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Living on minimum wage

Policies, Society

Living on minimum wage

A national debate is underway in the United States over whether to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour from the current $7.25 an hour today, as more than 30 million U.S. citizens now live below the poverty line.

The last time the U.S. increased the hourly federal minimum wage was in 2009. According to economists and advocates, the $7 an hour rate in at least 20 U.S. states is to blame for the increase in poverty in the nation. However, in some states it’s legal to pay even lower than the minimum wage. For example, in the state of Wyoming, some residents are paid as little as $5.15 an hour or even less. And they haven’t seen a wage increase in 20 years.

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Article: Out of the Pandemic, Chances for Another Future

Policies, Society

Out of the Pandemic, Chances for Another Future

About a year ago, just as the pandemic was hitting New York City, St. John Frizell and his two partners were readying for the grand reopening of Gage & Tollner, a newly renovated, 140-year-old restaurant in Downtown Brooklyn. One day before the March 15 opening — for which the three partners had spent almost a year and a half preparing — they made the difficult decision not to open.

Mr. Frizell retreated to his home in Brooklyn. “The only sounds in the street were ice cream trucks and ambulances,” he recalled. Anxious about going to the supermarket but needing groceries for himself and his son, he reached out to one of his vendors, Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op, to see about having some food delivered. Lancaster was delivering boxes of seasonal produce, but needed an order large enough to be worth the trip. So Mr. Frizell, who suddenly had downtime, did something he hadn’t done in a while: He reached out to his neighbors.

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What happens when women run the economy? We’re about to find out

Economy, Policies, Society

What happens when women run the economy? We’re about to find out

Women now hold many of jobs controlling the world’s largest economy – and they’re trying to fix it.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and trade czar Katherine Tai hold top jobs in U.S. President Joe Biden administration and many of his economic advisers also are women, as are nearly 48% of his confirmed cabinet-level officials.

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Millions Spend Easter Weekend Under COVID-19 Lockdowns

Policies, Society

Millions Spend Easter Weekend Under COVID-19 Lockdowns

India’s health ministry said Sunday that it recorded 93,249 new COVID cases in the previous 24-hour period, the highest daily tally this year in the South Asian nation.

Only two other nations have more coronavirus infections than India’s 12.4 million cases, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. The U.S has 30.6 million cases, while Brazil has 12.9 million. Millions of people worldwide are under new lockdown restrictions this Easter weekend thanks to coronavirus infections that have surged despite the continued rollout of vaccination campaigns.

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Breaking the silence — an intergenerational call for unity and action

Policies, Society

Breaking the silence — an intergenerational call for unity and action

“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed … without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s words — delivered at New York City’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, exactly one year prior to his assassination in 1968 — resonate even more deeply now than when he first spoke them.

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Enter the Age of the Vaccine Selfie

Policies, Society

Enter the Age of the Vaccine Selfie

From topless politicians to designers, it’s a thing. And it’s part of a longer tradition than you might expect.

Someday, when the history of the pandemic is written, it may be a narrative told partly in images: the despair of crowded hospitals and body bags, the fear and isolation of the masks. And then the balm of a smiling individual, one sleeve rolled up practically to the collarbone, with a medical worker poised to jab a needle into their upper arm. Log in to any social platform, and the picture — not to mention The Pose — is almost impossible to miss.

The vaccine selfie has gone viral.

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The World Economic Forum says it will take an extra 36 years to close the gender gap

Policies, Society

The World Economic Forum says it will take an extra 36 years to close the gender gap

A new report from the World Economic Forum estimates that attaining global gender parity will take nearly 136 years, up from its previous estimate of almost 100 years.

WEF measures parity in four ways: economic participation and opportunity, education, health and political empowerment. Data examined by the organization showed that the gap in political empowerment has widened significantly since its 2020 report, while economic participation has improved only slightly.
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Solutions To America’s 7 Biggest Problems For We, The People

Policies, Society

Solutions To America’s 7 Biggest Problems For We, The People

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Our central thesis is that as a nation, we are divided and stalled out by deep, cynical, fully paid for partisanship at a time when the stakes of delaying pragmatic decisions to address the Five Fates could not be higher. What is to be done?

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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

Policies, Society

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

A study of the downfall of some of history’s greatest civilizations, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, includes coverage of such cultures as the Anasazi, the Maya, and the Viking colony on Greenland, tracing patterns of environmental damage, climate change, poor political choices, and other factors that were pivotal to their demise. Reader’s Guide available. Reprint.

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