Social Security will run out of funds in 2033—sooner than forecast last year—according to a new government report. Medicare's hospital insurance fund will be gone by 2024. Together, the programs account for 35 percent of all federal spending, and if the trust funds—which are made up of the difference between the payroll taxes paid toward the programs and the benefits doled out—were depleted, benefits would be automatically cut by 25 percent. Social Security's disability insurance faces the soonest expiration—it is now scheduled to run out of money  in 2016, two years earlier than projected last year.

Did Timothy Noah catch a wave or anticipate one? In 2010, Noah, a longtime public-policy reporter now at The New Republic, wrote a ten-part series in Slate about American economic inequality. This was at a time when the most discussed issue in U.S. politics was how much government Tea Partiers aimed to slash and how quickly we must balance the budget—even in the face of the worst downturn in eight decades. Then, about a year after the Slate series, Occupy Wall Street and its proxies around the country seemingly awakened the nation to the vast disparity of wealth between the top 1 percent and the rest of us.

In January 2011, the advocacy group Utah Sound Money released a 30-second ad designed to stir up support for a new bill in the state legislature. “The almighty dollar’s not looking so almighty these days,” the announcer intones as storm clouds fill the screen. “The feds have us tap-dancing at the edge of financial ruin.” A small map of the U.S. totters along a rising red graph of debt. Suddenly, blue skies open as a giant gold coin floats down, using the Constitution as a parachute. “Restoring an inflation-proof, sound-money option offers a time-tested option,” the announcer concludes over the laughter of children at play. Viewers are then urged to support the Utah Sound Money Act.

Sponsored by Representative Brad Galvez, a Republican, the bill would make gold and silver coins from the U.S. Mint legal tender in the state. Although no businesses or individuals are compelled to use them, Galvez’s bill requires the state to accept the coins for tax payments or any government fees. Galvez says he was motivated by a fear that the nation’s mounting debt could lead to a loss of faith in the dollar, resulting in hyperinflation and possibly a currency collapse. He wanted to protect Utah, he says, from this calamity by creating an alternative to “fiat” currency, under which the dollar is backed by the “faith and credit” of the U.S.—not, as it once was, by gold reserves.

For a company trying to ward off unionization, firing a union activist is a great investment. While the National Labor Relations Act bans such retaliation, its process is slow and its penalties are minimal. Every time Democrats have controlled the presidency and Congress, unions have pushed reforms to the law—and every time they’ve come up short. In their new book, Why Labor Organizing Should Be a Civil Right, the Century Foundation’s Richard Kahlenberg and labor lawyer Moshe Marvit propose a new approach to labor law reform: add protection against anti-union discrimination to the Civil Rights Act.

With Occupy Our Homes—the growing movement to fight foreclosures and evictions—community organizations and Occupy activists have teamed up in cities throughout the country to defend at-risk homeowners, pressure banks to renegotiate mortgages, and keep families in their homes. This effort has resulted in some impressive local victories. At the same time, the scope of the foreclosure crisis calls out for federal remedies.