In 1960, an average American household spent over 10 percent of its income on clothing and shoes – equivalent to roughly $4,000 today. The average person bought fewer than 25 garments each year. And about 95 percent of those clothes were made in the United States.

Fast forward half a century.

Today, the average American household spends less than 3.5 percent of its budget on clothing and shoes – under $1,800. Yet, we buy more clothing than ever before: nearly 20 billion garments a year, close to 70 pieces of clothing per person, or more than one clothing purchase per week.

Oh, and guess how much of that is made in the U.S.: about 2 percent.

Browse through the timeline below to see how dramatically the cost and origin of our clothing has changed. And then continue reading to find out why.

How did we get here?

The mid-1970s saw the emergence of large textile mills and factories in China and other developing countries in Asia and Latin America. These operations offered incredibly cheap labor and raw materials, as well as the capacity to quickly manufacture huge orders. By 1980, even though about 70 percent of the clothing Americans bought was still made domestically, a handful of big retail chains like Gap Inc. and J.C. Penney began transitioning away from actually making their own clothes.  Instead, they increasingly just designed and marketed them, but outsourced production factories overseas where the work was done at a tiny fraction of the cost. Meanwhile, the same early adopters began to develop vast global supply chains that allowed them to divide up each step of the production process, sending the work to whichever location offered the cheapest, most efficient services. By 2003, Gap was ordering its clothes from more than 1,200 different factories in 42 countries, according to Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Fast Fashion.

A successive wave of trade liberalization polices in the 1990s, including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, effectively wiped out most import restrictions and duties on foreign-made clothing. American retailers increasingly looked to suppliers in the Global South for all manufacturing needs.

Not surprisingly, American textile manufactures couldn’t compete: between 1990 and 2011, about 750,000 apparel manufacturing jobs in the U.S. disappeared, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The average U.S. garment worker, among the roughly150,000 who still remain, makes about 38 times the wage of his or her counterpart in Bangladesh, according to Cline.

Today the U.S. apparel market is the largest in the world, comprising about 28 percent of the global total. And hardly any of this clothing comes with a Made in the USA tag.

As part of a collaboration with the National Writing Project, this is the first in a series of teacher-created educator guides on key topical issues. Written by two NWP-affiliated high school English and media arts teachers – Kirsten Spall of Natomas Charter High School (Sacramento) and Chris Sloan of Judge Memorial Catholic School (Salt Lake City) – the guide helps teachers explore and navigate the highly-charged political and emotional issues behind the topic of gun control. Based on content featured on The Lowdown, the guide provides ideas for integrating the issues into English language arts and social studies curriculum. It includes Common Core Standards Alignment, a synopsis of key background information, integration tips, and lists of issue pros and cons, creative writing prompts and best classroom practices.

Download the entire guide here (PDF)

Recently arrived Irish immigrants in the the mid-1800s.

Ever since the first Europeans landed here over four centuries ago, America has had a conflicted relationship with its newcomers. It’s a serial drama that continues today in the halls of Congress, as legislators wrestle over a new round of immigration reform. We are, of course, a nation of immigrants, a destination for huge numbers of people from around the world. And the vast majority of us – everyone, in fact, except for American Indians – can trace our roots to foreign lands. Despite that common thread, though, America has not always treated its newest residents with empathy.

There have been four major waves of immigration to America, the last of which – mainly from Mexico, other Latin American countries, and Asia – continues today. Several themes play out consistently in all four chapters:

• Each successive wave of immigrants has been, to an extent, a reflection of social and economic conditions elsewhere in the world, and within the U.S. itself.
• Nearly every cycle of newcomers has faced animosity and backlash from already assimilated communities.
• The history of America’s immigration policy is a swinging door that often opens during periods of economic prosperity and slams shut when times get tough.

Scroll through the timeline below to follow the tangled history of America’s ever-changing immigration policies. (Easiest to view in full-screen mode) The interactive chart beneath it shows rates of legal immigration from 1820 to the present (use the scroll bar to zoom into specific chunks of time).

