The 29 States Where You Can Still Be Fired For Being Gay

Tim Cook came out as gay in an essay in Businessweek on Thursday. He said that the unequal treatment LGBT employees face all over the country was a critical factor in his decision.

"I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences," Cook wrote. "Not everyone is so lucky."

Indeed, there is no federal law protecting LGBT workers against discrimination based on their sexual orientation. And while some states and cities have passed their own protections, there are still 29 states where you can actually be fired for being gay, leaving more than half of all total workers vulnerable to employment discrimination.

Most Americans incorrectly think that this problem has already been solved. A 2013 HuffPost/YouGov poll found that 69 percent of Americans think that firing people for being gay is illegal.

A proposed federal law called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would provide protections for all LGBT Americans working for employers with at least 15 employees. It's been introduced in nearly every Congress since 1994, but has never passed.

Apple's home state of California has some of the most robust anti-discrimination laws in the country, and the company itself is an outspoken advocate for LGBT rights.

"If hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy," Cook wrote in his essay.

Tim Cook Just Changed America In A Way Steve Jobs Never Could

Maybe someday we'll complain about Corporate America's shortage of LGBT executives, just as we complain now about the number of women and minorities at the top. And that will be an improvement -- because once Corporate America barely acknowledged that LGBT executives existed.

That changed abruptly on Thursday, when Apple CEO Tim Cook announced, in an essay for Bloomberg Businessweek, that he was gay. That made him the first openly gay CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

It's a watershed moment not only in the history of Corporate America, but in the history of the country.

A couple of other members of the C-suite have come out in the past, including former Urban Outfitters CEO Glen Senk and John Browne, the former BP CEO, who came out after he resigned. But Tim Cook is different.

Because Tim Cook doesn't just run any company. He runs Apple, for God's sake, the biggest company by market value in America, bigger than Exxon Mobil and Microsoft. Apple, the iconic American success story that started in Steve Jobs' garage and became the world's gold standard for fancy consumer gadgets.

The thought that the captain of such an enterprise would be openly gay would have been unthinkable, say, 18 years ago, when President Clinton signed the gay-baiting Defense Of Marriage Act into law.

Today it is not only thinkable, but blissfully mundane: On Wall Street, the news caused barely a ripple in Apple's stock price, which was down about 0.6 percent in recent trading.

Wall Street has come a long, long way from its days of rampant homophobia, but you can bet that if stock traders thought Tim Cook being gay was somehow bad for Apple's business, then the stock would be down a bunch. It's not. This kind of reaction says something about how far the country has come in its attitudes about people's sexual identities. It could encourage other LGBT executives to come out, too.

Of course, Cook's coming-out wasn't exactly a huge shocker: As he wrote, many people inside Apple knew he was gay. Many people outside of Apple were aware of it, too: The business and tech media have long chattered about when Cook was going to finally just make it official, already.

But the fact that Cook could rise to the very top of the biggest company in America, without hiding who he really was, is also an encouraging sign.

Maybe it will give hope to the many LGBT Americans who still face discrimination at work. More than half of all LGBT workers hide their orientation at work, according to a recent Human Rights Campaign survey, as reported just a couple of days ago by CNN. It's still legal in 29 states for employers to fire workers for being gay, CNN noted.

Cook mentioned that, too, suggesting it was part of the reason he broke his silence:

"I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences," Cook wrote. "Not everyone is so lucky."

The tide of public opinion and laws in this country has already turned in favor of gay marriage. Maybe Cook's coming-out can help turn the tide more decisively against workplace discrimination, too. As Cook noted, it's bad for business.

Cook has been CEO of Apple for more than three years. Apple's stock price has nearly doubled in that time, and America's lust for Apple products doesn't seem to have cooled a bit. Still, Cook hasn't quite been able to escape the huge shadow of his iconic predecessor. People have wondered if the company can ever be as innovative and efficient under Cook as it was under Jobs. Would the Apple Maps debacle have happened on Steve Jobs' watch? What about bendgate?

Some questions about Cook's business legacy at Apple won't be answered for a long time. But with just one step, Cook has left Jobs' shadow and become an icon of his own.

Gas Hasn't Been This Cheap In Nearly Four Years

Gas prices always go down in the fall, but usually not this much.

At 56 percent of the nation’s gas stations, the price of gas is now under $3 per gallon, according to Michael Green, a spokesman for AAA, an auto club federation. AAA collects information on gas prices from consumers who use between 80,000 - 100,000 different U.S. gas stations every day, Green said.

This is a huge change from a year ago, Green said, when only 11 percent of stations were selling unleaded fuel for less than $3. Gas hasn't been this cheap in nearly four years, AAA said in a statement on Monday.

Gas prices always fall in the autumn, as colder temperatures mean fewer people go on road and boat trips, said Patrick DeHaan, a senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, a website that lets people share information about gas prices.

