Economic crises are social accelerators—things that were abstractly understood as trends are suddenly new and crushing realities. Twenty-five years ago, while the “Massachusetts Miracle” of growth charmed a generation of […]
Cost of Living and Consumer Affairs
Posted inOpinion
Jobs held hostage by housing
Like new england Patriots victories, high housing costs became matter of fact in Massachusetts over the last decade. As we rebuild from the Great Recession and the housing bubble that […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion, Politics
Tea partying for fun and profit
Even a grass-roots movement of The People needs leaders, and the recent Tea Party festival on the Boston Common reveals the group’s vanguard: commercial hucksters, both small-time and big-name, in […]
Posted inEconomy
Foreclosure limbo continues for retiree in Dorchester
the good news for Helen Williams is that two years after receiving an initial foreclosure notice, she hasn’t lost her house. The bad news is that she still doesn’t know […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion
Cancel their bill
it’s an issue that has received only limited media attention, so it may come as a surprise to most Massachusetts residents that a single telecommunications corporation — Verizon — has […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Bad hand for Lottery poker
Amid much fanfare and looking to cash in on the then-growing poker craze, the Massachusetts Lottery introduced its $10 Texas Hold ’Em instant ticket with a $10 million grand prize […]
Posted inEconomy
Ben Franklin was right
TO BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, the concept of thrift represented a forward-looking way of life in the New World. Franklin believed that by harnessing its twin virtues of industry and frugality, which […]
Posted inEconomy, Education
IBM offers transition to teaching careers
When Elizabeth Cowles of Bedford graduated from college in 1987, she had two job offers: one to work for IBM and one to teach high school physics. She chose IBM […]
Posted inEconomy, Education
Labor lessons
INTRO TEXT Warren Wilson students carry outtheir chores earlier this spring. snow on warren Wilson College’s campus is an unusual sight — not only because western North Carolina rarely gets […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, State House News Service
Utahs financial literacy requirement
INTRO TEXT States want to be trendsetters, but not all trends are worth bragging about. That was Utah’s predicament from 2002 through 2004, when the Beehive State ranked No. 1 […]
Posted inEconomy, Opinion, Politics
Help wanted
the job of being the voice of consumers in government has been vacant for years in Massachusetts. Not since the ’80s and early ’90s have we had political figures who […]
Posted inEconomy
Redefining a ‘better’ life
“it’s crazy that none of us can afford to live in the town where we were kids,” said a high school classmate at a recent mini-reunion. We’d grown up in […]
Posted inEconomy
Job seekers
UPDATE: The Bay State’s unemployment rate over the 2009 calendar year was 8.4 percent, far above the 4.5 percent that we found worrying in 2007. See the map below for […]
Posted inEconomy
What works
LOCAL GROWERS COMPETE IN COLLEGE CAFETERIAS It used to be a source of frustration in small towns in western and central Massachusetts that the contract for school milk would go […]
Posted inEconomy
Risky business
few books have generated as much anticipation here in the CommonWealth office as Jacob Hacker’s The Great Risk Shift. In terms of addressing themes we keep coming back to in […]
Posted inEconomy, Health Care
Spend shift
A long line at JP Licks is an inconvenience, but it may also signal a turning point in Boston’s spending habits. While the rest of the country spends less and […]
Posted inEconomy
“Strapped” author Tamara Draut explains why young adults arent getting ahead
In her new book, Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead, Tamara Draut crunches numbers and interviews young adults across the country to show how, for the generations […]
Posted inEconomy
The Good News Garage gives a lift to people who need cars in order to get jobs
INTRO TEXT After many years and many miles of steady service, the trusty old station wagon still starts up every morning, but the body is dinged up, repair bills loom […]
Posted inEconomy
Immersion journalist Barbara Ehrenreich finds that landing a middleclass job is more of a challenge than surviving on lowwage work
You can’t exactly call Barbara Ehrenreich the left’s answer to David Brooks. But if the conservative New York Times columnist’s book-length observations on the lives of the comfortable (Bobos in […]
Posted inEconomy, Transportation
Driven To Distraction
When Cheryl Travis, an account supervisor at Weber Shandwick, a public relations and marketing firm in Cambridge, moved from Winchester to Charlestown two years ago, there was one cost that […]
Posted inEconomy, State House News Service
CommonWealth Forum totes up assets and opportunities
INTRO TEXT “Asset inequality” is a major reason why African-Americans continue to lag behind white Americans in terms of homeownership and education, agreed several speakers at the latest CommonWealth forum, […]
Posted inEconomy, Politics
Sociologist Thomas Shapiro says that a lack of assets, not income, is holding African-Americans back
On the issue of economic inequality, Americans are of two minds. On the one hand, we value opportunity over security, balancing a meager safety net (compared with other developed countries) […]
Posted inEconomy
Commonwealth Forum ponders middle-class debt crisis
MUCH HAS BEEN WRITTEN about federal and state governments spending beyond their means, but many middle-class American households are also awash in red ink. At the Commonwealth Forum “Going for Broke: […]