Number of Foreign-Born Legal Permanent Residents, 1820 to 2012

Source: Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics

View data table

A gas-mask wearing demonstrator during the first Earth Day celebration in 1970. (Associated Press)

 

Happy Earth Day!
To start, a quick quiz:

1. Who said the following quote:

“Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they, more than we, will wreak the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.”

2. Which organization contributed the most money and support to the first Earth Day?

(Yup, you guessed it: you gotta read the post to find the answers.)

A planetary shout-out

From its scrappy beginnings 43 years ago as an effort to teach the public about America’s environmental crisis, Earth Day has evolved into a major international event. It’s now the largest secular celebration in the world, with millions of activists simultaneously participating in countries around the globe.

Right now the earth needs all the love it can get. But even in the face of today’s catastrophic environmental crises, like climate change and the vast destruction of natural habitats, environmentalism has become a staunchly partisan issue in Washington, where lawmakers repeatedly shy away from legislative action to address very urgent problems. This is evident not only in Congress’ failure to enact any comprehensive legislation on climate change, but also in the alarming number of elected officials who consider the mere suggestion of stricter environmental regulation anathema, a plot to kill jobs and weaken our economy. In fact, many lawmakers now consider the Environmental Protection Agency among the most reviled and distrusted agencies in the federal government. This was evident last year, when several Republican presidential candidates repeatedly called for the agency’s termination.

Have Americans always been so apprehensive about environmental laws and regulations? And has it always been so controversial and partisan?

The first Earth Day

Back in 1970, the environmental outlook was not so shiny either.
After decades of unfettered industrial and economic growth in the absence of strong federal environmental laws, America had managed to majorly muck up its air and water resources. Toxic effluent from factories spilling into streams and rivers was not an uncommon site in industrial areas. Countless open spaces and waterways throughout the country had become dumping grounds, and air pollution was so bad, it frequently left urban areas shrouded in thick blankets of smog.

Consider this timeline of events:

• November 1966: In New York City, 168 people die of respiratory-related illnesses over a 3-day period due largely to horrendous air quality.

• March 1967: Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall, announces the first official list of endangered wildlife species in the U.S. 78 animals are named, including the symbol of American itself: the Bald Eagle.

• January 1969: A blowout at an offshore oil rig near Santa Barbara spills upwards of 10,000 gallons of crude oil for 10 days into the Santa Barbara Channel and onto nearby beaches. At the time, it’s considered largest oil spill in American history (sadly, it now ranks third, overtaken by the 1989 Exxon Valdez and 2010 Deepwater Horizon).

• June 1969: A particularly fetid industrial stretch of the Cuyahoga River running through Cleveland bursts into flames (seriously) when oil-soaked debris in the water is ignited by sparks from a passing train.

“If the people really understood that in the lifetime of their children, they’re going to have destroyed the quality of the air and the water all over the world and perhaps made the globe unlivable in a half century, they’d do something about it. But this is not well understood.”

That’s a quote from Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, who spearheaded the first Earth Day organizing effort.

Nelson formed a congressional steering committee, invited California Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to co-chair it and hired 25-year-old Harvard Law School dropout Denis Hayes to direct the undertaking. Borrowing from the Vietnam War protest model, the mission was to organize environmental teach-ins throughout the nation, all during the course of a single day.

With a very limited budget and no email or internet access (didn’t exist yet), Hayes and his small group of young organizers mailed out thousands of letters to high school and college student body presidents across the nation requesting their participation. The group successfully brought together volunteers in dozens of cities and college campuses to organize local events.

Denis Hayes in the Earth Day campaign office (Associated Press)

The Earth Day organizing effort caught on like “gangbusters,” said Nelson.
On November 30, 1969, the New York Times reported: “Rising concern about the ‘environmental crisis’ is sweeping the nations campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam.”

