Inequality

While Poorest Scapegoated, Analysis Of 25 World’s Wealthiest Families A Reminder Of Inequality’s Economic Drain

August 13, 2019 By Jon Queally, Nationofchange.org Educate! Inequality, New Economy, Ruling Class

"It's funny that the real truth about income inequality is not coming from the south like some would like you to believe—the sucking sound draining the middle-class is the 1 percent... Just saying." If the world needed yet another example of just how unequal the global economy has become, a new analysis of the top 25 wealthiest family dynasties published Saturday revealed that while one out of ten people in the world live on less than $2.00 per day, these super rich families now control a total of $1.4 trillion in assets and are making as much as $4 million every single hour.

The World Bank Needs To Understand Poverty And What It Actually Costs A Family To Live On

August 12, 2019 By Sharan Burrow, Ipsnews.net Educate! Inequality, Poverty, World Bank

The World Bank’s extreme poverty line of US$1.90 a day is in fact not based on real estimates of people’s cost of living within countries. This explains why it fails to capture the desperation experienced by so many. As soon as we focus on people’s lived experience, the picture becomes more stark. At a most intuitive level, we know that poverty is determined by a person’s inability to meet their material needs. Perhaps the most basic of these needs is food. The UN’s 2018 figures on hunger show that it is on the rise globally. It estimates that 821 million people are currently going hungry.

Retirement Shouldn’t Mean Poverty

July 26, 2019 By Katherine Newman, Otherwords.org Educate! Inequality, Poverty, Retirement

Vivian Majors spent her life cleaning houses while her husband, Martin, worked as a carpenter. Their bodies broke down in their 60s. Martin now lives in a nursing home and has Parkinson’s disease. Vivian, now 71, lives on her own and ekes by on a $960 in social security, plus $50 in food stamps. Hardened by years of physically taxing work that left her hovering around the poverty line, Majors, now retired, is girding herself for more years of financial hardship.

Let’s Establish A Wealth Tax — And Give Every Family $25,000 A Year

July 24, 2019 John R. Talbott, Truthout.org Create! Inequality, Ruling Class, Taxes

Three men in the U.S. have more accumulated wealth than half of all Americans, 165 million people. Our corporations control more shareholder wealth than 99 percent of Americans combined. 90 percent of us have less than 7 percent of the wealth in the country if you exclude pension assets, which may be of great interest to younger Americans given the difficulty in today’s market of finding a job with pension benefits. Like most, you probably think the U.S. tax system is progressive, that rich people pay a higher percentage than low-income people.

CBO Report Shows Broad Benefits From Higher Minimum Wage

July 10, 2019 By Heidi Shierholz, Epi.org Create! Class Struggle, Inequality, Minimum Wage, New Economy, Workers

This afternoon, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report assessing the economic impact of raising the minimum wage to $15 in 2025 in six steps (this is a similar policy to the Raise the Wage Act, which would increase the minimum wage to $15 in 2024). The key fact coming out of the report is that CBO finds that the benefits to low wage workers of a $15 minimum wage far exceed the costs. The report finds that a $15 minimum wage would increase the wages of millions of low wage workers, increase the average incomes of low and lower-middle-income families...

“Theoretical Lies” Of The World Bank. Developing Countries And The Hidden Agenda Of The “Washington Consensus”

June 29, 2019 By Eric Toussaint, Globalresearch.ca Educate! IMF, Inequality, US Imperialism, World Bank

The World Bank claims that, in order to progress, the Developing Countries [1] should rely on external borrowing and attract foreign investments. The main aim of thus running up debt is to buy basic equipment and consumer goods from the highly industrialised countries. The facts show that day after day, for decades now, the idea has been failing to bring about progress. The models which have influenced the Bank’s vision can only result in making the developing countries heavily dependent on an influx of external capital, particularly in the form of loans, which create the illusion of a certain level of self-sustained development.

25% Of Americans Are “Worse Off” Than They Were Before The Great Recession

June 21, 2019 Mac Slavo, Shtfplan.com Educate! Economics, Inequality, New Economy

For many, the economic recovery being touted by the mainstream media has not yet affected them. About 25% of Americans say that a decade after the housing bust that caused the Great Recession, they are doing worse. Almost half of Americans are not doing any better at all too. If you believe the mainstream media, the economy is robust and the unemployment rateis at a 49-year-low. But not all Americans have recovered from the Great Recession. According to a new survey from Bankrate of about 3,000 Americans, 23% of people who were adults when the recession started in December 2007 say they are now financially worse off than they were before the recession hit.

