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Inequality

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

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

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?

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

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.

Revealed: Americans Care More About Social Needs Than Deficits

A recent poll from the Democracy Collaborative and YouGov reveals that most Americans are ready to spend more for social needs, even if it raises the deficit. The debate around modern monetary theory (“MMT”) is picking up steam – with its partisans pushing the model further into the public sphere than one might expect, and the old guard of establishment economics, together with some more interesting critical voices, pushing back. The questions at stake can make the average person’s head spin: can a government with sovereign control over its currency create money at will to meet social needs, or would this create out of control inflationary spirals?

Eight Reasons Why Inequality Ruins The 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

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

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’

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

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. 

In An Unequal America, Empathy, Not Just Housing, Has Become Too Pricey

In our daily lives, as anyone who keeps a household budget can attest, the unexpected happens all the time. A refrigerator evaporator fan motor fails. Some part on your car you never realized existed breaks down. A loved one passes away and you have to — you want to — be at the funeral a thousand miles away. “Unexpected” expenses like these will, sooner or later, hit all of us. But all of us, says new research out of the Federal Reserve, can’t afford them.

We Have The Means To Fund Reparations. Where Is The Political Will?

Between 1983 and 2016, the median net worth for Black Americans actually went down by 50 percent. Paired with a growing Latinx population that also lags far behind whites in household wealth, the U.S.’s overall median wealth trended downward over those decades, even as median white wealth increased. These trends go hand-in-hand with the rigging of the overall economy. Over the last 30 years, the wealthiest 20 percent of households have captured almost 97.4 percent of all increases in wealth, leaving only scraps for the rest.

How Inequality Makes US Poorer

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. Or it might not. This is not the only evidence for the possibility that inequality is bad for growth.

When Will The Contented Classes Rise Up In Rebellion?

When will the people who recognize just how bad things have become for the most vulnerable—and the nation at large—unfurl the flag of rebellion against the plutocrats and the autocrats? For all the rhetoric and all the charities regarding America’s children, the U.S. stands at the very bottom of western nations and some other countries as well, in terms of youth well-being. The U.S.’s exceptionalism is clearest in its cruelty to children. The U.S. has the highest infant mortality rate of comparable OECD countries. Not only that, but 2.5 million American children are homeless and 16.2 million children “lack the means to get enough nutritious food on a regular basis.”

Why The ‘One Percent’ In The US Is Worried

Inequality in the United States has reached such levels lately that even members of the "one percent" have started worrying.  Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates hedge fund who is ranked 57th wealthiest person in the world by Forbes magazine, quipped in a recent interview that capitalism is denying "equal opportunity for the American dream". He said that he was "a byproduct of capitalism when it also gave equal opportunity", adding "I was very lucky to live the American dream by having the proper care and the proper public school education … A number of things have changed."
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