A 2012 report from the Pew Research Center, “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class,” surveyed nearly 1,300 Americans who identified with this income tier and found pervasive gloominess: 85% said it was “more difficult” for “middle class people to maintain their standard of living” compared to a decade ago.

Congress is in recess, but you’d hardly know it. This has been the most do-nothing, gridlocked Congress in decades. But the recess at least offers a pause in the ongoing partisan fighting that’s sure to resume in a few weeks. It also offers an opportunity to step back and ask ourselves what’s really at stake.

In Washington, D.C., Walmart has threatened to cancel plans to build three new stores and possibly close three more stores due to open if the city passes an ordinance mandating that the retailer pay a "living wage" of $12.50 an hour. In other words, the type of person who shops at Walmart today has less money to shop at Walmart -- because of, among other things, Walmart.

On May 31st, president Barack Obama strolled into the bright sunlight of the Rose Garden, covered from head to toe in the slime and ooze of the Benghazi and IRS scandals. In a Karl Rove-ian masterstroke, he simply pretended they weren't there and changed the subject. The federal government has made it easier than ever to borrow money for higher education - saddling a generation with crushing debts and inflating a bubble that could bring down the economy.

Want to see a public school system in its death throes? Look no further than Philadelphia. There, the school district is facing end times, with teachers, parents and students staring into the abyss created by a state intent on destroying public education. On Thursday the city of Philadelphia announced that it would be borrowing $50 million to give the district, just so it can open schools as planned on Sept. 9

Why is the nation more bitterly divided today than it’s been in eighty years? Why is there more anger, vituperation, and political polarization now than even during Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, the tempestuous struggle for civil rights in the 1960s, the divisive Vietnam war, or the Watergate scandal?

Then one day in April, Feusner ripped open his royalty envelope to find that while his wells were still producing the same amount of gas, the gusher of cash had slowed. His eyes cascaded down the page to his monthly balance at the bottom: $1,690. Chesapeake Energy, the company that drilled his wells, was withholding almost 90 percent of Feusner's share of the income to cover unspecified "gathering" expenses and it wasn't explaining why.

In this clip from his radio show, Thom Hartmann gives a pretty good explanation why the American Dream is disappearing and why with great wealth comes great poverty. Thom says billionaires are taking over our commons through privatization and its not a good thing.

In 2008, payday lenders suffered a major defeat when the Ohio legislature banned high-cost loans. That same year, they lost again when they dumped more than $20 million into an effort to roll back the law: The public voted against it by nearly two-to-one. But five years later, hundreds of payday loan stores still operate in Ohio, charging annual rates that can approach 700 percent.

As President Obama heads to Phoenix today to tout the "housing recovery," journalist Laura Gottesdiener examines the devastating legacy of the foreclosure crisis and how much of the so-called recovery is a result of large private equity firms buying up hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes.

Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing? On a bright Thursday afternoon in 2007, Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a Houston bar-and-grill, drove with her two young sons and her boyfriend...

The U.S. unemployment rate in July was 7.4 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, down 0.1 percent from the month before. A separate survey reported businesses claimed to create a net of 162,000 new jobs last month. That left the U.S. with 11.5 million people officially unemployed, 263,000 fewer than in June. But the official jobless rate understates the problem.

Research shows that destroying jobs is an essential component of the retail giant’s anti-worker business model. Does Walmart create jobs? That question is at the heart of the debate currently raging over its plans to open stores in Washington, DC.

Corporations want corporate tax reduction to be the centerpiece of “tax reform" come the fall. The President has already signaled a willingness to sign on in return for more infrastructure investment. But the arguments for corporate tax reduction are specious.

Money is power. Perhaps more than any generation that has come before us, we un­derstand the deeply-rooted reality of this short phrase and its universal meaning for every human being living on this planet. It follows that wherever large amounts of money collect, so also new centers of power form. The latest...

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Janusz Korczak (1878-1942). Korczak was a writer, a medical doctor, a thinker and a radio broadcaster, but he was mainly known as a unique and innovative educator, who founded an orphanage for Jewish children in Warsaw.

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning Columbia University economist, and author of "The Price of Inequality," talks with Melissa Harris-Perry about the plight of low-wage workers in America and how the stagnation of working-class wages in the United States has eliminated a consumer class that is needed to keep the economy active.

If the 1968 minimum wage grew with inflation, it would be $10.67 today. Unfortunately the federal minimum wage is a miserly $7.25.  According to the Economic Policy Institute, U.S. CEOs of major companies earned 18.3 times more than a typical worker in 1965 and in 2012, CEO pay was 202.3 times more than typical worker pay.

"There are so many other cities in Detroit’s situation, that if the courts decide that it is legal to take away the pension that has been promised to and paid for by these workers, you have [legalized] theft.

Facing an estimated $18 billion in debt, Detroit has become the largest U.S. municipality to file for bankruptcy. It is a grim milestone in the decline of what was once the country’s fourth largest city. Known as the Motor City and the birthplace of the middle class, Detroit’s auto industry and manufacturing sector have collapsed.

Countries like Egypt and Switzerland have placed regulations on how much executives can earn. Here’s why the U.S. should consider doing the same.

This time, it's the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York, not the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. This time, the agency paying the tab is New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), not the San Francisco area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Americans are segregating by income more than ever before. Forty years ago, most cities (including Detroit) had a mixture of wealthy, middle-class, and poor residents. Now, each income group tends to lives separately, in its own city'