JUST IDEAS

Improving Policy, Improving Lives

America must build a caregiving infrastructure to help our families

Feb 13, 2018 | Blog, Indivar Dutta-Gupta

To be sure, a well-designed infrastructure plan is long overdue to fix our D+ infrastructure, as graded by the American Society of Civil Engineers, but the new plan does not provide real solutions, nor does it address our nation’s great need for an ambitious jobs strategy. We’ve got an idea that holds far more promise: Build a caregiving infrastructure that will actually meet the current and future needs of our families

From family leave to inclusive paid leave — the importance of the disability lens

Feb 13, 2018 | Blog, Kali Grant

Nearly all of us will need to take time away from a job at some point to address a family member’s or our own serious illness, or to welcome a new child into our family. Unfortunately, in the United States we have a patchwork system filled with holes when it comes to paid leave.

Stop pointing at Asian Americans to downplay racism at universities

Feb 13, 2018 | Blog

Offering up an imaginary monolithic culture as the model for success is futile and dangerous. The model minority rhetoric ignores institutional racism against Asian Americans, not to mention fundamental differences in the history and current reality faced by other people of color, such as African Americans and Latinos.

Block grants would be a disaster. Here’s how we know.

Nov 20, 2017 | Blog, Peter Edelman

Republicans are advancing yet another effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act that is as bad as the one defeated in July, if not worse. This one makes large use of block grants, a long-standing Republican idea to promote “state flexibility.”

Budget Cuts Would Leave Many Americans Hungry

Jun 29, 2017 | Blog

Their bellies were swollen and their fragile limbs covered with sores that would not heal. Clothed in rags, these children of the Mississippi Delta huddled in crumbling shacks with empty iceboxes, not a morsel of food to be found. It was a level of human suffering and despair that brought a New York Senator to tears. Walking, stunned, from one hovel to the next, Senator Robert F. Kennedy saw conditions that rivaled what he’d seen in third-world countries.

Please, un-black poverty: breaking down oppressive stereotypes

Sep 12, 2016 | Blog

I grew up in South Carolina, one of America’s poorest states, with two high school-educated parents. My family has a long history of doing the best they can with the little they have.

I Was Homeless in Rural America. Here’s How to Help Families Like Mine.

Jul 28, 2016 | Blog

Source: AP Photo/Elaine Thompson Originally posted on Talkpoverty.org After we packed what was left of our belongings into our rusted-out minivan, my siblings and I loaded in to avoid the rain. We squeezed in among the garbage bags full of clothes, the kitchen...

The Tipped Minimum Wage Hasn’t Budged in 25 Years. That’s a Problem.

Apr 1, 2016 | Blog

Originally posted on The Leadership Conference Education Fund After a quarter century, change has yet to come for tipped workers in the United States. Since 1991 – the last time the federal tipped minimum wage was increased – the first iPod was released and Google...

What Candidates Should Say about Poverty and Opportunity at Ryan’s Forum

Jan 7, 2016 | Blog

First published on TalkPoverty.org and cross-posted on BillMoyers.com. This Saturday, a number of Republican presidential candidates will converge in South Carolina to debate and discuss “fighting poverty and expanding opportunity in America.” We hope that they...

New Research Documents Growth of Extreme Poverty

Sep 3, 2015 | Blog

Cross-posted by several other media outlets, including Billmoyers.com and Commondreams.org. A new book by two of our nation’s foremost poverty researchers, Kathryn Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, reveals the desperate circumstances that hundreds of thousands of children and...

404 Error: Why Internet Access is Still a Problem for Many in Poverty

Aug 10, 2015 | Blog

Originally posted on TalkPoverty.org When President Obama recently announced the ConnectHome initiative in the auditorium of Oklahoma’s Durant High School, he again stated that the Internet is a necessity, not a luxury. No kidding, Mr. President. This isn’t news to...

Why the wealthy always win

Apr 22, 2015 | Blog

Inequalities in income, wealth, and opportunity have risen to virtually unprecedented levels. In Affluence and Influence, political scientist Martin Gilens demonstrates that in policy disagreements between the most well-off and everyone else, the wealthy consistently...