Yet today's prices are way down even when compared with previous seasonal lows, as this graphic shows:

(Chart courtesy of AAA)

The low cost of gas could be a boon for the U.S. economy: spending less to fill up their tanks means Americans have more disposable income going into the holiday season. U.S. households save $120 for every 10 cent drop in the price of gas, the New York Times reported earlier this month, citing GasBuddy's Tom Kloza.

There are a few reasons why gas is cheaper this fall than in previous years. For one thing, crude-oil prices have tumbled recently as investors fear that a global economic slowdown could weaken demand.

When the price of oil falls, the price of gasoline falls, too. Experts say the price of oil makes up about two-thirds of the price of gas. Other factors, such as taxes and refining and distribution costs, also play a role in determining the cost of a gallon of gas.

In many places in America, gas is even cheaper than $3 a gallon:

(U.S. gas price heat map courtesy of GasBuddy)

Oil prices are also falling because major OPEC oil producers Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran chose to slash prices earlier this fall, DeHaan told The Huffington Post.

Analysts have speculated that Saudi Arabia, which produces more oil than any other OPEC member, wants to increase its share of the market.

“If there’s a landlord who sells all his houses for greatly under value, it causes the whole market to tank,” DeHaan said. “That’s what’s happening with oil. The Saudis are basically flooding the market with cheaper oil, and that’s putting a huge amount of downward pressure on oil prices.”

One more reason gas is so cheap, according to DeHaan: The U.S. is sucking more and more oil out of the ground than at any time since the 1980s. “So we have all these sources of new crude oil in the U.S., and that’s adding to the global oil supply, which naturally pushes prices down,” he said.

Majority Of Kroger Shoppers Want Gun-Friendly Chain To Ban Guns

The cadre of mothers crusading to ban the open carry of firearms in stores has added a new poll to its arsenal.

Sixty-four percent of shoppers in states allowing gun owners to brandish their weapons in public want supermarket giant Kroger to prohibit open carry in its stores, according to the poll, commissioned by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America, the increasingly powerful gun-control group backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg.

On Wednesday, the moms plan to picket outside Kroger’s annual investor relations meeting in Cincinnati armed with a 300,000-signature petition and the poll, which was released Tuesday by the Benenson Strategy Group.

“People are now just realizing how absurd it is that someone could bring a loaded AR-15 into Kroger with them while they’re shopping,” Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, told The Huffington Post on Tuesday.

Moms Demand Action has already notched significant victories through powerful social media campaigns. At its urging, corporate food chains Chili’s, Sonic, Jack in the Box, Chipotle and Starbucks asked customers to leave guns at home or in the car. After a prolonged fight, during which the moms faced fierce rallies by rifle-toting open-carry advocates, the group convinced Target to announce a no-guns policy.

But the Kroger campaign marked a shift for the group toward more sophisticated tactics. Flush with cash from Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety fund, the moms rolled out campaign ads for the first time last month. Meant to jolt shoppers into realizing the absurdity of allowing assault-grade firearms in the stores, the ads juxtapose a person with an AR-15 slung around his shoulders with either a child holding an ice cream cone, a shirtless man or a teenager with a skateboard. The message: Deadly weapons are allowed at Kroger, where policy forbids these other, relatively harmless things.

One of the ads released by Moms Demand Action to pressure Kroger to ban guns.

Two radio ads, made by recording real customer service calls to Kroger, are also getting air time.

Since the moms embarked on the campaign, smaller grocers have approached the group for help drafting gun bans of their own.

Watts said her group chose the supermarket giant because of its size and visibility. Kroger operates 2,419 stores in 31 states, most of which are in the South and Midwest, regions where gun culture and the powerful National Rifle Association maintain a stronger grip than in, say, the liberal Northeast.

“We wanted to pick a campaign that would give us the opportunity, frankly, to do more brand damage by running ads,” Watts said. “They may at first sit back and allow the brand damage to occur, and then realize, ‘Oh, wait, we’re alienating most of our customer base, which is women and mothers.”

Kroger said it has no plans to change its current policy, and that it believes the Everytown is "a national political organization that is attempting to use retailers to further their agenda."

"Kroger's policy has been and continues to be to follow state and local laws and to ask customers to be respectful of others while shopping in our stores," Keith Dailey, a spokesman for the chain, wrote in an email to HuffPost. "We believe the controversial gun issue is best resolved by lawmakers, not retailers."

Though the results of the moms' new poll should be taken with a grain of salt, considering the group financed the poll, the findings indicate a desire to leave guns out of the grocery store.

A huge majority of those polled, 83 percent, said they believe Kroger has the right to prohibit guns if it so chooses. And 61 percent of shoppers who have guns in their homes say they don’t think such a policy would violate their Second Amendment rights. Most notably, 52 percent of shoppers who said they support a gun ban at Kroger keep firearms in their homes.

Open-carry activists marched through a Target location in Texas to protest the moms' early efforts pushing the retailer to ban guns.

Watts said most of the retailers that have announced no-guns rules over the last year conducted their own polls ahead of any policy changes.

