Yesterday, it was announced that New York state will raise its minimum wage for tipped workers by a hefty 50%, to $7.50 an hour. This is one small step toward ending the tyranny of tipping.

Retail death star Walmart has just announced that it will be giving raises to all of its low-level hourly workers this year, and setting a minimum wage of $10 an hour next year. Walmart can see which way the wind is blowing.

Student debt, like global warming, is one of those rare categories of news in which the latest news is always worse, never better. How are the very latest numbers? Bad!

In the past few years, economic inequality has become a mainstream political issue. We often hear politicians speak about “income inequality.” We should be speaking about wealth inequality, instead.

It has become increasingly clear to mainstream America that our nation's decades-long experiment with mass incarceration is fundamentally a bad idea. And though state prisons loom large in the public mind, it's actually local jails where most of the (bad) action happens.

Presidential campaigns have no shortage of factually empty platitudes and gross hypocrisy deployed for political gain. It's early still, but I'll wager that the 2016 campaign will see no more scoff-worthy talking point that the Republicans' sudden concern about economic inequality.

A new day dawns, and with it, a new detailed report laying out exactly how garishly unequal our national economic situation has become. Behold the bitter fruit of America. This is what we do here.

Economic inequality in America has been steadily increasing for three decades. Since the recession, only the very rich have made out well. Now, we have data on the individual U.S. states where the class war is being lost most severely.

This morning, a group of McDonald's workers in Virginia filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of ignoring "rampant racial and sexual harassment" happening in its stores. Ugly details below.

Traditionally, young people come to the big city with a dream; then, when that dream inevitably fails to materialize, many of them move away to some smaller, more forgiving town and cry silently, years later, at what might have been. Now, the fucking tables have turned.

If current trends continue—and there is no reason to suspect they won't—we may be just a year away from a time when the wealthiest 1% of people in the world control the majority of the wealth.

America has money. Which is better than not having money. But all of the money in America is going to the rich. This is our basic problem.

For several days, the Los Angeles Times has been running an excellent series on the exploitation of farm workers in Mexico. Here is a bit of information on how the people who grow the produce you buy at Walmart are treated.

Today is hashtag #GivingTuesday, a day when the act of charity transforms into an act of #viral #marketing for #brands. Reject it!

Canned food donation bins for impoverished Walmart employees are popping up in Walmart stores this holiday season. Today, protesters left this huge food bin outside of Walmart heiress Alice Walton's zillion-dollar Manhattan condo. Ha. [Pic via]