The Biden administration has, to date, approved debt relief for 3.9 million people—amounting to roughly $138 billion.
Category: Money & Jobs
Private Equity Firms Profit Off the Backs of Working Women and Families
If you’ve ever wondered whatever happened to iconic U.S. businesses like Sears and Friendly’s Ice Cream, Samsonite Luggage and Zales’ Jewelry, or even Toys-R-Us, you’ll find distressing answers in Brendan Ballou’s Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America and Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America. Both books describe private equity firms’ largely secret and little understood 40-year-long hit-and-run scam.
If you’re worried about the deteriorating appearance of downtown areas, hospitals or the housing market, if you’ve noticed a growing shabbiness, or if you’ve notice the government’s indifference, these books will help explain not only what’s wrong, but what we ordinary people can and must do to stop the steal—the real steal.
Fighting Fatphobia and Embracing ‘Unshrinking’: The Ms. Q&A With Kate Manne
We live in a society obsessed with fatness. Or, perhaps more accurately, obsessed with fighting it. Fatness has been rendered a disease, and we are inundated with “cures,” which particularly haunt women’s bodies—and their wallets.
Questioning the devotion to anti-fatness usually prompts a “well, being fat is unhealthy!” But according to Kate Manne, feminist philosopher and author of the recently released Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia, the connection between weight and health is not so clear cut. What is clear, Manne brilliantly reveals, is that fatphobia, not fatness, is the problem.
The U.S. Can Create True Wealth by Giving Cash to Parents Who Need It
In 2018, we launched the Magnolia Mother’s Trust, the United States’ first modern-day guaranteed income program and the first in the world to focus solely on low-income Black mothers.
Our goal is simple: Provide the financial capital necessary for these mothers to dream a little bigger and breathe a little easier. We can give everyone that kind of wealth. And yes, I will play on the word here—we can guarantee it. If we are willing to understand, a little financial investment can change someone’s life, and allow them the flexibility, heart, and mind to build and define true wealth—equity, delight, honor and love.
Front and Center: Single Mothers ‘Are Having to Work Two or Three Jobs and Beg for Help Just to Make It’
Back for its third year, Front and Center is a groundbreaking Ms. series that offers first-person accounts of Black mothers living in Jackson, Miss., receiving a guaranteed income. First launched in 2018, the Magnolia Mother’s Trust is about to enter its fifth cohort, bringing the number of moms served to more than 400 and making it the longest-running guaranteed income program in the country. Across the country, guaranteed income pilots like MMT are finding that recipients are overwhelmingly using their payments for basic needs like groceries, housing and transportation.
“It feels like the people in power are boosting the cost of everything and it’s making it harder for us to survive, especially when there’s so little help out there. A lot of my family and friends are having to work two or three jobs and beg for help just to make it.”
Women’s Sports Are an Economic Force
Female athletes are making an impact on the court and, with the right opportunities, can make a significant economic impact off the court too.
Sports fans of all ages are on to something big. The media can no longer bury the lead. Women excel in sports. Now companies and their brands need to see the writing—and the opportunities—on the sports page.
Thank You, Megan Rapinoe! Advancing Pay Equity in Sports
Today’s conversations about pay equity in sports and other professions are important because they highlight how gender shapes power—who has it, who is kept from it, and how it is wielded to protect a privileged few.
The Future of Pay Equity, 15 Years After Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act
Fifteen years ago, we stood at the White House while then-President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This law restored the rights of employees to have their day in court for ongoing wage discrimination taken away by the Supreme Court in the Ledbetter v. Goodyear case.
This bill was such an important victory for workers and gave employees who were experiencing ongoing pay discrimination their day in court. However, the law did not give women new tools to combat the wage gap itself. Still, with all working women earning on average 77 cents for every dollar paid to their male counterparts—and the pay gaps even wider for women of color—it reminds us our work is still far from finished. We will not rest until we can enact more policies that give workers stronger tools to challenge pay disparities and other forms of employment discrimination.
Attacks on Corporate DEI Are Hurting Black Women First
As experts in our field and industry suspected, the Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down affirmative action created a cascading wave of attacks on corporate DEI initiatives meant to level the playing field and eradicate the racial wealth gap.
We cannot close the racial wealth gap without programs specifically designed to support Black women.
Far-Right Players Behind Latest Attacks on Abortion in Emergencies
In April, the nation’s highest Court will hear a pair of cases that will determine whether the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) preempts state laws that impede emergency abortions needed to protect the health of pregnant people even if they are not on the brink of death.
Both of these cases have ties to the main anti-abortion zealots that helped overturn Roe: Leonard Leo and Alliance Defending Freedom.