News

The outlook is grim for American workers.

First came the news that 40 percent of workers are living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new CareerBuilder survey.

Then the Pew Research Center released a deluge of economic data -- The Lost Decade of the Middle Class – demonstrating that the middle class is shrinking. Today, 85 percent of middle-class Americans says it is more difficult now than 10 years ago to maintain their standard of living. Families are feeling pinched, and “for the first time since the end of World War II, mean family incomes declined for Americans in all income tiers,” says the report.

The government recently approved the Big Cable deal. But opponents of the monopoly aren't staying quiet.

David Balto, a former FTC policy director and trial attorney at the Justice Department’s antitrust division, recently analyzed why this “cartel in disguise” will hurt consumers and workers. He wrote in the Huffington Post:

Perhaps the DOJ accepted at face value Verizon's 2009 claims that it did not intend to further deploy FiOS. The DOJ ignores the obvious when it listens to these self-serving declarations: FiOS is a profitable endeavor, and one that Verizon would likely pursue if not for these deals. However, strategic redlining by Verizon as it has expanded FiOS has left many particularly susceptible locations without this important alternative. Millions of consumers in Albany, Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Wilmington will likely never know the benefits of competition because the DOJ action fell short of addressing the harm to competition.