Hayes, who was interviewed in the recent PBS documentary Earth Days, recalls the sentiment:

“Lord knows what we thought we were doing. It was wild and exciting and out of control and the sort of thing that lets you know you’ve really got something big happening … What we were trying to do was create a brand new public consciousness that would cause the rules of the game to change.”

 

In all, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, marking the single largest demonstration in U.S. history.

Recalls Hayes: “It was a huge high adrenaline effort that in the end genuinely changed things. Before (that), there were people that opposed freeways, people that opposed clear-cutting, or people worried about pesticides, (but) they didn’t think of themselves as having anything in common. After Earth Day they were all part of an environmental movement.”

A rally in Philadelphia as part of the first Earth Day celebration (AP)

And that brings us to the second question of the quiz: The group that was most supportive – financially and otherwise – of the first Earth Day organizing effort was the United Auto Workers.

An organization not generally known for championing environmental causes, the UAW donated money, provided volunteers across the country, and paid the printing costs of promotional materials.

UAW President Walter Reuther pledged his organization’s full support for Earth Day and for subsequent environmental legislation.

In one speech, he said:

“The labor movement is about that problem we face tomorrow morning. Damn right! But to make that the sole purpose of the labor movement is to miss the main target. I mean, what good is a dollar an hour more in wages if your neighborhood is burning down? What good is another week’s vacation if the lake you used to go to is polluted and you can’t swim in it and the kids can’t play in it? What good is another $100 in pension if the world goes up in atomic smoke?”

UAW-sponsored flier

Soon thereafter, General Motors’ president Edward Cole promised “pollution free” cars by 1980 (that didn’t quite pan out).

The era of environmental regulation

Before we get to that, here’s the answer to the first question of our little quiz. The quote was by none other than (drum roll, please):
President Richard Nixon … during his State of the Union address in 1970.

Yes, that Nixon, best remembered as the conservative Republican who appealed to the “silent majority,” prolonged America’s involvement in Vietnam, and resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal.

Nixon, however, also oversaw and approved the most sweeping environmental regulations in the history of our nation – the very ones responsible, in part, for the fresh air and clean water we enjoy today.

Even before the first Earth Day, Congress and the president began taking action. On January 1, 1970, Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which among other things, required environmental impact statements for major new projects and developments.

Environmentalism had never been one of Nixon’s big political priorities, but his administration recognized the growing media attention and public pressure around the issue. In other words, he realized that pushing forward strong environmental regulation was, at that point, a prudent political move.

Three months later, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

By the end of 1970, he had signed an extension of the Clean Air Act. Now considered the single most important piece of air pollution legislation in American history, it required the newly formed EPA to create and enforce regulations on airborne pollution known to be hazardous to human health, and, among other things, led to the universal installation of catalytic converters in cars.

By the end of 1972, the Clean Water Act, the Pesticide Control Act (which banned DDT), and the Marine Mammal Protection Act had all been signed into law by Nixon. A year later, he signed the Endangered Species Act and soon thereafter the Safe Water Drinking Act.

Most of these bills were approved with bipartisan support in Congress, some almost unanimously.

In a televised speech in 1972 Nixon said:

“I have sent to Congress today a sweeping set of proposals to clean up our nation’s air and water. This is the most far reaching and comprehensive message on conservation and restoration of our natural resources ever submitted to the Congress by the President of the United States. We are taking these actions not in some distant future, but now, because we know that it is now or never.”

By and large, the regulations worked. Environmental conditions vastly improved. America had been on the brink of ecological disaster, and we did something about it while we still had the chance.

The next decade — through the presidencies of Republican Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter — was somewhat of a heyday for environmentalism in America. Which is not to say that there weren’t strong voices of opposition and major lingering environmental problems. Nonetheless, during this era legislators on both sides of the aisle agreed that protecting the environment simply made the most sense.

In 1979, just before the price of a barrel of oil hit $30, President Carter had solar panels installed on the White House roof in support of his Federal Solar Research Institute. He said: “We must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources.”