But the rules aren’t always legally binding. It can be difficult for individual chains to enforce the policies, both legally and logistically, if a defiant customer decides to carry in a loaded assault rifle strapped to their back. But Watts, who has endured violent threats and brutal, misogynistic hate speech since founding the group after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, said the policies are first steps toward loosening the grip of the NRA gun culture.

“Ultimately,” she said, “businesses cannot withstand the wrath of American moms and women.”

This story has been updated with a statement from Kroger.

The 10 Most Livable Countries Right Now

Based on the most recent release of the Human Development Index by the United Nations Development Programme, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the most and least livable countries. Data from the Human Development Index is based on three dimensions of human progress — having a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable, and having a good standard of living. According to the index, Norway is the most livable country in the world, while Niger is the least livable.

One factor that influences a country’s development is its income. The U.N. used gross national income in its calculation of the Human Development Index to reflect the standard of living in a country. In the most developed countries, gross income per capita is generally quite high. All of the world’s 10 most livable countries had among the top 30 gross national incomes per person. The top-rated country, Norway, had the world’s sixth highest gross national income per capita of $63,909.

At the other end of the spectrum, the world’s least developed countries typically had very low incomes. Six of these 10 least livable nations were among the bottom 10 countries by gross national income per capita. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, which had the lowest gross national income per capita in the world, at just $444 last year, was the second least developed country worldwide.

Click here to see the 10 most livable countries

Similarly, these countries also generally had extremely high percentage of their populations living on just $1.25 a day or less, adjusted for purchasing power. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Burundi, more than 80% of the population lived on less than $1.25 per day.

Life expectancies, another factor considered in the Human Development Index, were also far better in highly developed nations. Switzerland, Australia, and Singapore were all among the top rated countries with life expectancies greater than 82 years for individuals born in 2013. By this metric, the United States is a relative laggard. The median life expectancy at birth in the U.S. of 78.9 years was ranked just 38th worldwide.

For individuals born in the world’s least developed nations, the average life expectancy was far lower. In all but one of these nations, a person born in 2013 had a life expectancy of less than 60 years. Sierra Leone, the fifth-lowest ranked nation, had the worst life expectancy, at just 45.6 years.

Sadly, among the factors contributing to these low life expectancies are, almost certainly, high mortality rates for infants and young children. Sierra Leone, which had the lowest life expectancy, also had the highest mortality rates for infants and children under five, at 117 deaths and 182 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Education also plays a role in determining development. In all but one of the most developed countries, residents aged 25 and older spent an average of more than 12 years in school. By contrast, in all of the world’s least developed countries, adult residents had less than four years of education on average.

The most and least developed nations also tend to be clustered geographically. Five of the 10 most developed countries are located in Europe. All of the least developed nations, on the other hand, are located in Africa, where political turmoil, health crises, and lack of infrastructure are far more common.

Despite their low scores, however, several of the world’s least developed nations have worked towards improving their economies in recent years, and their Human Development Index scores have improved as well. Mozambique is perhaps the best example. While it is still the 10th lowest rated nation, its score had risen by 2.5% per year between 2000 and 2013, faster than almost all other countries globally. Burundi’s score also rose substantially, by 2.3% per year in that time.

Click here to see the 10 least livable countries

To identify the most and least developed nations, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed the latest Human Development Index figures published by the U.N. The index included three dimensions made up of select metrics. The health dimension incorporated life expectancy at birth. The education dimension was based on the average and expected years of schooling, for adults 25 and older and newly-enrolled children, respectively. The standard of living dimension was determined by gross national income per capita. We also considered other statistics published by the U.N. alongside the index, including inequality measures, mortality measures, poverty rates, and expenditures on health and education as a percent of gross domestic product (GDP). All data are for the most recent period available.

These are the most livable countries.

22 Percent Of Americans Would Rather Die Than Retire Without Enough Money

Saving for retirement is scary. So little is knowable, and so much is uncontrollable and uncertain. A new survey from Wells Fargo reinforces just how anxious middle-class Americans are over how much financial security they will have once they retire, if they can ever afford to.

Wells Fargo found that “22 percent of the middle class say they would rather ‘die early’ than not have enough money to live comfortably in retirement.”

This is the depressing state of retirement in America: survey questions that pose an early death as a viable alternative to comfortable retirement.

Americans at least seem to have gotten the message that’s been drilled into them in the 30 years since the 401(k) was created: Personal savings will be your primary source of income when you retire. Only 30 percent of Americans think Social Security will be their primary source of retirement income, according to the Wells Fargo survey.

But the survey also reveals that Americans are deeply aware their personal retirement savings are inadequate, especially as they get older. Forty-eight percent of respondents in their 50s said they won’t have enough to live on if they stop working. Would-be retirees with inadequate savings are left with the choice of working longer or accepting the much lower standard of living that comes with relying only on the government safety net to survive.

The survey defines "middle class" as households with an annual income of $50,000 to $100,000 for 30-to-75-year-olds, and annual household income of $25,000 to $99,000 for 25-to-29-year-olds. The current U.S. median household income is $51,900.

