Portside

About 7.4 million Americans – up from 7.2 million as of November – are working part-time but would like to be working full-time.

The jobs aren’t there any more. Anyone lucky enough to find work must accept whatever rate of pay they are offered. There’s nowhere, no way, to fight.

Sports have the capacity to communicate a toxic, destructive brand of masculinity. In the last two years, these poisonous, narrow definitions of "manliness" are being challenged.

Payroll fraud and the shift to contingent employment are robbing workers of wages, benefits, and job security—and stealing revenues owed to government.

The dramatic and widening gap in household wealth along racial lines in the United States reflects policies and institutional practices that create different opportunities for whites and African-Americans. Personal ambition and behavioral choices are but a small part of the equation.

The immediate threat poor blacks face today in Jackson comes from outside developers and speculators with the resources to move in and take over their neighborhoods.

Output growth at the nation’s factories has [...] been weak since 2000. And though automation undoubtedly has displaced some workers in manufacturing, research suggests that persistent trade deficits and America’s decline as a location for production have accounted for much of the sector’s job loss. Boosting exports or reducing imports enough to bring trade into balance would generate 4.2 million jobs directly and another 2.1 million jobs indirectly.

We must be careful of how we measure our progress. If we use the wrong metrics, we will strive for the wrong things. Economic growth as measured by GDP is not enough—there is a growing global consensus that GDP does not provide a good measure of overall economic performance. What matters is whether growth is sustainable, and whether most citizens see their living standards rising year after year.