 The end of the green honeymoon

And then, with the election of President Ronald Reagan in 1980, the environmental honeymoon came to a swift conclusion. By the end of the first year of his presidency, Reagan had issued an executive order giving the Office of Management and Budget (OMB ) the power to regulate environmental proposals before they became public. He also cut the EPA’s budget by almost half. In his second term as president, Reagan even took the symbolic action of dismantling the solar panels on the White House roof.

And since then, a unified political drive to protect the environment has never quite been revived.

The benefit of tangible problems

Organizers of the first Earth Day had a key advantage: the problems they were trying to tackle were clearly visible and impacted everyday life. Kids couldn’t swim in public lakes and rivers because they were too polluted; parks and open spaces were strewn with trash; people were getting poisoned by pollution in the air. And because of those very tangible problems, there was a clear and urgent connection made between environmental policies and quality of life.

Today, many of the issues at play are perhaps even more threatening – on a global scale – but also more abstract. The idea, for instance, that human action can be the cause of a couple of degrees increase in the global temperature, and that in turn can cause massive disasters is a much harder idea to convey to people who haven’t yet felt the impact.

Interestingly, though, in the wake of the many natural disasters that swept through the U.S. in 2012, the percentage of Americans who said they believed in the concept of climate change has risen slightly. And in his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama broke his long-held silence on the issue and urged Congress to begin to address the problem.

This minor shift in public opinion has clearly not been enough yet to inspire any substantive legislative action in Washington. But it does suggest that when faced with the threat of environmental disaster, Americans grow more willing to accept the idea of regulation. That’s at least, what led to major changes in the 1970s.

What degree of environmental degradation will be powerful enough to inspire real change today?

A mural by Anton Refregier depicting San Francisco’s 1916 bombing and the two men wrongfully accused of the act. The mural is on public display at San Francisco’s Rincon Center.

Although incredibly infrequent, bombings in crowded public places are unfortunately not a new phenomenon in America. This week’s Boston Marathon explosion harkens back to an often forgotten local tragedy nearly 100 years ago, when a bomb tore through downtown San Francisco during a major public event, killing 10 people and leaving scores of others seriously wounded.

The Preparedness Day Bombing, as it became known, was the worst act of terrorism in San Francisco’s history. It occurred just after 2 p.m on July 22, 1916 during a huge San Francisco parade that had been organized to drum up public support for the United States’ imminent entry into World War I. Not long after the 50,000 person march began, a huge blast echoed through the streets, set off by a pipe bomb filled with explosives and steel slugs that was hidden inside a suitcase and placed near the intersection of Steuart and Market streets, a stone’s throw from the Ferry Building.

The following film, produced by the Hearst-Pathe News Service and shown to local audiences shortly after the tragedy, opens with a set of propagandist animation triumphing American prosperity and decrying the lawlessness and chaos that, it suggests, inevitably stem from radicalism. The film goes on to show actual footage of the parade and the chaotic scene in the explosion’s aftermath.

Like the Boston bombing, authorities had few concrete leads. Investigation was initially focused on local extremist political groups, who in the wake of labor unrest and the rise of Bolshevism, had spoken out vociferously against U.S. involvement in the war, and who the city’s conservative business leaders eyed with growing concern.

With scant evidence, police arrested Thomas Mooney and his assistant Warren K. Billings, two well known radical labor leaders who had previously both been been arrested on attempted terrorism and civil disobedience charges (Mooney’s wife was also arrested but later acquitted). The trial was hastily carried out in a lynch-mob atmosphere, in which the suspects were denied counsel. Both men were quickly convicted, with Mooney sentenced to death and Billings to life in prison.

In 1918 a commission reexamining the case, found no clear evidence of Mooney’s involvement in the incident and commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. But over the next two decades, overwhelming evidence of perjury and false testimony during the trial prompted California Governor Culbert Olson to issue a pardon to both men.

Although theories among historians abound as to who the actual perpetrators were, the identity of the bomber has never been determined and will likely remain a mystery.