The survey’s rather generous definition of middle class – which skews higher than one common measure of 50 percent above and below median income – makes data points like these even more troubling:

• 19 percent percent of middle-class Americans have zero retirement savings
• 34 percent are not currently saving for retirement
• A staggering 41 percent of Americans between 50 and 59 are not currently saving for retirement

Based on the numbers, most retirees will be unable to match their current standard of living. The standard assumption is that your retirement income should be 70 to 80 percent of your working income. The median savings across all age groups was a paltry $20,000.

Even a group that has saved a relatively large amount, people in their 40s with a 401(k), haven’t saved anywhere near enough. Their median savings are $50,000. That’s good for a little more than a single year of retirement, based on the current median income. Even bleaker: 40-to-49-year-olds without a 401(k) have median savings of just $10,000.

Why aren't people saving more? The survey's responses offer a hint. Wells Fargo asked what spending “sacrifices” people would make in order to save more. A little more than half said they’d cut back on discretionary and impulse purchases like spa visits, eating out, or jewelry. Yet most of Americans' spending isn’t on such variable, discretionary things. Housing, healthcare, food, and transportation make up about 65 percent of Americans' spending. On top of that, incomes have fallen over the past decade.

In other words, Americans' inability to save for retirement is all about high fixed costs and stagnant wages, not indulgence and a lack of willpower.

Wells Fargo, of course, would like people to think that they can will themselves to save more, and save it with Wells Fargo. From this self-interested perspective, surveys like this are sales pitches. (The first three words of the Wells Fargo report are a link to the company’s retirement services website.) They are meant to jolt and perhaps scare people into doing what they know they should already be doing: saving a lot more.

But this strategy is only effective if people have the means to save. A few Americans have enough individual savings to maintain their standard of living in retirement; most don’t now and likely won’t ever.

The problem, Wells Fargo's Kim Wimbish said, is that “non-retirees worry about their ability to earn more in their lifetime, and they are skeptical the stock market is the place for them to grow their savings.” Those worries are unfortunately well-founded.

Brooklyn Bowling Alley 'The Gutter' To Reopen After Ebola Cleanup

The bowling alley used by a New York man the night before he was diagnosed with Ebola will reopen Friday, according to the New York Times.

Williamsburg bowling alley The Gutter, shut down on Thursday as a "precautionary measure" while it worked with the New York Health Department to have the bar cleaned and sanitized, it said on its Facebook page.

Post by The Gutter.

Although bowling alleys where people rent shoes and share balls are notorious incubators of germs, it's extremely unlikely that you can get Ebola from a bowling ball. "There is no evidence that it has been passed, as colds or flu sometimes are, by touching surfaces that someone else touched after sneezing into their hand," says a separate article in The New York Times.

Still, closing its business down for cleaning was probably a smart move for the bowling alley. "They’re losing some money obviously by being closed, but what they gain in peace of mind and goodwill I think is worth a lot to them," said Lynda Maddox, a marketing and advertising professor at George Washington University. Maddox noted that this is the first time Americans are dealing with ebola on their soil and there's currently a lot of skepticism with regards to how the CDC is handling the virus. A little extra care is going to be well-perceived.

Craig Spencer, the 33-year-old doctor who contracted New York's first case of Ebola, told authorities that he had gone bowling at The Gutter on Wednesday night before taking an Uber back to his apartment in Manhattan.

Uber said on Thursday that the car and driver involved were not a risk for ebola.

The following morning, Spencer felt feverish and was diagnosed at Bellevue Hospital.

The Gutter said it had been told by doctors advising the New York Health Department that there was no risk to its staff or to any customers. The New York Health Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

While there have been some reports saying Spencer also "caught some music" at The Brooklyn Bowl, a larger bowling and concert venue nearby, Brooklyn Bowl said on its Twitter page that Spencer did not go there.

The musician Questlove, who plays a regular show at Brooklyn Bowl on Thursday nights, said Thursday that the venue was safe to hang out at:

Ladies & Gents @brooklynbowl is safe (*said* bowling alley in WB is called "The Gutter") out bowling alley is open and clean #BowlTrain

— Questlove Gomez (@questlove) October 24, 2014

Brooklyn Bowling Alley 'The Gutter' To Reopen After Ebola Cleanup

The bowling alley used by a New York man the night before he was diagnosed with Ebola will reopen Friday, according to the New York Times.

Williamsburg bowling alley The Gutter, shut down on Thursday as a "precautionary measure" while it worked with the New York Health Department to have the bar cleaned and sanitized, it said on its Facebook page.

Post by The Gutter.

Although bowling alleys where people rent shoes and share balls are notorious incubators of germs, it's extremely unlikely that you can get Ebola from a bowling ball. "There is no evidence that it has been passed, as colds or flu sometimes are, by touching surfaces that someone else touched after sneezing into their hand," says a separate article in The New York Times.

