Inequality

The Decline Of African-American & Latinx Wealth Since The Great Recession

December 25, 2018 By Edward Wolff, VOX Educate! Inequality, Racism

While many studies have documented the wide disparity in income between whites on the one hand and African-Americans and Hispanics on the other, the gap in wealth is even greater. In seminal work on the subject, Oliver and Shapiro (1995) document and analyse the sources of the wealth differences between blacks and whites and discuss some of the deleterious effects of low wealth on the wellbeing of black families – including access to decent housing and education, poor health, lower longevity, and the like.

Real Roots Of Inequality Is Neoliberal Capitalism, Not Trade & Technology

December 17, 2018 By Jayati Ghosh, Project-syndicate.org Educate! Capitalism, Class Struggle, Inequality, Labor, Wages

New findings from the International Labor Organization show that workers across many advanced and emerging economies continued to miss out on the gains from growth in 2017. Rather than trotting out the usual suspects – trade and technology – it is time for policymakers to place the blame where it belongs. NEW DELHI – It’s now official: workers around the world are falling behind. The International Labor Organization’s (ILO) latest Global Wage Report finds that, excluding China, real (inflation-adjusted) wages grew at an annual rate of just 1.1% in 2017, down from 1.8% in 2016. That is the slowest pace since 2008.

Tackling Climate Change Means Addressing Inequality And Building Resilience To Climate Change

December 15, 2018 Staff, Gofossilfree.org Strategize! Climate Change, Inequality

The Gilets Jaunes movement sprung up in France, responding to a decision by the French government to increase taxes on fuel starting in 2019, officially to finance incentives for the purchase of electric vehicles. In reality, only a fraction of the money collected from the tax would have gone to finance green programs: most of this tax would’ve been used to bridge the gap in the budget that the cancellation of the tax on the highest incomes has created. Rather than holding accountable those most responsible for causing the climate crisis – for instance, French fossil fuel giant Total – the French government seemed to want to force the less privileged to pay for the consequences of climate change.

Tale Of Two Depressions

December 5, 2018 David F. Ruccio, Anticap.wordpress.com Educate! Capitalism, Inequality, New Economy

Mainstream economists continue to discuss the two great crises of capitalism during the past century just like the pillars of society performed in the brothel—a “house of infinite mirrors and theaters”—in Jean Genet’s The Balcony.* The order they represent is indeed threatened by an uprising in the streets, and the only question is: can they reestablish the illusion of control? The latest version of the absurdist economic play opens with Brad DeLong, who dons the costume of the liberal mainstream economist and argues that, while the Great Depression of the 1930s was far deeper than the Great Recession (what I have long referred to as the Second Great Depression), the recovery from the crash of 2007-08 was so mishandled that it casts a shadow over the U.S. economy in a way the first Great Depression did not.

What Does Inequality Cost The Average American? About $150K

December 4, 2018 By Sam Pizzigati, Otherwords.org Educate! Inequality, New Economy, United States

Belgian waffles. Belgian beers. Americans love ’em. But what Americans really need from Belgium has nothing to do with beer or breakfast treats. We need Belgium’s much more egalitarian distribution of wealth. The English philosopher Francis Bacon once long ago compared wealth to manure. Both only do good, Bacon quipped, if you spread them around. Belgium is spreading about as well as any nation on Earth, according to the Swiss bank Credit Suisse’s latest annual global wealth report. Why should Americans care about what’s happening in Belgium? The new Credit Suisse report at first doesn’t make that clear. On average, the Credit Suisse numbers show, Belgian adults hold less wealth than Americans.

Gender Pay Inequality Even Worse Than Previously Reported

November 29, 2018 Stephen J. Rose and Heidi Hartmann, Iwpr.org Educate! Gender, Inequality

The commonly used figure to describe the gender wage ratio—that a woman earns 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man—understates the pay inequality problem by leaving many women workers out of the picture. This report argues that a multi-year analysis provides a more comprehensive picture of the gender wage gap and presents a more accurate measure of the income women actually bring home to support themselves and their families.

Breaking The Chains Of Debt: Lessons From Babylonia For Today’s Student Crisis

November 29, 2018 By Michael Hudson, Inequality.org Educate! Debt, History, Inequality

Today, the wealthy depict inequality in glowing colors as a byproduct of economies pulling ahead, “creating wealth” by innovations that add to prosperity. This view is unprecedented in history. From antiquity to quite recently, personal accumulation of large amounts of wealth was frowned upon, because it usually was achieved at the expense of others. One party’s gain often tended to be at the expense of others, polarizing communities by pushing many below poverty levels. The most corrosive method of gaining personal wealth, from the ancient world to today, is interest-bearing debt that mounts up with compound interest.

