California Needs a Family Recovery Budget
By Leticia AlejandrezThis month, I spoke up for the California Dream. The organization I lead, the California Family Resource Association, joined nearly 120 statewide and local organizations in calling for a Family Recovery Budget to help all families, our economy, and State get back on track after this great recession. We all oppose the Governor’s devastating May Revise budget, which includes only cuts to the very jobs and investments that built California families and communities, while simultaneously failing to provide a balanced, common-sense solution to the state’s multi-billion dollar budget woes.
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The Economic Madness Of Cutting Pension Benefits
By Robert CruickshankAs pension reform heats up, both here in California and in Congress, it's important to understand the underlying economic context - and why slashing benefits would be a stunning act of madness, likely to prolong our recession and budget problems instead of solving either one, at the expense of our basic standard of living.
We live in an economic era characterized by too much debt, itself a symptom of low wages and high costs of living. Although much of our media discussion of economic policy is still locked in the 1970s, obsessed with an obsolete worry about inflation, the reality is that households are not making enough money to pay the costs of living in 21st century California.
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