Still, closing its business down for cleaning was probably a smart move for the bowling alley. "They’re losing some money obviously by being closed, but what they gain in peace of mind and goodwill I think is worth a lot to them," said Lynda Maddox, a marketing and advertising professor at George Washington University. Maddox noted that this is the first time Americans are dealing with ebola on their soil and there's currently a lot of skepticism with regards to how the CDC is handling the virus. A little extra care is going to be well-perceived.

Craig Spencer, the 33-year-old doctor who contracted New York's first case of Ebola, told authorities that he had gone bowling at The Gutter on Wednesday night before taking an Uber back to his apartment in Manhattan.

Uber said on Thursday that the car and driver involved were not a risk for ebola.

The following morning, Spencer felt feverish and was diagnosed at Bellevue Hospital.

The Gutter said it had been told by doctors advising the New York Health Department that there was no risk to its staff or to any customers. The New York Health Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Huffington Post.

While there have been some reports saying Spencer also "caught some music" at The Brooklyn Bowl, a larger bowling and concert venue nearby, Brooklyn Bowl said on its Twitter page that Spencer did not go there.

The musician Questlove, who plays a regular show at Brooklyn Bowl on Thursday nights, said Thursday that the venue was safe to hang out at:

Ladies & Gents @brooklynbowl is safe (*said* bowling alley in WB is called "The Gutter") out bowling alley is open and clean #BowlTrain

— Questlove Gomez (@questlove) October 24, 2014

The Workers Making Sure The NYC Subway Is Ebola-Free

The people who clean the subways might be New York City's unsung heroes. They work at all hours, power-washing urine from platforms, putting themselves in harm's way to clean tracks and mopping the train car floors and seats that millions of people use every day.

Still, workers were disconcerted by the news that Craig Spencer, the doctor who tested positive for Ebola in New York City on Thursday, rode the A, L and 1 subway lines the day before he was diagnosed. After all, they’re the ones who have to clean the trains on which Spencer travelled.

"It's a time for caution, a high level of caution," said John Samuelsen, president of the Transportation Workers Union Local 100, which represents Metropolitan Transportation Authority workers.

Samuelson told The Huffington Post that the biggest concern for transit workers right now is making sure they have the right protective gear for cleaning up hazardous waste. The union is advising workers to do their jobs and be professional, but to challenge any supervisor who tells them to deal with infectious waste without protective equipment.

The risk of any transit worker contracting Ebola is relatively low. The disease is not airborne, and it’s only spread through bodily fluids. For someone to catch it, they would have to actually come in contact with something like mucus or vomit from an infected person.

Bodily fluids weren’t reported on any of the subway lines Spencer rode on Wednesday, according to the MTA.

That said, uncomfortable cleanups are all too common on New York City's busy subway system.

"This is nothing new for transit workers," Samuelsen said.

Indeed, whoever ends up cleaning the subway will be well-prepared. Transit workers are trained regularly on how to deal with emergencies. Moreover, the MTA already has procedures in place for cleaning up infectious waste in the transit system, including isolating the bus, train car or subway where the waste is found and providing protective equipment and training to the people cleaning it up. The MTA has added extra levels of protection for workers cleaning the places where Spencer came in contact with the system.

“Based on advice from health experts, the MTA has updated the protocols to ensure employees are issued nitrile gloves, use a 10 percent bleach solution for disinfection, and double-bag any potentially infectious waste,” according to a statement from the agency.

In addition, the TWU Local 100 union released a statement Thursday saying that its director of occupational health, Dr. Frank Goldsmith, is “closely monitoring the situation."

The people who keep the subway humming work under a variety of strange conditions that would be foreign to most New Yorkers, according to Robert W. Snyder, the author of Transit Talk: New York Bus and Subway Workers Tell Their Stories. Their hours can be erratic. They’re in contact with many more people every day than most of us are. Some of their jobs are “industrial” and can involve dangerous conditions. Amid all of this, these workers are also expected to maintain a happy face for customers, Snyder told HuffPost.

(This is confirmed by just one look at the union's website, which is currently advertising a workshop called “Dealing with Difficult People.")

Transit workers are "often seen as invisible unless something goes catastrophically wrong,” said Snyder, who is also a professor at Rutgers University’s Newark campus.

That dynamic was on display earlier this month, when passengers wrote in anger to various news outlets about a used condom that had been hanging from a handrail on the F line for weeks. An MTA spokesman told Gothamist that he wasn’t necessarily surprised workers had missed the condom, which was relatively high up, because they’re so focused on cleaning the floors and seats of the train.

Despite the stressful conditions of transit work, people still flock to the job because “it remains one of the few jobs in the city where an ordinary person with an ordinary education can build a decent life with decent pay,” Snyder said.

Transit workers who clean the subway make about $25 an hour, according to data provided by the union. MTA workers also get dental and medical benefits, as well as perks like two weeks of paid maternity and paternity leave.

That may be part of the reason that, so far, transit workers and organizers haven’t used the Ebola panic to highlight the difficulties of the work. By contrast, earlier this month, airplane cleaners and other LaGuardia airport workers addressed Ebola in a strike that was organized with the help of the Service Employee International Union.

