Our guest blogger is Sarah Jane Glynn, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Understandably, in today’s economic climate any job is often perceived as better than no job at all. After all, unemployment remains at 8.5 percent, and 8.1 million people are involuntarily working part-time because their hours have been cut or they cannot find full-time work.

But while getting people back to work is an important goal, it is also important that workers be employed in positions where they can earn a living wage and receive benefits.

Case in point, nearly a quarter of a million jobs were added in the retail trade in 2011, and retail is projected to be one of the fastest growing industries though 2018. According to the National Retail Federation, “Retail Means Jobs,” as the industry supports 1 in 4 jobs in America.

On the surface this looks very promising. But a new report released by City University of New York and the Retail Action Project illustrates how the wages and working conditions of retail workers in New York City are often less than ideal — especially for women and people of color.

They surveyed retail workers in New York City — a major retail hub in the United States — and the findings of their study are stark. While about one-third of the survey respondents were economically supporting at least one family member, the median wage was only $9.50 an hour, with about 12 percent earning only the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

More than half of the retail workers surveyed were employed part-time, with only 29 percent receiving health benefits, and only 44 percent were entitled to paid sick days. Of those workers who did not receive health benefits from their employer, a quarter had no health insurance and slightly more than a third depended on government programs like Medicaid.

The findings were even more disheartening for women and people of color employed in retail, particularly given the fact that they comprise the majority of the workforce. Women earned less money, were more likely to be employed part-time, were less likely to have health coverage, and were less likely to be offered promotions than men. Read more

Several months ago, the nation’s biggest banks became embroiled in the “robo-signing” scandal, when it became clear that they had been approving thousands of foreclosures without verifying the proper documents or guaranteeing borrowers due process. The banks submitted fraudulent documents to courts and were forced to halt their foreclosures processes entirely as they sorted out what happened. “I had no idea what I was signing,” said one Bank of America employee. “We had no knowledge of whether the foreclosure could proceed or couldn’t, but regardless, we signed the documents to get these foreclosures out of the way.”

Robo-signing people into foreclosure is bad enough. But as it turns out, the practice may not have been limited to residential mortgages. American Banker, in fact, notes that JP Morgan Chase may also have been robo-signing credit card deals:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. has quietly ceased filing lawsuits to collect consumer debts around the nation, dismissing in-house attorneys and virtually shutting down a collections machine that as recently as nine months ago was racking up hundreds of millions of dollars in monthly judgments…It is unclear whether Chase has stopped pursuing collection on many claims nationwide, or if intends to pursue the debts in some other fashion. The bank has not explained its apparent moratorium and declined comment.

Chase’s halt does, however, follow scattered defeats in state courts and a whistle-blower’s allegation that it falsely overstated the balances of thousands of delinquent accounts it sold to a third party. Former Chase employees and debt collection experts insist that the bank would not have abruptly retreated from its collections efforts in the absence of trouble. [...]

Robo-signing, or the high-volume production of signed legal documents, has been a key element of the governmental and media foreclosure reviews. Chase’s current pullback raises at least the possibility that at least some banks may have documentation problems in other business lines…”If sloppy record keeping and problems with false affidavits is a problem with mortgages, it’s 100 times bigger in credit card accounts,” says Michelle Weinberg of the Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan Chicago.

As one finance blogger put it, “When a bank leaves money on the table for no obvious reason, you know that something’s not quite right.” It seems that JP Morgan, and who knows how many other banks, were attempting to collect on debts without being certain that the amount they were asking for was accurate. One whistle blower looked at $200 million in JP Morgan customer accounts and claims to have found that “half the accounts lacked adequate documentation of judgment and one-sixth listed the wrong amounts owed.”

Banks have been robo-signing documents since as least 1998, as an Associated Press investigation found, and its not all that surprising that a practice that worked so well for so long (at least in the eyes of the banks) would have migrated to other areas.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) struggled through another GOP debate last night, fumbling several questions. After claiming that U.S. ally Turkey was run by “Islamic terrorists,” Perry clearly felt the need to stick to his main talking points — the need for lower taxes, less regulation, and a part-time Congress — not matter what question he was asked.

When confronted directly about what he would do to alleviate America’s continuing housing crisis, Perry dodged, resorting to his old stand-bys — and an off-the-wall joke about Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s taxes:

MODERATOR: What measures would you immediately take to improve the housing market, or do you consider any such intervention to be an overreach of government?

PERRY: Well obviously the first thing we need to do in this country is cut the tax rate down…That’s the reason I laid out a simple and flat tax of 20%…Even Timothy Geithner can get his taxes in with that type of a system. And that is where we need to be focused is creating jobs, is pulling back those regulations that we talk about since ’08…As President of the United States that’s what I’m going to do…work towards a Balanced Budget Amendment..and try to pass a constitutional amendment, if the people will accept and work with, to make Congress a part-time body…

MODERATOR: Governor, so beyond moving to a part-time congress and encouraging the rest of the nation to follow Texas in terms of job creation, you would take no pointed measures aimed at helping the U.S. housing market?

PERRY: I think I said two things that are pretty powerful — cut the taxes and cut the regulation, which will increase the jobs and people will have the income to come in. I don’t think it’s the government’s responsibility’s — look we’ve seen that before with Fannie and Freddie. We don’t need the federal government in the housing market anymore. They need to be out of the housing market.

