( Inequality.org ) – Over a half-century ago, back in the mid-1960s, books about poverty abounded. But publishers paid relatively little attention to wealth’s concentration. A generation earlier, Americans had obsessed about grand private fortunes. By late mid-century, that obsession no longer excited either the media or the public. That would all soon change, particularly […]
Climate Emergency Caused our Scorching Summer, but Inequality meant it hit Workers Hardest
( Inequality.org ) – The heat. Never been hotter in our lifetimes. This past spring the mercury nearly hit 124 in the Pakistani city of Jacobabad, “just below,” notes science writer David Wallace-Wells, “the conventional estimate for the threshold of human survival.” This summer’s U.S. daily high temperatures are continuing our torrid global pace. America’s […]
Does the Future Belong to People Who Profit Off Our ‘Excessive Wealth Disorder’?
( Inequality.org ) – If Dustin Hoffman should ever do a remake of The Graduate, the classic 1967 film that launched his famed cinematic career, what might be the 2020s update for that film’s most iconic exchange? A good many of us still fondly remember that poolside party scene. A 21-year-old “Benjamin” gets pulled aside […]
Why Keeping Workers Poor Is actually Bad for Business
( Otherwords.org) – CEOs at America’s biggest low-wage employers now take home, on average, 670 times what their typical workers make. But we don’t just get unfairness when a boss can grab more in a year than a worker could make in over six centuries. We get bungling and inefficient businesses. Management science has been […]
Let’s Go after the Ill-Gotten, Tax-Evading Gains of All Oligarchs, not just Russian Ones
( Inequality.org ) – Can we please get serious about taxing the rich? Polls show that hefty majorities of people in the United States — and around the world — believe the rich ought to be paying more at tax time. Yet our contemporary don’t-tax-the-rich era has now entered its fifth consecutive decade. Egalitarian tax […]
Is the Gutting of Newspapers by Private Equity Firms the Nail in the Coffin of Democracy?
Profit maximizing in the newspaper industry is corroding the knowledge base that sustains government by the people. ( Inequality.org ) – Has the unthinkable, the Swedish political scientist Bo Rothstein mused earlier this month, now entered the realm of real possibility? Could democracy in the United States be disappearing? Millions of Americans are worrying about […]
Two Sides, Same Coin: Suppressing Votes, Cutting Rich People’s Taxes
( Inequality.org) – America’s national media typically pay little attention to the moves the nation’s state lawmakers make. Not this year. State legislative battles have emerged over recent months as a top-tier national story. And deservedly so. The battling at the state level — on a tidal wave of proposed new voter-suppression laws — could […]
How Billionaires’ Utopias could End American Democracy
( Inequality.org) – Great wealth can do great damage. Grand personal fortunes, we’ve come to understand, can menace our democracy and distort our economic life. But these fortunes can also wreak a much more hidden havoc: They can mess up the minds of people who hold them. Great fortunes can leave their owners feeling supremely […]
Let’s Take the Profit Out of War
By Sam Pizzigati | – ( Otherwords.org) – After all, we grew up living it or hearing about it. The 20th century rates as the deadliest in human history — 75 million people died in World War II alone. Millions have died since, including a quarter-million during the 20-year U.S. war in Afghanistan. But for […]
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