Though the LaGuardia protest dealt with working conditions more broadly, the Ebola outbreak offered a good opportunity to highlight those conditions, since the workers cleaning airplane cabins regularly come into contact with passengers’ bodily fluids.

Samuelsen added that his organization was in constant communication with workers and the MTA to ensure employees are working safely.

"We're not going to put ourselves in harm's way," he said.

Overweight Women More Likely To Have Low-Paying Jobs Than Overweight Men

Fat shaming can have economic consequences.

As a woman gets heavier, her chances of working in a low-paying, physically taxing job grow, according to a new study from Jennifer Shinall, a law professor at Vanderbilt University. But weight doesn’t have nearly as much bearing on the type of job a man lands.

Though obese men are more likely than men of average weight to work in lower-paying, physical jobs, the effect isn't nearly as strong as it is for women. As a result, obese women make $7 less than their average-weight counterparts, while obese men make just $2 less.

“It absolutely suggests that weight is much more of a consideration in the labor market for women than it is for men,” Shinall told The Huffington Post in an interview.

Shinall’s findings add to the growing body of evidence that physical attributes play a depressingly large role in the lives of working women, no matter how they look. Very skinny women tend to get paid more. Hiring committees penalize attractive women by not calling them for interviews.

Such factors typically add to the broader discrimination women already face at work. Research shows women earn less than men in the same roles and are also more likely to work in low-paying fields.

Many female-dominated, low-wage jobs, such as home health care and child care, are where obese and morbidly obese women are most likely to end up, Shinall’s study found.

"Those are the only jobs that are available for the heaviest women in the labor market," she said.

For her study, Shinall analyzed occupation, health and population data for 10,007 women and 8,928 men. She found that, the heavier women get, the more likely they'll end up working in jobs that require more physical activity.

The opposite is true for women seeking jobs in fields that involve a lot of personal interaction, such as sales. Women become less likely to land those roles the more overweight they are. Morbidly obese women who do get jobs in such fields are paid about 5 percent less, on average, than other women, even controlling for factors like education, the study found.

For men, on the other hand, being heavier can actually boost earnings in some jobs. Overweight men working in more physical jobs make about 4 percent more, on average, than their average-weight colleagues, according to the study.

Shinall said she suspects that one of the main reasons obese and morbidly obese women tend to cluster in low-paying, strenuous jobs is because of discrimination in hiring for white-collar roles. Companies may not want an overweight woman representing them to customers, she said, and it's also possible that the person doing the hiring may not want to work with an obese woman.

Overweight Women More Likely To Have Low-Paying Jobs Than Overweight Men

Fat shaming can have economic consequences.

As a woman gets heavier, her chances of working in a low-paying, physically taxing job grow, according to a new study from Jennifer Shinall, a law professor at Vanderbilt University. But weight doesn’t have nearly as much bearing on the type of job a man lands.

Though obese men are more likely than men of average weight to work in lower-paying, physical jobs, the effect isn't nearly as strong as it is for women. As a result, obese women make $7 less than their average-weight counterparts, while obese men make just $2 less.

“It absolutely suggests that weight is much more of a consideration in the labor market for women than it is for men,” Shinall told The Huffington Post in an interview.

Shinall’s findings add to the growing body of evidence that physical attributes play a depressingly large role in the lives of working women, no matter how they look. Very skinny women tend to get paid more. Hiring committees penalize attractive women by not calling them for interviews.

Such factors typically add to the broader discrimination women already face at work. Research shows women earn less than men in the same roles and are also more likely to work in low-paying fields.

Many female-dominated, low-wage jobs, such as home health care and child care, are where obese and morbidly obese women are most likely to end up, Shinall’s study found.

"Those are the only jobs that are available for the heaviest women in the labor market," she said.

For her study, Shinall analyzed occupation, health and population data for 10,007 women and 8,928 men. She found that, the heavier women get, the more likely they'll end up working in jobs that require more physical activity.

The opposite is true for women seeking jobs in fields that involve a lot of personal interaction, such as sales. Women become less likely to land those roles the more overweight they are. Morbidly obese women who do get jobs in such fields are paid about 5 percent less, on average, than other women, even controlling for factors like education, the study found.

For men, on the other hand, being heavier can actually boost earnings in some jobs. Overweight men working in more physical jobs make about 4 percent more, on average, than their average-weight colleagues, according to the study.

Shinall said she suspects that one of the main reasons obese and morbidly obese women tend to cluster in low-paying, strenuous jobs is because of discrimination in hiring for white-collar roles. Companies may not want an overweight woman representing them to customers, she said, and it's also possible that the person doing the hiring may not want to work with an obese woman.

Janet Yellen: Rising Income Inequality Could Seriously Harm The U.S. Economy

The Federal Reserve is sounding increasingly alarmed about income inequality.

"The extent of and continuing increase in inequality in the United States greatly concern me," Fed Chair Janet Yellen said in a speech at an inequality conference in Boston on Friday. Her comments come just days after Swiss bank Credit Suisse warned that inequality in the U.S. is at levels that have been associated with recessions in the past, with one key measure at its highest level since the Great Depression.

