wealth inequality

These 20 Corporations Are Major Culprits In The Affordability Crisis

March 4, 2026 Sarah Anderson and Reyanna James, Inequality.org. Educate! Corporations, Purchasing Power, Wages, wealth inequality

A recent poll found that nearly half of people in the world’s richest country are having difficulty affording basic necessities like groceries, utility bills, health care, housing, and transportation. A new Institute for Policy Studies report shines a spotlight on the role leading corporations are playing in this affordability crisis. The report analyzes the 20 largest employers of low-wage U.S. workers, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 20.” Our analysis finds that at half of these firms, median worker pay actually declined in real terms between 2019 and 2024. For the group as a whole, average median pay dropped 4.6 percent to just $29,087.

A Swedish Answer To Labor’s $8 Trillion Question

February 9, 2026 Otto Barenberg, On Labor. Strategize! Labor Movement, Pensions, Sweden, Unions, wealth inequality, Worker Rights

It may come as a surprise that a substantial portion of America’s economy is worker- and union-owned — technically. Private sector and public sector union members’ pension funds collectively manage roughly $8 trillion in worker savings. That’s nearly 15% of Wall Street. But those funds — comprising the monthly contributions of millions of workers and enabled (in part) by union organizing and collective bargaining — are often invested in (and by) firms that harm workers. The labor movement has long tried to harness the economic power tied up in its vast stores of capital: labor’s “last best weapon.”

Oxfam Report Highlights How Billionaires Rig Politics

February 8, 2026 Jacob Andrewartha, Green Left. Educate! Billionaires, Oxfam, Plutocracy, wealth inequality

Oxfam’s latest global inequality report, released during the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 19, reveals how billionaires use their extreme wealth to keep profiteering and maintain an infrastructure of sympathetic politicians, media and bureaucracies in place. Resisting the Rule of the Rich. Protecting freedom from billionaire power found that, globally, billionaire wealth rose by more than 16% last year — reaching a record $18.3 trillion. One of the report’s more alarming statistics is that, last year, “billionaire wealth increased three times faster than the average annual rate over the previous five years”.

Activists Protest World Economic Forum Meeting, ‘Summit Of Delusion’

January 19, 2026 The Canary. Resist! Davos, Direct Action, wealth inequality, World Economic Forum

Activists from underground climate group Shut The System sabotaged snow machines on the Davos ski slopes on 19 January. This happened as international power holders and billionaires flocked to the Swiss ski town for the World Economic Forum (WEF) starting on 20 January. The saboteurs cut power cables supplying snow machines across the Jakobshorn mountainside. They used natural pigment to write blood-red messages alongside the ski runs. These stated: “Summit of Delusion” and “Shut the System”. A Shut The System spokesperson said: WEF is a death cult for the financial elites.

Still The Golden State?

January 3, 2026 Mark Kreidler, Scheer Post. Educate! California, Housing, Poverty, wealth inequality

California is nothing if not a land of contrast. It is a state of astounding economic might, yet it carries the highest poverty rate in the nation. It has more residents on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans than any other state, but also has the most homeless people — nearly 25% of the entire U.S. total. And even as it touts its standing as the world’s fourth-largest economy, state or country, the gap between the rich and poor in California remains near historic highs. Wealthy residents enjoyed skyrocketing investment returns during the pandemic and into the A.I. boom, while low-income workers were laid off service economy jobs and then ate into their savings — if they had them — in order to survive.

Half Of The World’s Population Owns Just 2% Of Global Wealth

December 19, 2025 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Educate! Global Economy, Global South, Taxes, wealth inequality

Neoliberal free-market economic policies are creating an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, leaving the majority of the world population with little or no means to make a decent life and almost no power over their destiny, claims the 2026 World Inequality Report published earlier this month. The report claims, “inequality today is not confined to income or wealth; it affects every domain of economic and social life” resulting in the world facing unequal access to basic material resources, gender disparities, territorial divides and climate change, among others.

The American Dream, We Hardly Knew You

December 9, 2025 John Miller, Dollars and Sense. Educate! American Dream, Capitalism, Social Mobility, Wages, wealth inequality

If Americans’ hopes of getting ahead have dimmed, as the Wall Street Journal reports yet again, it could only be because the lid of the coffin in which the “American Dream” was long ago laid to rest has finally been sealed shut. The promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will get ahead, or if you don’t, surely your children will, was broken long ago. And today’s economic hardships have left young adults distinctly worse off than their parents, and especially their grandparents. This long decline has stripped away much of what there was of U.S. social mobility, which never did measure up to its mythic renderings.

Chile’s Solidarity Economy Is Growing

October 21, 2025 Nicolás Chesta, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Chile, Neoliberalism, Solidarity Economy, wealth inequality

Chile has emerged from decades of often brutal dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet with a dynamic and growing economy—and deepened social and economic inequalities. Pinochet’s neoliberal economic policies have concentrated wealth among the few and left significant portions of the population behind. In 2017, 56 percent of the lowest-income population earned, on average, only $258 per month. In contrast, the richest 5 percent of the population had a per capita income of over $2,900 per month—11 times higher, according to Observatorio Social, a division of the Chilean Social Development and Family Agency, in 2018.

