After national unemployment ratesfrom 6.6 percent in January to 6.7 percent in February,听that job openings in the U.S. increased less than expected in January. According to听Bloomberg听writer Jeanna Smialek, this was likely a sign that 鈥渓abor-market cooling from late 2013 persisted as severe winter weather hammered the eastern and midwestern U.S.鈥�
Smialek quotes Ryan Weng, an economist at HSBC Securities USA Inc. in New York. 鈥淗iring was delayed during the winter due to bad weather, and I think we鈥檝e started to see some catch-up already in the February figures,鈥� Weng said.
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Good news for Vincent Viola. The founder and majority shareholder of New York high-frequency market trader Virtu will soon be the latest Wall Street billionaire as his firm gets ready to go public on NASDAQ. Viola, who owns 65 percent of Virtu鈥檚 shares, is projected to make more than $2 billion from the move,听.
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Bad news for Barack Obama. UNITE Here, a hospitality workers union representing workers in the United States and Canada, put outpredicting that the president鈥檚 key legislative accomplishment, the Affordable Care Act, would hasten income inequality, thereby undermining Obama鈥檚 policy approach to narrow the income gap.
The union, a group that has been critical of the new health care law before but usually supports the president鈥檚 policies听, says in the report that 鈥渢he promise of Obamacare was the right one and the hope for extending health care coverage to the un- and under-insured a step in the right direction. Yet the unintended consequences will hit the average, hard-working American where it hurts: in the wallet.鈥�
The report was听on conservative media outlet鈥檚 websites such as听foxnews.com, which has been critical of the new legislation for months.
Meanwhile, Obama himself made a rather unorthodox campaign stop during his promotion of the ACA. In order to urge young, healthy Americans to sign up for the new health care program by the March 31 deadline, the president sat down with comedian Zach Galifinianakis in an episode of the social media satire interview series听
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In the political fight over the right policy approach toward tackling inequality, Republicans and Democrats don鈥檛 find a lot of common ground, which makes the issue so hotly debated and omnipresent in the media.听Upworthy, a news website determined to publish viral content, now announced that they will form an uncommon alliance with the public interest investigative journalists of听ProPublica听and advocacy media groups such as听Human Rights Watch听to push coverage of income inequality, the听.
The site cites an听Upworthy听that indicates the direction of the planned coverage the alliance plans to produce: 鈥淭oo many media companies assume the worst about their communities 鈥� they think just because they鈥檝e seen starlet scandals get more site traffic than foreign revolutions, that鈥檚 what their audience really wants to see. We couldn鈥檛 disagree more, and we think that the millions of you who make up the听Upworthy听community help prove it every day.鈥�
The blog post also determined that according to Upworthy readers, income inequality was the second-most important topic, led only by 鈥渃limate change and clean energy.鈥�
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In a recent听The New York Times听, Paul Krugman challenged the prevalent belief that income redistribution would negatively affect the gross domestic product.
鈥淭aking action to reduce the extreme inequality of 21st-century America would probably increase, not reduce, economic growth,鈥� Krugman wrote, acknowledging that 鈥渢he very affluent would lose more from higher taxes than they gained from better economic growth,鈥� but also pointing out that 鈥渋t鈥檚 pretty clear that taking on inequality would be good, not just for the poor, but for the middle class.鈥