Watch it:

Perry’s stilted and rambling response revealed that he has no clue about — much less a solution to — the dire situation millions of middle class families are facing. American homes have lost $7 trillion in value in five years, four million Americans are either behind on their payments or in foreclosure, and a quarter of the nation’s homeowners are underwater.

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, none of the major candidates have offered a single substantive solution to the foreclosure crisis. Mitt Romney, for instance, has insisted that the government should not try to prevent foreclosures and allow the housing market to “hit bottom.”

Economists continue to emphasize that the collapse of housing prices is a major impediment to economic recovery that undermines consumer confidence. Housing experts and Occupy protesters have pleaded for more government intervention to save millions of families from being evicted from their homes.

Citizens for Tax Justice a few months ago estimated that Mitt Romney, due to most of his income coming from investments, pays a tax rate of around 14 percent, a far cry from the 35 percent top income tax rate. Romney then confirmed that the bulk of his income does, indeed, come from investments (and is thus subject to the top capital gains tax rate of 15 percent), but he has refused to release his tax returns in order to reveal the definitive tax rate that he pays.

However, during a press conference on the campaign trail today, Romney did give a glimpse into his finances, confirming that he pays “closer to the 15 percent rate”:

Q: What’s the effective rate you’ve been paying?

ROMNEY: What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last ten years, I’ve, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, rather than earned annual income.

Watch it:

As Center for American Progress Director of Fiscal Reform Seth Hanlon has explained, the latest data shows that “many middle-class families paid much more [in taxes] than the 17.5 percent average paid by the very rich.” When President Obama suggested the “Buffett rule,” aimed at ensuring that millionaires can’t pay lower taxes than middle class families, Romney derided it as “class warfare,” and “the wrong way to go.”

One of the reasons Romney is able to drive his tax rate down so low is that he is still earning money from his private equity firm, Bain Capital, that is likely subject to a pernicious tax loophole. This loophole lets wealthy money mangers like Romney pay the capital gains tax rate on profits they make investing other people’s money, turning the justification for having a lower capital gains tax rate completely on its head.

During the same press conference, Romney said that he only makes some income from speaker’s fees, “but not very much,” which is money that would be taxed at normal income tax rates. From Feb. 2010 to Feb. 2011, Romney earned $362,000 in speaker’s fees.

Our guest blogger is Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

America is supposedly a land of opportunity, but increasingly the data shows that we are a country where parents’ earnings are paramount in determining their children’s future earnings. This sort of class-stratified society is exactly what most of us think America is not (or at least should not be). Plus, this kind of class calcification is bad for economic growth.

The relationship between today’s inequality and tomorrow’s economic mobility was a key theme of a speech by Alan Krueger, Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, at the Center for American Progress last week. To show how class has become calcified in America, he showed this chart, which he called the “Great Gatsby Curve”:

In the chart, the Gini coefficient, one of the most-commonly used measures of income inequality, is on the x-axis. The higher the Gini, the more unequal a nation is. Notably, for 1985, the United States was more unequal than any of the other nine advanced economies shown. A measure of economic mobility is on the y-axis. This measure, the “intergeneration earnings elasticity” measures how important a parent’s earnings are to predicting their child’s future earnings (in this chart, only looking at fathers and sons).

Imagine two American fathers, Middle Class Dad and Rich Dad, standing together with their adult sons. Rich Dad earned 100 percent more than Middle Class Dad when the boys were young. This chart shows that Lil’ Richie will earn about 50 percent more than Lil’ Middle.

When a parent’s economic status has too big an impact on his children’s economic status, it has a pernicious impact on the economy. Today, somewhere in America, there’s a young toddler who may be the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs (or just a really terrific manager who boosts productivity at her firm). But, if she’s not Rich Dad’s little girl, our economy may never benefit from her talents and that would be a loss for everyone.

As economists Flavio Cunha and James Heckman put it, “The best documented market failure in the life cycle of skill formation in contemporary American society is the inability of children to buy their parents or the lifetime resources that parents provide.” As they say, you can’t choose your parents.

On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney constantly claims that he is “focused” on the middle class. “I’m not worried about rich people. They are doing just fine,” he’s said.

However, Romney’s tax plan doesn’t back up that rhetoric, as it includes huge giveaways to the already wealthy. In fact, during a debate in South Carolina last night, Romney told Fox News’ Brett Baier that he’d like the top income tax rate of 35 percent to be cut by at least a third, down to no higher than 25 percent:

BAIER: I’d like to ask a question about keeping money for all of the candidates down the line. What is the highest federal income tax any American should have to pay? We are looking for a number. [...]

ROMNEY: I would like 25 percent, but right now it’s at 35, so people better pay what is legally required. But ultimately let’s get it down to as low as we possibly can, if it’s 20, if it’s 25, but paying more than 25 percent, I think, is taking too much out of our pockets.

BAIER: So the highest you had was 35?

ROMNEY: Well, that’s what the law is right now, but 25 is where I would like to see us go.

Watch it:

Romney’s tax plan would double the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, while increasing taxes on millions of middle class families, including half of middle class families with children. But maybe we should, as Romney suggested, only talk about this in “quiet rooms,” lest the “politics of envy” rears its ugly head.