Though Yellen didn't go so far as to echo Credit Suisse's recession alarm, she did warn that rising inequality risked doing serious harm to the overall strength of the U.S. economy. Yellen, too, noted that "income and wealth inequality are near their highest levels in the past hundred years, much higher than the average during that time span and probably higher than for much of American history before then."

Yellen suggested such inequality is downright un-American:

"I think it is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity," she said.

Patriotism aside, inequality is also a worry because of its ill effects on the economy. As Yellen noted, living standards have been "stagnant" for most Americans for the past few decades, an unhealthy development for an economy that relies mainly on consumer spending to drive growth.

One key measure of inequality at its highest level since the Great Depression (Source: Credit Suisse)

And inequality tends to foster even more inequality, Yellen suggested, as the well-off tend to have better access to economic opportunity than the poor. And if the have-nots have fewer opportunities to climb the economic ladder, that hurts the general health and vibrancy of the economy.

Yellen's been warning about inequality for a while, telling Congress in February and in May that it was a "disturbing" trend. Congress, shockingly, has done nothing to address it.

On Friday she suggested a handful of possible solutions, including early childhood education, making college cheaper and helping entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, the Fed, the nation's central bank, has exactly zero control over any of those things, noted the Washington Post's Ylan Mui.

The Fed might even have made inequality worse, with stimulus measures that have boosted stock and bond prices, mainly a boon to the already wealthy. Yellen noted that the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans own two-thirds of all stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other such financial assets.

Even lower mortgage rates, one of the most direct Fed stimulus effects, have mainly helped people who already own homes or have credit good enough to buy homes. Many of those people are closer to the middle and bottom of the economic ladder, at least. But the small bounce in home prices since the Great Recession has been dwarfed by soaring stock and bond prices, and has done nothing for those homeowners' stagnant wages.

These 5 Scary Obamacare Predictions Were Dead Wrong

Predicting the ways in which Obamacare would fail and ruin America has been something of a cottage industry for conservative politicians and talking heads since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010.

Sometimes the Obamacare haters resolutely held their ground even as the facts disproved their theories. This is known as "Obamacare trutherism".

So let's take a journey down Bonkers Lane and remember together some of the scariest prognostications about Obamacare that turned out to be untrue.

1. Prediction: No One Is Going To Pay For Health Insurance

What happened: Just About Everyone Paid For Health Insurance. After we learned that more than 8 million Americans signed up for health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges by April, it became hard to argue that no one would enroll. So conservatives moved on to a new theory: No one was actually gonna pay for it. The taker-class, 47 percenters who had latched on to the government teat were deadbeats who don't pay their bills, the argument went, basically. "But how many have paid??" they asked. Over and over.

House Energy and Commerce Republicans released a laughable "report" in April asserting only two-thirds of enrollees had paid premiums. Then they held a hearing about it, where health insurance company executives lined up to tell them they were were dead wrong, and the number was more like 80 percent to 90 percent.

Finally, after months of caginess, the Obama administration offered a real answer: 7.3 million enrollees were paid up as of Aug. 15. That's down from the 8 million announced in April, but still more than the 6 million the Congressional Budget Office predicted would sign up.

"Thank you for the health insurance. Here is my money." - Most people

2. Prediction: Premiums Are Going To Skyrocket!!

What happened: Premiums Went Up A Smidge. Maybe the loudest, most persistent prediction was that health insurance prices would go through the roof next year because so many sick people would sign up, and so few young people, that insurers would have to jack up prices -- maybe even by as much as 300 percent! And then a "death spiral" would begin and undermine the whole industry!

Back to reality: Forty-six percent of the people who bought plans on the exchanges said the plans were less expensive than the ones they had in 2013, according to a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation survey from March and April.

Thirty-nine percent of enrollees surveys did said their new plans were more expensive. These higher rates mainly affected younger, healthier people who earn too much money to qualify for tax credits to help pay for coverage. Eight-five percent of everyone who enrolled got these subsidies. And the increases were likely a one-time bump, mainly caused by rules making the insurance package better, so it isn't relevant to 2015. And yet...

"O-Care premiums to skyrocket," screamed a March headline in The Hill, which remains the only entity that uses the term "O-Care." FOX News was ON IT. Health insurance prices are going to double -- triple even. Trainwreck!

The basis for this shocking report? Anonymous quotes from "health industry officials." Which ones? Who knows! Stop asking questions. From The Hill:

“...I think everybody knows that the way the exchange has rolled out...is going to lead to higher costs,” said one senior insurance executive who requested anonymity.

The insurance official, who hails from a populous swing state, said his company expects to triple its rates next year on the ObamaCare exchange.

Color us rate-shocked! But wait -- what's that, consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers? The average premium increase on the exchanges next year will be 6 percent? (That's less than 300 percent, if you don't have a calculator handy.) That doesn't seem so bad, and is lower than typical increases for individual insurance policies before Obamacare.

