Nicholasmiller's List: Acc. English Gatsby Paper

• The good news is that the U.S. Department of Labor predicts that jobs in the field of psychology will grow about 12 percent over the next 10 years — about average for all occupations.

• Tucked into the appendix are two colorful maps of America that tell you where social mobility—the chance to move up the income ladder, a.k.a. The American Dream—is living and where it's not. First, the graphs. Then, five facts. [Glossary: Absolute upward mobility measures how children stack up to their parents. Relative mobility measures their chances of moving up or down the income ladder relative to their peers. Different measures; similar stories. Lighter colors suggest higher mobility.]
• 1) The most upwardly mobile region is the Great Plains (followed by the West Coast and the Northeast)

• Even if you don’t embrace laissez-faire libertarianism, they make a more pragmatic case: The minimum wage is counterproductive. It steals jobs from the most vulnerable people—those who could get hired at $5 an hour, say, but not at $7.25 or $10.10.
• The argument that a wage floor kills jobs has been weakened by careful research over the past 20 years, beginning with a seminal 1994 study by David Card of the University of California at Berkeley and Alan Krueger of Princeton.
• The result: no reduction in New Jersey’s employment rolls.

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• By the smallest of margins, Republicans continue to block the renewal of federal jobless aid, and there’s nothing that Democrats can do until one GOP members moves over. “We picked up four [GOP] votes. The other vote is in the Republican caucus. We can’t find it,” says Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, who has been leading the effort to revive the benefits.

   

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• A new survey from Public Policy Polling suggests that Republicans could indeed pay a political price for opposing the extension of jobless aid. More than 50% of Ohio voters say they’re less likely to vote for Sen. Rob Portman because of his opposition to extending the jobless aid, which he had previously voted to advance, according to the poll, which commissioned by liberal advocacy group Americans United for Change. 

   
• Even if the Senate passes an extension, there’s likely to be an even bigger fight in the House.

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• On Dec. 28, roughly 1.3 million out-of-work Americans will lose their unemployment insurance. That's because Congress declined to renew an emergency aid program for the jobless that's set to expire that day.