A new study by the Urban Institute published Tuesday found that 40 percent of Americans can’t meet at least one basic need—food, healthcare, housing, or utilities—even as the economy approaches nearly full employment with only a 4.4 percent unemployment rate. Remember this as the president boasts about the stock market
“Inequality,” particularly of the economic variety, can seem abstract. It sometimes fails to move us as much as it should. Some delight in positioning it as somehow separate and apart from the concerns of “identity politics.” IT’S ALL THE SAME THING.
This piece is co-published with investigative reporting outlet Capital & Main.
The 2018 World Inequality Report highlights just how much worse inequality is in the US compared to in Western Europe. One statistic is particularly shocking—how income share is divided between the top 1 percent and everyone else in Europe versus in the States.
Wow—yesterday was bad, politically speaking. In fact, the past year and a half has been bad, politically speaking. But as we all despair, it is very important to take a step back and remember: this could all get much, much worse.
When you think of detention, you might get the sense that it’s something temporary, like after-school detention. But when it comes to immigration, the word “detention” can mean being locked up for eight years.
As the Fight for $15 movement has escalated over the past few years, winning higher minimum wage laws across the country, the most common criticism on the right has been that such policies will lead to job loss. After San Francisco raised its minimum wage, people freaked out about lost jobs. After Seattle raised its…
Just like $2.5 trillion worth of companies around the world, the company publishing the story you are now reading is owned by private equity firms. Most people have little idea what the private equity industry actually does. The truth is terrifying.
The Trump administration is reportedly set to announce that Larry Kudlow will replace Gary Cohn as the head of the National Economic Council and Donald Trump’s top economic adviser.
The Republican tax cut, which stands as the lone actual big legislative accomplishment of the Trump administration, was sold on a bald-faced lie, and will cost our country more than a trillion dollars. That is the conclusion of a bipartisan team of Harvard economists. Uh... look over there, immigrants!
Why has the investor class been getting richer for decades as the working class’s share of the pie grows smaller? One prime reason is: our system, left unchecked, leads inevitably towards monopoly, which eats us all alive.
The slow collapse of traditional retailing is attributable to Amazon more than any other single company. We’re sad to report, then, that a new study finds that a new Amazon warehouse won’t create any jobs in your decrepit town, at all.
The United States is one of the wealthiest countries on earth. The small percentage of people who hoard that wealth are likely to have a very good year. The markets are booming with no end in sight, and the Republican tax plan is already doing what it was designed to do: entrenching the wealth and power of large…
This month, Thea Lee took over as president of the Economic Policy Institute, America’s premier left-wing economic think tank. We spoke to her about Trumponomics and the fight for equality.
Before the 2008 economic recession hit, Prince George’s County was one of the wealthiest majority-black counties in America. After the U.S. housing market went into a death spiral, the Maryland county became one of the areas hit hardest by the subprime lending crisis. Between 2012 and 2013, P.G. County saw a 50…
Given the fact that economic inequality has been rising for nearly four decades, it’s natural to assume that government redistribution of wealth has disappeared. According to a new study: Not so! But that raises even more sinister questions.
Because economic inequality is such a persistent, pervasive, and growing problem in America, many people assume that any solution to it must be very complicated. Not true! For example:
There were other economic factors I could have mentioned in this cartoon, such as tax policy that promotes extreme inequality, or companies offshoring, or the entire perverse system of Wall Street incentives that benefits the investor class at the expense of workers. And there’s also the much-ignored fact that …
The first step of confronting a problem is to name it. “Market fundamentalism,” a term I picked up from George Lakoff, should be a catchphrase on the tips of everyone’s lips. It has become THE defining force — paired with racism — of Americans’ economic lives. Pundits and Democratic politicians should be throwing…
