Pacific Standard March-April 2013 Cover

Things Aren’t Looking So Good for the Graduating Class of 2013

May 15, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
sad-graduation

Stacey Kalivas should be celebrating her graduation from college later this week. Instead, the 22 year-old is getting ready to move back home with broken dreams and in debt. Kalivas is a member of the class of 2013, the fifth successive wave of students to enter into a stubbornly weak U.S. labor market—marked by high unemployment, a large number of part-time workers, and many who have given up the hunt for jobs. "It's kind of tough to be graduating and not having anything," said Kalivas. The finance major will graduate from Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island, on May 18. It has ... Read More

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Benefits of Bowling Alone

May 7, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
bowling-alone

Thanks to Robert Putnam, we tend to think amassing social capital is a good thing to do. Thanks to Sean Safford, we know that too much of a good thing can do a world of harm. Can a community have too much trust? Europe's geographic mobility problem: According to documents seen by the Financial Times, the E.U. is working on plans to combat the problem by extending the period during which economic migrants can receive unemployment benefits from their home country from three months to six months. This, it is hoped, will make it easier for citizens to move around the bloc in search of work, a ... Read More

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#OWS: Have We Entered the Age of Protest?

October 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The Occupy Wall Street movement is in many ways a sign of the moment. The unemployment rate has been hanging out around 9 percent for more than two years. Income inequality is rising. Washington's political system has devolved into dysfunction. There is, in other words, plenty to protest. But there's another way to think about what's going on in Zuccotti Park (and its far-flung spinoffs): People have many legitimate grievances these days, but they're also more prone to protest than in the past. Occupy Wall Street, in this sense, represents a particular moment in time when people are really ... Read More

More like this: Culture, The Idea Lobby
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Do the Rich Really Make All the Jobs?

September 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

In Washington shorthand, many politicians have begun interchangeably substituting the phrase "people who have a lot of money" with the more hopeful term "job creators." With every new debate over raising taxes or lowering the deficit, the two meanings seem to move closer. All job creators, this rhetoric implies, are rich. And all rich are job creators. But are these two groups really one and the same? "Everything I've studied says the answer is yes," said Tim Kane, a senior scholar with the entrepreneur-oriented Kauffman Foundation. He adds, though, that there isn't a single data set ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, The Idea Lobby
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Bridging the Budget Gap With Stolen Lunch Money

August 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
School Budget Cuts Graphic From AASA Survey

As the United States attempts to regain footing in its most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression, locally funded schools are left to shoulder the burden. Spending cuts are enacted to diminish the budget gap, while resources to core services, like education, slow to a trickle. The American Association of School Administrators published data from a recent survey detailing how K-12 school administrators across the country made cuts to their schools' programs. Click the image below to view the info graphic that appears in the September-October 2011 issue of Miller-McCune. It ... Read More

More like this: Education, Graphic Art, September-October 2011
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Perhaps Veterans Don’t Need Special Job Help

August 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Young male veterans, aged 18-24, have historically had higher rates of unemployment than other men their age. This has been true during peacetime and in war since 9/11, but also before. In 2010, these vets had an unemployment rate of about 22 percent, a figure not statistically different from other young men but still more than twice the national average. That number has understandably startled politicians and the public. Last week, President Obama unveiled a host of job proposals aimed at doing right by America's war vets at a time when it seems many of them are facing graver challenges in ... Read More

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Political Polarization Grows as Job Security Falls

July 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The debt ceiling drama under way right now in Washington — or, more specifically, the dramatic inability of Republicans and Democrats to reach compromise and the cheerleading of many who don't want them to — is the latest testament to an odd phenomenon in American politics. It goes by a couple of different names: increasing partisanship, political polarization, the disappearing center. And political scientists don't have a single winning theory to explain it. "This political polarization is something that's fascinated me as a political scientist quite a bit because it's so strange," ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, The Idea Lobby
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Did the Stimulus Quench America’s Economic Thirst?

May 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
How Does Your Garden Grow - Stimulus Graphic

For the next financial crisis, what would be the best way to spend stimulus dollars? While some economists suggest a national fire sale and some pharmacists heaping helpings of hormones, an examination of how the current stimulus-dollar cascade has helped or hindered the recovery bears examination. That's what graphic artist Stanford Kay has done with buckets of data drawn from the Congressional Budget Office's scintillating bestseller from last September, "The Economic Outlook and Fiscal Policy Choices," plus the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Department of Commerce. While what strange ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Graphic Art, May-June 2011
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Next Economic Stimulus: Everything 20 Percent Off

April 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — aka the stimulus bill — was the first bold stroke of the Obama administration. Most economists agree that the act prevented the economy from plunging into a deeper recession, even a depression. But this wasn't the last recession the U.S. will face, nor will it be the last stimulus plan that Congress will pass. There will be future recessions, and future debates over what government can do to prime the economic pump. Which raises the question: What should the stimulus next time look like? The stimulus enacted by the administration was a ... Read More

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Reweaving Tax Nets to Nab Online Shoppers

December 3, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

State and local governments across the country have been struggling since the recession began to pay teachers, fund health initiatives, staff police and fire departments and keep social services running. With the newest jobs report out Friday — unemployment nationally has ticked back up to 9.8 percent — the epidemic budget woes aren't likely to end soon. All of this means state officials will be cringing this holiday season at the thought that you may shop online. Sure, if you buy a lot for Christmas, it helps feed the economy. But if you're getting most of it from Amazon, your local ... Read More

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