Anton Refregier, a New Deal artist, captured the scene of the bombing and subsequent trial (the composition at top). It’s one of 27 murals depicting landmark events in California’s history that the artist was commissioned to paint on the walls of a downtown San Francisco post office (now the Rincon Center) in the early 1940s. All of the murals remain on public view today. For a detailed audio tour of the works, including historical context, download KQED’s Let’s Get Lost app.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

The last time the Supreme Court took up a case on marriage equality was 46 years ago when about one-third of all states in the country still had laws that banned people of different races from marrying each other. This week all eyes are on the High Court as it prepares to hear oral arguments on two cases related to same-sex marriage. At issue is whether gay marriage bans violate the rights those couples have to equal treatment under the law, as guaranteed by the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The Court’s rulings on both cases – expected by June – will likely be considered landmark decisions, ones that could potentially result in a dramatic widening of marriage rights for same-sex couples throughout the country … or a preservation of the status quo. The issue, though, harkens back to another, often forgotten, landmark civil rights decision from 1967 that similarly addressed marriage equality and the concept of equal protection of the law,  long before the notion of legalized same-sex marriage was considered even a remote possibility. Appropriately titled Loving v. Virginia, the case before the Court concerned the fate of its two plaintiffs: a black woman and a white man who had married each other in Washington D.C., but lived in Virginia, one of almost 20 mostly southern states in the late 1950s that still enforced anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting whites from marrying people of color. (Virginia, it turns out, hasn’t always been for all lovers.) In a unanimous decision, the Court ruled that such bans were in violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause, ending the last piece of explicitly legalized segregation in America.

The plaintiffs

In 1958 Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in Washington D.C. Upon retuning shortly thereafter to Virginia, police raided their home in the middle of the night, arresting the couple on felony charges for breaking the state’s anti-miscegenation law, known as the Racial Integrity Act, which made it a criminal act for any white person to marry any person of color. In January 1959, the two –- a bricklayer and a homemaker — pled guilty in state court. A trial judge sentenced them both to one year in prison, suspending the sentence on condition that they leave the state and not return for 25 years. In considering his verdict, the judge wrote:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The Lovings moved to Washington D.C., where their union was legally recognized. They had no intention of becoming activists, but longed to return to Virginia. In 1964, as Congress debated passage of the Civil Rights Act, Mildred Loving wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, asking if the new law could help them. They were referred to the American Civil Liberties Union, who took up the case, filing suit in federal court against the State of Virginia. Three years later, after several appeals, the case reached the Supreme Court.

Anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Almost every state in the country has had some form of anti-miscegenation law in its history. By the end of World War II, about 40 states still had active anti-miscegenation laws on the books, including California. In 1948, the California Supreme Court ruled In Perez v. Sharp that the state’s anti-miscegenation statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It became the first state since Ohio in 1887 to repeal its anti-miscegenation law. Throughout the 1950s, numerous other states followed California’s lead, and by the start of the Loving’s Supreme Court case, the remaining 16 holdouts were almost all in the South.

The Court’s Ruling

The Court unanimously overturned Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law, rejecting the state’s defense that the statute applied equally to both blacks and whites. It held that drawing distinctions based on race were generally “odious to a free people,” and should therefore be subject to “the most rigid scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court stated, had no legitimate purpose except blatant racial discrimination as “measures designed to maintain white supremacy.” Delivering the opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote:

Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival. … To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

The decision effectively overturned all state laws that prohibited any kind of interracial marriage. In several states, though, some of the statutes remained on the books, even though they were no longer legally enforceable. Alabama in 2000 was the last state to officially remove an anti-miscegenation provision from its state constitution. The ballot measure passed by a 60 percent margin. But nearly 526,000 people voted to keep the provision in place. In 2007, on the 40^th anniversary of her Supreme Court case, Mildred Loving – who died the following year at age 68 – mentioned same-sex marriage in reference to the ongoing struggle for imarriage equality:

I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry… I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight, seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.

