What's Keeping U.S. Children Out of the Middle Class? - Derek Thompson. What does it mean to be "middle class," and what does it take to get there? A new study from Brookings tries valiantly to answer both questions. The authors, Isabell Sawhill and Scott Winship, start with a road map of the middle-class lifestyle. They name six benchmarks, one for each life stage from family formation and birth to adulthood. Children are considered on track for a middle class life if (for example) they are graduating from high school by 19 with a GPA above 2.5 or earning a college degree by 29. Here are all six benchmarks. Rich children are twice as likely to make it to the middle class -- i.e. earning 300% of the poverty level by 40. How do the bottom 20% and top 20% fare?
Here's another look at the life benchmarks -- this time broken down by race instead of income. Personal responsibility has become a theme of the presidential campaign. Head Start is a public program. For sale: The American dream - Fault Lines. The US' housing bubble burst nearly six years ago, but the worst may be yet to come. After a landmark settlement, the major banks have lifted a freeze on foreclosures and government relief has been too small to make a difference. Public housing budgets have been slashed, leaving larger numbers of people with no place to call home. The line between home ownership and homelessness is growing ever more blurry, but neither President Barack Obama nor Governor Mitt Romney have made housing a major campaign issue.
Meanwhile, popular anger is rising over the perceived impunity of the banks and some have found innovative ways of fighting back in an age of austerity. Fault Lines travels to Chicago and California to see how people at the frontlines of the crisis are confronting the collapse of the American dream. "If you ask people who have been foreclosed upon, whose fault is it? "[So] what you do is that you take part of that surplus and you reinvest it in something. Inside Job: Facebook I.P.O. Shows the System Is Broken. Monday morning’s big fall in Facebook’s stock hardly came as a shocker.
It was clear on Friday that, at the offering price of $38 a share, there were more sellers than buyers. The only reason the stock held up was that Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the initial public offering, stepped in and supported it. At the opening of trading this morning, the stock fell $5, to $33, before rebounding a bit. (At 2:30 P.M., it was at $34.75.) That’s bad news for investors who thought their luck was in when they were allocated some Facebook stock. It’s also worrying news for I.P.O.s and the capital markets in general. In fact, a strong argument can be made that Facebook’s shaky start as a public company demonstrates that the entire I.P.O. process, which is supposed to spread the rewards to innovation, is broken.
That’s fair enough, you may say. Up to a point, I would agree with you. Traditionally, I.P.O.s provided early-stage technology companies with cash to finance their expansion. Insiste Obama en aumentar impuestos a millonarios. Por Uno Noticias, Última actualización: 14/04/2012 De acuerdo con analistas políticos, las posibilidades de que la Regla Buffett sea aprobada en el Senado son prácticamente nulas, por la oposición mayoritaria de los republicanos, quienes consideran que sólo permitiría recaudar 47 mil millones de dólares hasta 2022. El presidente estadounidense Barack Obama reiteró este sábado su llamado al Congreso a que apruebe la llamada Regla Buffett, que busca elevar los impuestos que pagan los millonarios. “Uno de cada cuatro millonarios en Estados Unidos paga un tipo impositivo inferior a millones de trabajadoras de clase media”, comparó el mandatario estadounidense en su habitual mensaje sabatino. Obama insistió en un nuevo llamado al Congreso sobre la Regla Buffett, llamada así en alusión al multimillonario inversionista Warren Buffett, quien “es uno de los hombres más ricos del mundo pero paga un tipo impositivo inferior a su secretaria”, apuntó el mandatario.
Why affordable housing is a myth, in one chart. Manufacturing illusions. Berkeley, CA - Suddenly, manufacturing is back - at least on the election trail. But don't be fooled. The real issue isn't how to get manufacturing back. It's how to get good jobs and good wages back. They aren't at all the same thing.
Republicans have become born-again champions of US manufacturing. This may have something to do with crucial primaries occurring next week in Michigan and the following week in Ohio, both of them former arsenals of manufacturing. Mitt Romney says he'll "work to bring manufacturing back" to the US by being tough on China, which he describes as "stealing jobs" by keeping value of its currency artificially low and thereby making its exports cheaper. Rick Santorum promises to "fight for American manufacturing" by eliminating corporate income taxes on manufacturers and allowing corporations to bring their foreign profits back to the US tax-free - as long as they use the money to build new factories.
President Obama has also been pushing a manufacturing agenda. The downward mobility of the US middle class. Berkeley, CA - January's increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story - the continuing downward mobility of the middle class in the US. Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy - hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of US workers remain in jobs only because they've agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they've lost. Entry-level manufacturing jobs are paying half what entry-level manufacturing jobs paid just six years ago. Other people are falling out of the middle class because they've lost their jobs, and many have also lost their homes.
The percentage of those in poverty in the US is its highest in two decades, and more of us are impoverished than at any time in the past 50 years. Experts say the bad economy is the main factor driving the increase. Oh, I almost forgot. Goldman Sachs gana 67% menos que en 2010 - El Universal - Finanzas. NUEVA YORK | Miércoles 18 de enero de 2012EFE | El Universal10:23 El banco estadounidense Goldman Sachs informó hoy que 2011 tuvo una ganancia neta de dos mil 510 millones de dólares, el 67 % menos que en el ejercicio anterior, lo que atribuyó a una menor actividad inversionista en un entorno de debilidad de los mercados. En cuanto a sus datos del último trimestre, a los que más importancia conceden los inversores estadounidenses, el banco neoyorquino indicó que registró una ganancia neta de 978 millones de dólares (1,84 dólares por título) , el 56 % menos que en la misma fecha de 2010 cuando se anotó 2.227 millones de dólares (3,79 dólares por acción) .
Esos resultados trimestrales fueron mejor de lo esperado por los analistas, que habían pronosticado que estarían en torno a 1,28 dólares por acción. En cuanto a sus ingresos anuales en 2011 fueron de 28.811 millones de dólares, el 26 % inferiores a los del ejercicio precedente, que alcanzaron 39.161 millones de dólares. mdz.