Fixing The Crisis Of ‘Runaway Wealth’

November 28, 2018 By Bob Lord, Otherwords.org Educate! Inequality, New Economy, Wealth

The next Congress faces a stunning array of challenges — on health care, gun policy, climate change, you name it. One crucial challenge starved of attention, however, is what I call runaway inter-generational wealth. That’s where the wealth of a country’s richest families snowballs from one generation to the next, unconstrained by living expenses or taxes, causing an ever-increasing share of national wealth to concentrate at the top. America has experienced this problem for decades now, and last year’s tax act is certain to make it worse. For the first time since the estate tax was enacted a century ago, rich American couples can pass $22 million to their children entirely free of federal taxes.

How Neoliberal Economists Wreak Havoc On The Global Poor While Protecting The Financial Elite

November 16, 2018 Vijay Prashad, Independent Institute Educate! Capitalism, Finance, IMF, Inequality, Uneven Development

On December 1, Mexico will have a new president—Andrés Manuel López Obrador. He will take over the presidency from the lackluster Enrique Peña Nieto, whose administration is marinated in corruption. Peña Nieto’s legal office has already asked the Supreme Court to shield his officials from prosecution for corruption. The elite will protect itself. López Obrador will not be able to properly exorcize the corrupt from the Mexican state, let alone from Mexican society. Corrupt weeds grow on the soil of capitalism, the loam of profit and greed as well as of rents from government contracts. López Obrador comes to the presidency as a man of the left, but the space for maneuvering that he has for a left agenda is minimal. Mexico’s economy, through geography and trade agreements, is fused with that of the United States.

Don’t Protect Mueller, Microscopic Effects Of Inequality & Combating Detention

November 15, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Detention Centers, Immigration, Inequality

It might sound like common sense that poverty affects our overall health – but did you know that income inequality catalyzes wear and tear on a micro molecular level? Science has a disturbing new scoop. Next up, please please PLEASE don't go to these kinds of protests. And finally, a local grassroots initiative to address an often overlooked aspect of our immigration crisis.

The World’s Paying Too High A Price For Inequality … And It Needs To Be Addressed Quickly

November 13, 2018 David Dodwell, Scmp.com Educate! Class Struggle, Inequality

As Donald Trump stirs his base ahead of midterm elections with fearmongering over a raggle-taggle band of would-be immigrants wandering through the Mexican countryside towards the US border, claims of victimhood in international trade, and the rise of a modern yellow peril, one has to wonder what has happened to the issue that is truly eating the US from within – extreme and entrenched inequality. As Stiglitz noted in the Scientific American: “By most accounts, the US has the highest level of economic inequality among developed countries. It has the world’s highest per capita health expenditures yet the lowest life expectancy among comparable countries. It is also one of a few developed countries jostling for the dubious distinction of having the lowest measures of equality of opportunity.”

The Evidence Pours In: Poverty Getting Much Worse In America

November 7, 2018 By Paul Buchheit, Commondreams.org Educate! Inequality, New Economy, Poverty, United States

According to the Credit Suisse 2018 Global Wealth Databook, 34 million American adults are among the WORLD'S POOREST 10%. How is that possible? In a word, debt. In more excruciating words: stifling, misery-inducing, deadly amounts of debt for the poorest Americans. And it goes beyond dollars to the "deaths of despair" caused by the stresses of inferior health care coverage, stagnating incomes, and out-of-control inequality. Numerous sources report on the rising debt for the poor half of America, especially for the lowest income group, and largely because of health care and education costs. Since 2008 consumer debt has risen almost 50 percent. The percentage of families with more debt than savings is higher now than at any time since 1962.

Wealth Of Three Richest US Families Grew By 6,000% Since 1982

November 4, 2018 Chuck Collins, The Guardian Educate! Inequality, New Economy, Wealth Divide

One troubling indicator that we are drifting toward a society governed by the wealthy is the expanding fortunes of multi-generational wealth dynasties. The three wealthiest US families are the Waltons of Walmart, the Mars candy family and the Koch brothers, heirs to the country’s second largest private company, the energy conglomerate Koch Industries. These are all enterprises built by the grandparents and parents of today’s wealthy heirs and heiresses. These three families own a combined fortune of $348.7bn, which is 4m times the median wealth of a US family.

Waffles, Beer, And The Penalty We Pay For Tolerating Inequality

October 30, 2018 By Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org Educate! Belgium, Inequality, New Economy, United States

Belgium is spreading about as well as any nation on Earth, according to data the Swiss bank Credit Suisse details in its new Global Wealth Report 2018. No other major society currently sports a distribution of wealth much more equitable than Belgium’s. How do we know? The new Credit Suisse report serves up all the key numbers for computing who gets what in over 200 nations worldwide. But we do have to exercise our imaginations a bit to get the most out of the Credit Suisse data. We have to imagine, as a first step, a world with every nation divvying up its wealth on a totally equal basis. That, of course, isn’t happening anywhere. No nation shares its wealth completely.

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