On March 20, 2003 U.S. forces invaded Iraq under the false pretense that its government was harboring weapons of mass destruction. Intended to be a brief mission to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime and find the weapons, the Defense Department estimated the effort would cost about $60 billion.  Today, 10 years later, Iraq is still reeling from a prolonged conflict that, according to a recent study, has cost the U.S. more than $2 trillion (and growing) and brought a death toll of nearly 190,000 civilians, soldiers, journalists and aid workers.

While the U.S. occupation did lead to the overthrow of Hussein and the semblance of a fragile democracy, it also launched the country into a state of civil war, fueled by an ongoing period of political instability and intense sectarian violence. The U.S. occupation officially ended in December of 2011, but today the bloodshed continues on a nearly daily basis as large swaths of Iraq remain mired in conflict.

This collection of visualizations illustrates some of the war’s cold hard facts, the big milestones, and the many layers of miscalculation and deception.

1. By the numbers: charting an expensive, bloody decade

This infographic, produced by The Guardian, details the high rate of fatalities and expenses associated with the Iraq War. Use the tool below to zoom in on details.

2. A chronology of war

Produced by the Council on Foreign Relations this timeline documents the major milestones of the War in Iraq, from the initial invasion on March 20, 2003 to the final exit of U.S. troops on Dec. 18, 2011.

3. Counting the fallen

Total deaths

A recently released report from Brown University’s Costs of War project, estimates that close to 190,000 people have died in Iraq since the war effort began. That includes close to 4,500 U.S. troops and upwards of  134,000 Iraqi civilians (about 70 percent of all deaths).

Source: Costs of War project

Using data from Wikileaks, the Guardian in 2010 created this interactive map detailing every recorded death in Iraq between 2004 and 2009.

U.S. soldiers deaths

This interactive, produced by CNN, shows the nearly 4,500 fatalities of U.S. armed forces in Iraq, with details on each soldier’s hometown and place of death in Iraq.

4. The tab

When the Iraq War began, the Defense Department anticipated that the effort would cost about $60 billion. While the U.S. price tag still remains a matter of speculation, even the most conservative estimates now place it at well over $1 trillion. The recent Brown University study estimates the current tab at around $2 trillion, and predicts it will eventually reach $6 trillion when accounting for residual expenses .

This animation, produced by Good Magazine – which places the current U.S. tab at a figure higher than most other estimates – details the elements that made the war so costly.

5. The spin and its deadly consequences

The U.S. invaded Iraq on the false stipulation that it had weapons of mass destruction. A mix of faulty intelligence and deception from the highest ranks of government resulted in an occupation that lasted longer than World War II. The first visualization below, by the Center for Public Integrity,  highlights the false statements made by the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion. The subsequent interactive, produced by the left-leaning Mother Jones Magazine details the many layers of deception that led us into Iraq.

Center for Public Integrity

Source: NPR

Much of President Obama’s State of the Union address last Tuesday centered on the theme of boosting America’s dwindling middle class.

“It’s our generation’s task,” he implored, “to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth — a rising, thriving middle class.”

Among the more tangible policies mentioned that evening to further that objective,  the president proposed raising the federal minimum wage – from $7.25 per hour to $9 by the end of 2015 –  and provide for annual cost of living adjustments. (This would apply to most hourly jobs, with some exceptions, including some tip-based work.)

“Let’s declare that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty,” he said. “Working folks shouldn’t have to wait year after year for the minimum wage to go up, while CEO pay has never been higher. So here’s an idea that Gov. Romney and I actually agreed on last year: Let’s tie the minimum wage to the cost of living, so that it finally becomes a wage you can live on.”

• How much does a minimum wage worker actually make?

• What are the arguments?
  

• When was the minimum wage first established, and how often does it go up?
  
• How do minimum wage laws differ by state?
  
• How does our minimum wage compare to rates in other wealthy nations?
  
• Audio and video resources

How much does a minimum wage worker actually make?

