The videos filled your Facebook and Twitter feeds for weeks. Everyone from your great aunt to your favorite actor to politicians jumped on the bandwagon and doused themselves with ice-cold water all in the name of charity.
Whether you love it, hate it or experienced the challenge’s chill firsthand, it’s official: The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, in all its cold, wet glory, is a bona fide social media success. But it’s far from the first online marketing campaign to go viral. Here are five social media campaigns — and what you need to know about them — that have made a substantial impact on an organization’s efforts to raise awareness or funds for its cause.
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Did we miss one that stood out to you? Let us know in the comments!
Tag: President Barack Obama
4 Takeaways from the Summit on Working Families
During the Summit on Working Families on Monday, First Lady Michelle Obama recalled once bringing her youngest daughter to a job interview.
“Who I was at that time was a breastfeeding mother of a four-month-old, I didn’t have a babysitter, so I took Sasha to the interview with me,” she said. “And I thought, ‘Look, this is — this is who I am; I got a husband who’s away; I got two little babies, they are my priority. If you want me to do the job, you gotta pay me to do the job, and you’ve gotta give me flexibility.”
Echoing the struggle many Americans face in striking a balance between work and home life, the First Lady joined her husband President Barack Obama, the White House, the Department of Labor, and the Center for American Progress in hosting a day-long discussion directed at creating better workplace policies for parents.
Business leaders (including CEOs from Johnson & Johnson and Goldman Sachs), lawmakers, working families, and White House officials participated in the all-day summit, as well as Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden.
At Monday afternoon’s remarks, Obama announced a presidential memorandum requiring federal agencies to provide employees more flexibility to take time off to take care of ill family members, to nurse, or to be able to work from home without suffering repercussions. Though the president did not offer up a plan requiring paid leave, he outlined four major themes that could help create a better life for American workers.
Flexible workplaces
The White House argues that more flexible schedules lead to happier employees, boosts productivity, and reduces turnaround rates, as Bloomberg Businessweek points out. As a part of the president’s executive order, federal agencies are required to review their policies on flexibilities as a part of the Office of Personnel Management’s plan to create a Workplace Flexibility Index, which will be updated annually to measure success, according to a White House fact sheet.
Obama also urged lawmakers to pass the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would require employers to accommodate pregnant women with flexibility that would allow them to keep their jobs.
Mad Men actress Christina Hendricks also spoke, illustrating the point that U.S. workplace policies were outdated. Using her character on the AMC series, a single mom and professional, Hendricks said, “In the 21st century the only place for a story like Joan’s should be on TV.”
Paid family leave
Obama also pointed out that the U.S. is the only developed country without mandated paid maternity leave. Women now comprise half the American workforce while men are increasingly playing the role of caregivers more than ever before.
“Many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth,” Obama said. “That’s a pretty low bar.”
Obama also urged Congress to pass the FAMILY Act, which would annually provide up to 12 weeks of paid leave to qualifying workers for personal illness, to take care of a sick family member, or for the birth or adoption of a child. While current federal policy allows up to three months of unpaid leave for newborns or sick family members for some employees, the law only covers about 60 percent of the American labor force—leaving almost half of all workers without the ability take leave sans a paycheck, the president argues.
Child Care
Child care was also mentioned at the summit. As a part of his initiative for better work policies, Obama will ask Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to set aside $25 million towards childcare for employees who want to attend job-training programs. Today, more than 60 percent of families with children live in a dual-income household, compared to only 40 percent of households with two working parents in 1965, according to U.S Council of Economic Advisors report.
“One study shows that nearly half of all parents, women and men, report that they’ve said no to a job, not because they didn’t want it, but because it would be too hard on their families,” Obama said. “When that many talented, hard-working people are forced to choose between work and family, something’s wrong. Other countries are making it easier for people to have both. We should too, if we want American businesses to compete and win in the global economy.”
Equal pay and raising the minimum wage
The president also emphasized pay equality and increasing the minimum wage as part of setting a 21st century workplace agenda. While females are more likely to work in low-wage and minimum-wage jobs than men, more than 40 percent of mothers are their family’s primary breadwinner yet they earn just 77 cents to every dollar, on average, compared to their male counterparts, according to White House economic advisers.
The President argued that by limiting the female labor force the U.S. is hindering its global edge. The U.S. ranks 17th in female labor participation among the world’s richest countries, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Back in 1990, the U.S. placed sixth.
These four narratives underscored a greater message from the White House: supporting families through better workplace policies is not just a women’s issue.
“At a time when women are nearly half of our workforce,” Obama said, “anything that makes life harder for women, makes life harder for families, and makes life harder for children. There’s no such thing as a women’s issue; this is a family issue. This is an American issue.”
A National Effort to Boost Local Resources
As smaller cities across the country grapple with poverty, unemployment, failing schools and other indicators economic distress, little time is devoted to ensuring they’re receiving the best tools and resources for better solutions.