This Is What's Up With Obamacare Premiums In 2015

Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute

3. Prediction: Obamacare Is The Worst Thing To Happen To Young People Since Moms Joined Facebook

What Happened: A Lot Of Young People Are Insured, Pleasing Moms Everywhere. Young adults were urged to "burn their Obamacare cards" by right-wing outfits trying to disrupt Affordable Care Act implementation. Their argument: Obamacare is a bad deal for 20-somethings because they'd be paying a ton just so old people and sick people could go to the doctor. Millennials were better off paying the fine for violating the law's individual mandate than buying health insurance. And anyway, these "young invincibles" didn't even want health insurance (contrary to what they actually said in polls, but whatever).

Obamacare was designed to "screw" young adults, they were told. But in 2010, the law started allowing people to stay on their parents' health insurance policies until they turn 26, and in 2014 it began offering subsidized coverage to people with low and moderate incomes, which includes lots of young people just starting their careers. The result:

The Uninsured Rate

Among 19- to 25-Year-Olds

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via White House Council of Economic Advisers

4. Prediction: Obamacare Is INCREASING The Uninsured Rate!

What happened: Obamacare DECREASED The Uninsured Rate. Considering that the Affordable Care Act will spend about $1 trillion over a decade to subsidize health benefits and requires most people to get covered, this idea seems just plain silly. But that hasn't stopped politicians and others from expressing it aloud!

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) himself got in on the action, saying in March there was a "net loss of people with health insurance." Whoa if true.

All available evidence shows that the uninsured rate is down -- way down. According to Gallup, it hasn't been this low since the 1990s.

Source: Gallup

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Harvard School of Public Health concluded in a New England Journal of Medicine article that 10.3 million more people have health insurance this year than did last year.

5. Prediction: Obamacare Will Destroy The Private Health Insurance Industry

What happened: Health Insurance Companies Got A Lot Of New Business. A big part of this claim rests on exploiting public confusion about what "Obamacare" is, and ignoring the fact that private health insurance is what's being sold on the exchanges. (Not to mention that even "single-payer" Medicaid is largely contracted out to private insurance companies.)

Another component of this prediction was that the Affordable Care Act lays too many regulations on health insurers. And there are lots and lots of regulations, like the prohibition against rejecting customers with pre-existing conditions and the mandate for a guaranteed minimum benefits package, that insurers wish they didn't have to follow.

"Look at what we've done to eviscerate the U.S. health insurance industry," Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said on FOX News in April.

Yes, look. After the first enrollment period brought in more than 7 million paying customers and the promise of millions more in the future, health insurance companies grew more confident (even some of those, like Aetna, that expect to lose money on the exchanges in 2014).

How confident? There will be 248 more health insurance plans available on the exchanges for 2015 than there were this year, a net increase of 25 percent (including a few companies that bowed out) compared to the first enrollment period.

Not a photo of the U.S. health insurance industry

All The Wealth The Middle Class Accumulated After 1940 Is Gone

Here's more proof the middle class is dying.

The middle-class share of American wealth has been shrinking for the better part of three decades and recently fell to its lowest level since 1940, according to a new study by economists Emmanuel Saez of the University of California, Berkeley, and Gabriel Zucman of the London School of Economics.

In other words, remember the surge of the great American middle class after World War II? That's all gone, at least by one measure.

In this case, "middle class" is defined rather expansively as the bottom 90 percent of all Americans. "Wealth" is the total of home equity, stock and bond holdings, pension plans and other assets, minus debt. As such assets are mostly owned by mid- to higher-income households -- and considering most Americans define themselves as "middle-class" -- it seems reasonable to use the bottom 90 percent as a proxy for the "middle class."

Saez and Zucman discussed their paper in a blog post for the Washington Center For Equitable Growth on Monday that included this stark chart:

Debt has been the big force driving net wealth lower for the middle class, according to Saez and Zucman. Brief bubbles in stock and home prices in the 1990s and 2000s only temporarily offset the steady, depressing rise in mortgage, student-loan, credit-card and other debts for the bottom 90 percent.

"Many middle class families own homes and have pensions, but too many of these families also have much higher mortgages to repay and much higher consumer credit and student loans to service than before," Saez and Zucman wrote.

Another important factor has been that incomes have stagnated for most Americans over the past few decades, once adjusted for inflation. Along with rising debt levels, stagnant wages have made it impossible for most families to save very much money.

And who has been the beneficiary of this middle-class misery? The top 0.1 percent of Americans, whose incomes have just kept rising, and whose share of wealth has soared to levels not seen since Jay Gatsby was still staring at the blinking green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan's dock:

In fact, the middle class is not alone in suffering from shrinking wealth. The rest of the top 10 percent of Americans below the 0.1 percent -- the "merely rich," Saez and Zucman call them -- have also suffered from falling household wealth over the past four decades.

This rising inequality of wealth can only lead to more inequality of income and wealth in the future, Saez and Zucman warned, echoing French economist Thomas Piketty. The very rich will just keep getting richer by living on the returns from their wealth, while the rest of us will keep falling behind.