Consumer advocates are rightly pressuring the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to require banks to disclose important terms on checking accounts like the monthly fee in easy-to-understand forms. more

The richest Americans generally don’t have the loudest voices when it comes to politics—billionaires don’t have to shout to make their preferences known. But in recent months, as President Obama has cast the widening divide between the rich and the poor in the United States as unfair and unjust, prominent members of the “1 percent” have had an unusually public message for him: Cool it.

When I talk with families from Spartanburg about the challenging issues facing South Carolina, they tell me they want their hard-earned tax dollars to be spent wisely—on programs and services that actually deliver results.

A majority of Americans believe the government is helping the "wrong" people. Whether Obama's message succeeds depends on who those people are. If there was anything notable about President Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas last week, it was the extent to which he attacked economic inequality in the United States, and its deletrious effects on income mobility.

Chase has become the first big bank to voluntarily adopt a simplified, plain-language checking account disclosure, as proposed by an arm of the nonprofit group Pew Charitable Trusts. more

NPR's All Things Considered interivews Economic Mobility Project Manager Erin Currier, who highlights a recent EMP fact sheet showing less economic mobility in the Unites States than other rich nations.

“Am I registered to vote?” “Where is my polling place?” These are common questions voters routinely ask before heading to the polls and casting their ballots. But easily finding answers to these questions depends, to a large extent, on whether their state election agencies are providing information and tools on their websites.

Despite boasting one of the highest per capita incomes in the country, San Jose, Calif., is running large and growing deficits. The main reason is pensions and other benefits for retired city workers, such as health insurance. San Jose's problems are severe, but hardly unique. In recent years, pension costs have become a central concern both in the U.S. and in Europe.

In October 2010, the Pew Safe Checking Project began a study of checking account terms and conditions at the 10 largest banks in the United States. One noteworthy finding was that the median length of disclosure documents was 111 pages. more

If you grow up in poverty, or in a wealthy family, chances are good you'll remain at that economic level.

We celebrate this Thanksgiving in times of near-record income inequality and near-record levels of poverty. Many Americans rationalize this with the comfortable myth that in America, anyone with enough grit and gumption can climb society's ladder.

The most durable message from the Occupy Wall Street encampments across the nation is also the simplest: "We are the 99%." But are the implications of that message fair? Is there a widening gap between rich and poor? Are those doing well just a fraction of the populace?