While cities like New York and San Francisco benefit from the bright minds of Silicon Valley and other social startups, smaller communities are in need of similar solutions and ideas to restore economic recovery and growth. That’s why President Barack Obama launched the National Resource Network, a pilot program developed to be a consulting agency for policy, technical, and financial support for local governments.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) injected $10 million into the program, forming a network of experts with the New York University and the International City/County Management Association as well as Enterprise Community Partners, Public Financial Management Inc. and HR&A Advisors.
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The goal is to spend a three-year period listening to local governments for the type of guidance and assistance they need. From there, teams will be formed to create customized strategies. Local officials will also have access to a library of resources on government reform and community development, as well as a “311 for Cities.”
What’s that, you’re probably asking? The help line will serve as an online resource for government officials to log in for help with anything from public budgeting to crime prevention. After sending an inquiry, the network will review the problem and within three days, send a response with referrals and resources. The online site is available for about 50 communities and aims to expand to hundreds more over the course of the next three years.
While larger cities continue to innovate new policies and strategies to spur more community development, economic growth, and public and private partnerships, it’s important to keep in mind the thousands of smaller cities without the same resources — but that need of the same solutions. With a one-stop shop like the National Resource Network, help is on the horizon.
Ask the Experts: The Pay Gap Explained
You’ve probably heard (or read) the most commonly cited stat about the wage gap: On average, women make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns — a ratio that hasn’t shifted since 2002. President Barack Obama wasn’t shy about using this figure (again) in a speech on April 8, otherwise known as National Equal Pay Day (the date marks how far into the following year women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year), when he issued two measures aimed at narrowing the gap among workers contracted by the federal government, noting that “it’s an embarrassment” that women with the same education in the same field earn less than men.
But the 77-cent figure doesn’t paint a complete picture of the wage gap, a fact that has been hashed out countless times in political speeches and the media. It derives from a simple calculation of U.S. Census Bureau data — the difference between women’s median salaries and those of men. It doesn’t take into account other variables that affect wages, like level of education, amount of work experience, or the fact that women are more likely than men to take jobs with lower salaries but more flex time — to better accommodate child-rearing. Depending on how you add it up, the pay gap shrinks (or sometimes grows).
Nevertheless, it doesn’t disappear. Though its actual size may be tricky to pin down, the wage gap is real and signifies a problem that’s much bigger than a single statistic. So, NationSwell convened a panel of experts and asked them to explain the pay gap phenomenon, why it exists and what we can do to fix it. Read on for their thoughts, and then join the conversation by leaving your own ideas in the comments box below.
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Ask the Experts: Why Should Americans Care About Income Inequality?
It was a focus of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in January. It’s consistently been a hot topic on political talk shows, in news magazines and at your dinner table. It’s a politically polarizing and passion-invoking topic of discussion. And it’s almost impossible to nail down.
It’s income inequality.
A commonly accepted view is that the United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality among the world’s industrialized nations. But is this true? Well, it depends on whom you ask or, more specifically, how you measure it. Judging from the Gini coefficient — a statistical measure of a country’s distribution of income — you might agree that, yes, the U.S. has seen a rise in income inequality over the past few decades.
However, economists like Richard Burkhauser of Cornell University have written extensively that the way we measure inequality is flat-out wrong. In a 2011 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Burkhauser and co-authors Jeff Larrimore and Kosali Simon argued that income should be measured post-tax, size-adjusted for households, and after accounting for benefits such as health care. When those items are factored in, Burkhauser and his co-authors claimed, income inequality isn’t as big an issue in the U.S. after all.
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In this first installment of a new series for NationSwell in which we ask experts to weigh in on the major issues facing America, we asked our panel to contemplate this highly controversial topic. The main question we asked is: Why should (or shouldn’t) Americans care about income inequality? And, of course, what are the solutions to the problem?
The answers we got were surprisingly wide-ranging. Read on for the panel’s thought-provoking perspectives, and then join the conversation by leaving your own ideas in the comments box.
Dan Crawford
Spokesman for the Economic Policy Institute
NationSwell: Why should Americans care about income inequality?
Dan Crawford: Income inequality is far from an abstract issue. Since the 1970s, the productivity of the American economy has soared, but workers’ wages have stagnated. Inequality doesn’t just mean the rich are getting richer — it means the middle class isn’t sharing in the country’s overall prosperity. Americans should care about inequality because, since so much economic power is concentrated in the hands of the top 1 percent, the middle class keeps falling further behind. We’re not seeing the increases in living standards that should be emblematic of a healthy economy. For most Americans, inequality means they won’t see their incomes or living standards grow in any meaningful way.
NS: How do we fix it?