Canadians Are On Year Three Of A People’s Recession

October 16, 2025 James Hardwick, Canadian Dimension. Educate! Canada, Finance and the Economy, GDP, Recession, wealth inequality

A new Deloitte report is projecting 1.3 percent GDP growth for Canada this year. The same report says that as long as Donald Trump keeps the CUSMA carve-outs in his tariff plan—meaning that most of the goods we export to the United States won’t face tariffs—we can look forward to 1.7 percent growth next year. This would mark a return to the growth rates we saw in 2023 and 2024. Economists seem cautiously optimistic that Canada will avoid a recession and return to a period of relative stability. This should be great news. On paper, the economy has proved its resilience in the face of serious challenges. But why then do things feel increasingly precarious?

Billionaire Wealth Concentration Is Even Worse Than You Imagine

October 4, 2025 Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo, Inequality.org. Educate! Billionaires, Capitalism, Poverty, wealth inequality

The share of the U.S. wealth pie owned by the top 0.1 percent grew 59.6 percent from 1989 to 2024, according to an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Federal Reserve data, while the share of the U.S. wealth pie owned by the bottom 50 percent of households has declined 26.1 percent, adjusted for inflation. This bottom half of households in America — 66 million of them — had $4.1 trillion all together at the end of 2024. The 905 billionaires in the United States hold a combined $7.8 trillion in wealth, according to Forbes data from September 29, 2025. This alarming narrowing of wealth has given those at the very top political influence and power that undermines our democracy.

Could A ‘Maximum Wage’ Combat Billionaire Power?

September 24, 2025 Celeste Pepitone-Nahas, In These Times. Create! Billionaires, Finance and the Economy, Maximum Wage, wealth inequality

In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, the power of the extremely wealthy over public policy has never been more evident. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has asserted, “Trump has… said it loudly and clearly: we are a government of billionaires.” The troubling extent to which we are ruled by the rich is hardly debatable. The real question is: what can we do about it? One solution that has been proposed in the past is implementing a “maximum wage.” Such a cap would limit the amount any individual can earn over a given period. There are a couple different ways that this limit could be accomplished. One way would be to use tax policy: We could simply levy a 100% tax rate on income over a particular level. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed such a measure during his administration in the 1940s.

Meet The Low-Wage 100

August 23, 2025 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Educate! Low wages, Profiteers, wealth inequality, Worker Rights

The gap between CEO compensation and median worker pay at Starbucks hit 6,666 to 1 last year. In other words, to make as much money as their CEO made last year, typical baristas would’ve had to start brewing macchiatos around the time humans first invented the wheel. Starbucks takes the prize for the most obscene corporate pay disparities of 2024. But jaw-dropping gaps are the norm among America’s leading low-wage corporations. This year’s edition of the annual Institute for Policy Studies Executive Excess report finds that CEOs of the 100 S&P 500 firms with the lowest median wages, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 100,” have enjoyed skyrocketing pay over the past six years.

How Wall Street’s Grip On School Finance Deepens Inequality

July 13, 2025 Claire Cahen, Inequality.org. Educate! Budget Cuts, Public Education, Wall Street, wealth inequality

Public school districts are bracing for cuts after the Trump administration’s decision to withhold $6.8 billion of education funding. But the financial squeeze is not new. For years, private finance has quietly shaped public education budgets. Schools have become deeply reliant on Wall Street debt to finance everything from basic infrastructure and classroom upgrades to day-to-day operations. The deeper schools fall into debt, the more they are bound by a set of financial rules that prioritize investors over students and teachers. School districts turn to debt financing when they face costs that their immediate budgets cannot cover.

Maglev Isn’t The Transit Future Our Cities Need

July 5, 2025 Martin Mitchell, Next City. Educate! MagLev, Maryland, Transportation, wealth inequality

Like many Marylanders, I want a faster, more reliable way to get around. But speed without equity, sustainability, or connection to real community needs isn’t progress — it’s just a flashy detour. The proposed Superconducting Maglev (SCMaglev) train between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore is being marketed as a bold leap forward in transportation. In reality, it risks becoming another expensive infrastructure project that bypasses the people it claims to serve. For nearly a decade, I’ve followed the SCMaglev proposal through public meetings, community briefings and presentations to elected bodies. Its proponents have promised everything from reduced traffic congestion to job creation to futuristic innovation.

Trump Is Setting The US Economy Up For Another Great Financial Crisis

June 27, 2025 C. J. Polychroniou, Truthout. Educate! Donald Trump, Economic crisis, Finance and the Economy, Trump Administration, wealth inequality

The financial system of the United States has always been prone to instability and crises. Now, however, under the new Trump administration, which is pushing for major cuts in regulation, including in the cryptocurrency sector in which the Trump family has a major financial stake, the financial system has become more vulnerable than ever, posing serious risks to the wider economy. Of course, this matters very little to Donald Trump, his family, and his billionaire friends. For Trump, the actual meaning of “America First” is “self-enrichment.” In the interview that follows, progressive economist Gerald Epstein, a leading expert in finance and banking, talks about the changing nature of the U.S. finance system under Trump 2.0.

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