Inequality

If even the Democratic Party can’t raise Taxes on the Super-Rich, is the US even a Democracy Any More?

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The struggle over efforts to revise and reform the tax code offers left and labor activists as well as the “democratic wing” of the Democratic Party an opportunity to test its strength and to clear up some widely circulated but misleading facts about the distribution of wealth […]

Inequality

Fund the Jobs bill by taxing the Billionaires who have made the $1.8 trillion during the Pandemic

OtherWords

By Chuck Collins | – ( Otherwords.org) – As lawmakers scramble to finalize a historic jobs and infrastructure package, huge fights are underway to figure out how to fund it. The simplest, most effective, and most popular way is to tax the extremely wealthy, like the billionaires who’ve seen their collective wealth grow by $1.8 […]

Employment

Unemployment Insurance Isn’t Holding Back the Economy. Inequality Is.

OtherWords

By Rebekah Entralgo | – An estimated 9 million Americans got the rug pulled out from under them over Labor Day weekend as enhanced pandemic federal unemployment benefits expired, leaving millions of families in the lurch during a record-breaking season for COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Some 35 million people — nearly 1 in 10 Americans […]

Homelessness

The Land of the Free, Where So Many of the Brave Are Homeless: Resisting Evictions Amid a Pandemic

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – Over the past weeks, multiple crises have merged: a crisis of democracy with the most significant attack on voting rights since Reconstruction; a climate crisis with lives and livelihoods upended in the Gulf Coast and the Northeast by extreme weather events and in the West by a stunning fire season; and an […]

Inequality

Tax the ‘Trillion-Dollar Seven’

OtherWords

By Bob Lord | – ( Otherwords.org ) – Democrats want to spend $3.5 trillion on jobs and infrastructure. A third of that could be covered by just seven billionaires. By Bob Lord | September 1, 2021 The collective wealth of the seven wealthiest Americans has now reached nearly $1 trillion. And these seven pay […]

Debt

Debt and Disillusionment: Neoliberalism’s Unfair burden on this Generation of College Students

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – For the last decade and a half, I’ve been teaching ethics to undergraduates. Now — admittedly, a little late to the party — I’ve started seriously questioning my own ethics. I’ve begun to wonder just what it means to be a participant, however minor, in the pyramid scheme that higher education […]

Debt

Only $3 Bn. of Federal $46 Bn rental assistance dollars reach renters, as eviction moratorium ends

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Brooke Newman | – ( Cronkite News) – WASHINGTON – The federal government’s COVID-19 moratorium on renter evictions ended Saturday, leaving thousands of Arizona renters vulnerable while state and local officials have distributed just a fraction of the funding aimed at keeping people in their homes. Government agencies in Arizona received almost $495 million […]

Climate Crisis

Top Four ways extreme heat hurts the economy

The Conversation

By Derek Lemoine | – Summer 2021 will likely be one of the hottest on record as dozens of cities in the West experience all-time high temperatures. The extreme heat being felt throughout many parts of the U.S. is causing hundreds of deaths, sparking wildfires and worsening drought conditions in over a dozen states. How […]

Inequality

Jeff Bezos Should Have Thanked American Taxpayers for Paying for His Space Ride

Inequality.org

By Scott Klinger | – ( Inequality.org ) – Shortly after emerging from his 10-minute space flight last week, Jeff Bezos thanked Amazon customers and employees for their primary role in paying for his Blue Origin joyride to the edge of space. The Amazon founder’s comments quickly elicited scorn from many employees who toil in […]