DC: There’s no easy fix to slowing or reversing the growth of inequality, but there are a number of steps that policymakers can take, such as making full employment a priority, raising the minimum wage, strengthening labor standards and protecting workers’ rights to bargain collectively.
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William McBride
Chief Economist at the Tax Foundation
NS: Why should Americans care about income inequality?
William McBride: First of all, I’m not sure they should. Income inequality is, in a general sense, a negative thing. You look around the world, there are certain places and times where it manifests itself as very problematic. For example, Brazil has such economic extremes, where the wealth and income is highly concentrated, and you have a real problem in terms of opportunity. You have a permanent “underclass” type of situation. Does that state of affairs exist in the U.S.? Well, it’s hard to get a handle on it.
I think a lot of researchers have tried to draw connections from income inequality to taxes. If we take from the rich and give to the poor through taxation, we can make our cultural problems better. That’s a very tenuous argument, and I think those who put it forth have yet to provide any evidence of it. [In fact,] the standard approach to economics tells a different story. It says that the economy works by different income groups cooperating, and employers hiring employees to produce wealth and income. Disrupting that process by redistribution from owners of assets to workers — or to retirees and nonworkers — that is a severe disruption to a basic economic process. We have very strong evidence that that destroys wealth — not just for the rich, but for the workers and future workers, as well.
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Additionally, the measurement of income inequality has been very flawed and politicized. To what degree do we have inequality? There are different ways to measure it. There’s IRS tax return-based measures and census survey data, and they come to totally different conclusions. The census-based data — which the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] uses that — that measure is more comprehensive, but it’s not the full story, either. When you add in what’s missing from that, you get a more complete picture of compensation, including fringe benefits. Then, you’ll find there’s been no change in inequality in 30 years, since the 1980s.
NS: Does it need to be fixed?
WM: There are policies that can and need to change to improve opportunity, not necessarily to improve inequality. Inequality is an outcome. But what we need to do is to change the inputs. In regards to education, it’s widely known we have a very poor K-12 system relative to other countries, and it’s only gotten worse over time. We have public schools in rich neighborhoods that are excellent, while low-income neighborhoods get very bad public schools. It’s very much tied to income. We know this is a very big driver of the low mobility problems we’re talking about here. So we need to fundamentally revolutionize K-12 public schooling, and to do so we can look around the world to see what’s worked and try some bold experiments.
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Branko Milanovic
Senior Scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York
NS: Why should Americans care about income inequality?
Branko Milanovic: There are several reasons people should care. Studies show if we have high-income inequality — called inequality of outcome — then over time that can be transformed into inequality of opportunity. What happens is that if you have a very high income, you pass your money, privileges, connections and so on to your sons and daughters, and they start their lives with much greater advantages than others. Gradually, these advantages become cemented from generation to generation, which means that at the very beginning of one’s life, there’s already a disparity in opportunity. In other words, one can say that such a society would undermine the long-held American dream of equality of opportunity and upward mobility.
Secondly, there are arguments that inequality might actually slow the rate of economic growth. We can argue that very rich people are saving and investing and so on, but if middle-class income doesn’t grow fast enough, then there’s no healthy demand provided by the bulk of the population. Again, we have seen this in the hollowing out of the middle class over the last 30 years, and possibly even in the run-up to the crisis, where the middle class basically compensated for the lack of growth by borrowing to unsustainable levels.
Lastly, in the long run, inequality has the tendency to undermine democracy. We have seen this, as well. Rich people try to buy legislation that is good for them. The political system gives them an unfair advantage over the others, which in turn makes them even richer. That’s how crony capitalism is born.
NS: How do we fix this problem?
BM: First, we can increase spending for education. Educated people are more productive. They participate in globalization, which is good for growth. And having more educated people in the country reduces the premium on university educations and reduces wage disparities, simply because the supply of highly educated people increases. Education is one of few instruments that we have which is a win-win strategy: It increases growth and reduces inequality. On top of that, basically everybody agrees that education is good in itself and for the entire nation.
Secondly, we can increase minimum wage to be in line with inflation. This would increase income for people at the bottom. But then of course, economists raise the issue of whether this could reduce demand for labor. So, one has to factor in this possibility too. Lastly, we can expand social spending and make it more generous — food stamps, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, earned income tax credit. They will decrease inequality, even if it means increased taxation. But all these ideas have as their objective not only to reduce inequality but more importantly poverty, which has been extremely stubborn in the U.S. for about 40 years.
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If our experts’ responses are any indication, the issue of income inequality has no simple explanation or answer. But notice that everyone did agree on one thing: To increase equality, we need to invest in education. Hear that, Congress?
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A Northwestern State Proves That a Higher Minimum Wage Doesn’t Necessarily Increase Unemployment
Talk about forward thinking. For 16 years now, the state of Washington has boasted the highest minimum wage in the U.S. — currently $9.32 per hour, a full two dollars and change more than the federal mandate of $7.25.