Half Of Americans Are Effectively Poor Now. What The?

June 18, 2019 Umair Haque, Eand.co Educate! Inequality, United States

There are days I feel like I read dystopian statistics for a living. And then there are day when the dystopian statistics take even my jaded breath away. Here’s one: 43% of American households can’t afford a budget that includes housing, food, childcare, healthcare, transportation, and a cellphone. Translation: nearly half of Americans can’t afford the basics of life anymore. Does that take your breath away too? It should. And yet it might not come as a surprise. You might know it intimately. The statistics say there’s an even chance you’re…living it. What a grim and bizarre reality.

Global Inequality In A Time Of Climate Emergency

June 18, 2019 By Tom Athanasiou, Inequality.org Educate! Climate Change, Green New Deal, Inequality, Reform

Something has changed, as most everyone in the climate movement agrees, and we have plenty of signposts that track the shift, from David Wallace-Well’s 2017 New York Magazine piece, The Uninhabitable Earth, to last year’s Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, a paper downloaded by the hundreds of thousands. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made the shift official with its own dramatic contribution, the landmark Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C.

Eight Reasons Why Inequality Ruins The Economy

June 12, 2019 By Chris Dillow, Evonomics.com Educate! History, Inequality, New Economy

I fear, however, that there might be something missing here – the impact that inequality has upon economic performance. My chart shows the point. It shows the 20-year annualized rate of growth in GDP per worker-hour. It’s clear that this was much stronger during the relatively egalitarian period from 1945 to the mid-70s than it was before or since, when inequality was higher. This might, of course, be coincidence: maybe WWII caused both a backlog of investment and innovation which allowed a subsequent growth spurt and a desire for greater equality.

Packing A Projector: U.S. Activists Stage Light Invasion

June 12, 2019 Carey L. Biron, News.trust.org Resist! Inequality, Protest Demonstrations, Washington DC

WASHINGTON, June 10 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The plan of action was nothing new; its outcome was. Soon after sundown, the activists made for the heart of the U.S. capital, set up a powerful projector then shone a giant, illuminated message onto the dim flank of a government building. "Discrimination is wrong" read the giant letters projected onto the side of a Congressional office building. What happened next was a first for the activists and helped ignite debate about whether light projection equals trespass.

Millennials Are Dramatically Financially Worse Off Than Previous Generations

June 6, 2019 Hillary Hoffower, Businessinsider.in Educate! Inequality, Millennials, New Economy

They have an average net worth of less than $8,000, reported Abha Bhattarai for The Washington Post, citing a new Deloitte study. According to the study, the net worth of Americans ages 18 to 35 has decreased by 34% since 1996, making them "dramatically financially worse off" than older generations, Business Insider's Kate Taylor reported. These findings underscore previous research indicating that millennials are financially behind. Millennials are less wealthy than previous generations were at their age at any point between 1989 and 2007, according to The Economist, citing a recent paper by the Brookings Institution.

Poor Neighborhoods Need More Than ‘Investment’

June 6, 2019 By Amadi Anene, Otherwords.org Create! Development, Inequality, Poverty

Low-income neighborhoods need employee-owned businesses anchored to their communities, not investors looking to make a quick buck. Where some of us see distressed neighborhoods — where families endure poverty and homes fall into disrepair — others see dollar signs. In fact, the Trump administration now brands them “opportunity zones,” offering tax breaks to investors who invest capital there. What remains unclear is this: Opportunity for whom? Big investors may stand to cash in, but many communities are saying they’re not getting the benefits they were promised.

US Has Regressed To Developing Nation Status, MIT Economist Warns

June 6, 2019 Chloe Farand, Independent.co.uk Educate! Development, Inequality, New Economy, United States

Peter Temin says 80 per cent of the population is burdened with debt and anxious about job security America is regressing to have the economic and political structure of a developing nation, an MIT economist has warned. Peter Temin says the world's’ largest economy has roads and bridges that look more like those in Thailand and Venezuela than those in parts of Europe. In his new book, “The Vanishing Middle Class", reviewed by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Mr Temin says the fracture of US society is leading the middle class to disappear.

«1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 »

Daily movement news and resources