No wonder that so many Americans remain so angry about their economic prospects and why political polarization is sure to define the 2020 election at least as much as it determined 2016’s outcome.

Continue reading “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in American Well-Being” →

Hard Work, Low Pay, High Costs: Life on the Ground in a “Well-Performing” Economy

~ Matthew Shaw ~ 2 Comments

By Matthew Shaw and Drake Palmer

Recent jobs data sparked excitement as news reports talked of how America is finally going back to work.  This is understandable optimism, based as it was on a concurrent rise in labor-force participation and a drop in the government’s preferred measure of unemployment.  Here, we assess whether the Fed’s “solid” and “very well performing” economy has finally allowed low-and-moderate income (LMI) households to share the prosperity rapidly pooling at the very top of the income and wealth distribution.  In short, and sad to say, it isn’t – hourly pay for low-wage/low-skill workers has declined in real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) terms over the past four decades and is essentially flat since 2010.  As we noted in our last blog post, wealth concentration has soared since the financial crisis.  Even if a corner has now been turned for everyone else, it’s just a very tight one at the bottom of the equality canyon. Continue reading “Hard Work, Low Pay, High Costs: Life on the Ground in a “Well-Performing” Economy” →

Seeing One Way Out

~ Karen Petrou ~ 1 Comment

By Karen Shaw Petrou and Basil N. Petrou

Can a change in financial policy that speeds cures for blindness also cure the way disability now exacerbates U.S. economic inequality?  Legislation introduced just yesterday shows how. 

Like most severe disabilities, blindness and significant vision impairment are major causes of un- and under-employment.  72 percent of blind Americans are not employed on a full-time basis, which by definition almost always makes them among the most economically unequal of all Americans regardless of race, age, or region.  To be sure, some blind people are gainfully employed – determination over the years and, now, technology and guide dogs drop the barriers to full achievement in almost every line of work and profession.  But far too often, the problems in education that disadvantage all too many Americans are still worse for the disabled, as are perceptions about incapacity and even downright discrimination.  Continue reading “Seeing One Way Out” →