When west coast voters passed the initiative in back in 1998, opponents claimed that a higher wage would kill jobs. Coincidentally, this is the same argument that is being used by politicians, business groups and lobbyists who are fighting against President Barack Obama’s push for a $10.10 minimum wage. As the debate continues, Bloomberg analyzed the numbers in Washington state, and the results are surprising.
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After Washington’s minimum wage increase passed, which increased wages over two years to $6.70 and linked future increases to inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index, unemployment in the state spiked for a three-year period. However, in the years that followed, unemployment gradually decreased. For four of the past five years, Washington’s unemployment rate has been below the national average — as well as below the averages for the Western and Southern regions. Overall, Bloomberg reports that Washington’s job growth has continued at an average of 0.8 percent annually, outpacing the national growth rate of 0.3 percent.
An added bonus? Poverty in the state trailed the U.S. average for at least seven years as well. And payrolls at Washington’s restaurants and bars — employees of which are particularly vulnerable to minimum wage laws — have expanded by a whopping 21 percent. In other words, after 15 years of implementation, Washington’s minimum wage increase is successful. “It’s hard to see that the state of Washington has paid a heavy penalty for having a higher minimum wage than the rest of the country,” Gary Burtless, an economist at Brookings Institution and former U.S. Labor Department worker, told Bloomberg.
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How do the results seen in Washington line up with those projected nationally? A report by the Congressional Budget Office published in February found that President Obama’s proposal of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 would reduce employment by 500,000 workers — a talking point that has been levied by opponents of the wage increase. However, the same report found that a higher minimum wage would lift 900,000 people out of poverty.
So while it’s true that raising the minimum wage would create higher costs for employers — which could lead to job cuts — the increase in pay will likely be pumped back into the economy by citizens who are spending more money than they would be able to if they were being paid at a lower rate.
That might not be enough to convince Congress, but just take a look at this sobering map created by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which shows the hours per week that minimum-wage employees would need to work in order to afford a two-bedroom apartment. In Washington, these employees would need to clock 81 hours a week — and that’s despite the fact that they are paid the the highest minimum wage in the country. For the 19 states that adhere to the federally-mandated $7.25 an hour … well, let’s just say it doesn’t look like these employees will be affording the apartment of their dreams (or even any apartment) anytime soon.
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These Billionaire GOP Donors Support the Idea of a $12 Minimum Wage. Will the Party Follow?
Could common political ground between Democrats and Republicans be on the horizon? It looks like some influential conservative donors are shifting their ideology ever so slightly to increasing the minimum wage — a legislative issue that Democrats are pushing for as we near the midterm elections. In January, wealthy Silicon Valley executive and conservative donor Ron Unz put forth a California ballot measure that would raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour in 2015 and $12 in 2016. His perspective was this: raising the minimum wage would put more money in the average Americans’ pockets, which in turn would make them less reliant on government aid. Now Peter Thiel, the billionaire co-founder of PayPal and GOP donor, is weighing in on Unz’s plan, saying, “I actually think that it’s a very out of the box idea — but it’s something one should consider seriously.” Thiel, who has donated millions of dollars to GOP causes over the year, including $1 million to the anti-tax group Club for Growth and nearly $4 million to the Endorse Liberty PAC in support of presidential candidate Ron Paul in 2012, agrees with Unz’s assumptions that a higher minimum wage could reduce people’s dependency on welfare. “Given how low the minimum wage is — and how generous the welfare benefits are — you have a marginal tax rate that’s on the order of 100 percent, and people are actually trapped in this sort of welfare state,” he said.
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The idea of a minimum wage increase has been a hot topic of late. President Barack Obama called on Congress to work together to increase the minimum wage to $9 an hour by 2015 in his State of the Union address, saying that the move would raise the income of millions of working families. “It could mean the difference between groceries or the food bank; rent or eviction; scraping by or finally getting ahead. For businesses across the country, it would mean customers with more money in their pockets,” he said. The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 — which is used in about 30 states that don’t mandate their own — translates to a $15,000 annual salary, which the President noted is well below a living wage in many areas of the country.
Recently, House Democrats filed a “discharge petition” in an attempt to dislodge their bill that increases the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, which would move the vote to the floor. While it seems unlikely that the petition will get the required votes, some Republican lawmakers have said that they are open to discussion on the issue. Others stick to their opposition, citing a bipartisan Congressional Budget Office report that says that raising the minimum wage would cost the economy 500,000 jobs. Democrats, on the other hand, cite another aspect of the same report — that raising the minimum wage would lift 900,000 people out of poverty. OK, so maybe legislators aren’t finding their common ground quite yet. But if there’s one certainty in politics it’s that politicians follow the money. If major conservative donors continue to push for a minimum wage increase, we might hear some GOP lawmakers singing a different tune.
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