Source: Center for American Progress

A full-time worker making the federal minimum wage (at $7.25/hour) earns about $14,500 a year, which is slightly above the federal poverty line ($11,490) for a person living alone. But for a single parent with one child, that same wage would be below the poverty line (which is $15,510 for a two-person household). In 2011, roughly 4 million Americans were making at or below the minimum wage, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Over 60 percent of them were women and roughly half were under 25.

The Obama administration argues that a $1.75 wage increase would affect an estimated 15 million workers (taking into account those now making more than the minimum wage but less than $9).

What are the arguments?

As with most things in politics, it’s one thing to propose something, and quite another to actually make it so. Raising the minimum wage is no exception. Since the U.S.established it’s first minimum wage in 1938 (at 25 cents and hour), increasing it has never come without a long hard fight.  In fact, when Obama first prepared to take office in 2008, his transition plan included a promise to raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011. And that was the last we heard about that …  up until now.

Raising the wage is strongly opposed by most conservatives who view it as a job killer and a prime example of government overreach into the free market economy.

When Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” he neglected to mention a third absolute: our government’s eternal failure to agree on how high those taxes should be and what they should pay for.

As long as our nation continues to spend a lot more than it takes in, the issue will continue to be a saga between conservatives and liberals, the former fighting for lower taxes, fewer public services, and smaller government; the latter pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy, more government revenue, and a preservation of the social safety net. It’s like a really boring, annoying version of the NeverEnding Story (without the cool flying animals). Just think about the last few months in Washington: we narrowly averted hurling ourselves over the fiscal cliff only to re-enter into a battle over the debt ceiling.

So, why should you care? The most compelling reason is because this is your hard-earned cash that these guys are fighting over. The federal budget mainly consists of revenue from income taxes and payroll taxes. It’s about knowing how the government is spending your cash and what they’re spending it on. Along those lines,  Google and Eyebeam last year put out a call to graphic designers and developers to help visualize how our federal income tax dollars are spent. The Data Viz Challenge, as it was called, drew some very cool entries, including some of the following interactives (click on each to explore the interactive versions).

Where Did All My Tax Dollars Go? Produced by Anil Kandangath, this won first place in contest. It allows users to enter their income and see a clear breakdown of what services that money went towards and how it was calculated.

Every Day Is Tax Day Designed by Fred Chasen, this project took second place in the contest. It allows users to explore how many hours they actually spend working directly for the government – based on individual salary – over the course of a year, and what programs that cash funds.

Federal Income Tax Receipt Although not actually an entry in the contest, this is a good straightforward visualization produced by the National Priorities Project that spits out a simple itemized receipt of your tax breakdown based on income.

On Monday, Americans commemorate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Most of us know at least a little something about the man: he was an African American civil rights leader; he gave the “I Have a Dream” speech; he was assassinated for his efforts … and we get a day off in his honor. For most American youth, though, knowledge about Dr. King — and understanding of civil rights history overall — doesn’t go too far beyond that. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, for instance, reported that only 2 percent of high school seniors could correctly answer a basic question about the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education case.

A study by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)  examined public K-12 education standards and curriculum requirements in every state in the nation, and found that 35 states – including California – failed to cover many of the core concepts and details about the Civil Rights Movement. 16 of these states (Iowa and New Hampshire included) didn’t require any instruction about the movement at all.

“For too many students, their civil rights education boils down to two people and four words: Rosa Parks, Dr. King and ‘I have a dream,’” said Maureen Costello, director of SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance program, which conducted the study.  “By having weak or non-existent standards for history, particularly for the Civil Rights Movement, (most states) are saying loud and clear that it isn’t something students need to learn.”

The study also found that much of what is taught about the movement in schools largely focuses on addressing the major leaders and events, but fails to address the systemic and often persistent issues like racism and economic injustice.

Throughout the country, Dr. King is honored as a national hero. Major city boulevards bear his name, and two years ago a memorial on the National Mall in Washington was unveiled. But if Dr. King’s teachings aren’t passed on to younger generations, the report notes, then all these tributes fall short of maintaining his legacy.