wealth inequality

The Rich Are Defunding Our Democracy

June 16, 2020 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Democracy, Elections, Money in Politics, wealth inequality

How can you tell if you’re living in a democracy? The answer can get rather complicated. Simple yardsticks can often confuse more than clarify. Take the notion that you have democracies where you have elections. Ballots over bullets. Sounds good. But authoritarians have been brazenly manipulating elections — to cement their rule — for generations. The deadliest example: the plebiscite Adolf Hitler staged in 1934 to lock in Nazi power. Stormtroopers at polling stations would ensure Hitler an overwhelmingly “victory.” How about free speech as the most indispensable indicator of democracy’s presence? If people can get up on a soapbox to speak their minds, if they can publish whatever they have to say, you have a democracy. But this simple formulation turns out to be less than universally revealing.

Black Workers Face Two Of The Most Lethal Preexisting Conditions For COVID-19

June 11, 2020 Elise Gould and Valerie Wilson, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! COVID-19, Racial disparities, Recession, wealth inequality

“We’re all in this together” has become a rallying cry during the coronavirus pandemic. While it is true that COVID-19 has affected everyone in some way, the magnitude and nature of the impact has been anything but universal. Evidence to date suggests that black and Hispanic workers face much more economic and health insecurity from COVID-19 than white workers. Although the current strain of the coronavirus is one that humans have never experienced before, the disparate racial impact of the virus is deeply rooted in historic and ongoing social and economic injustices. Persistent racial disparities in health status, access to health care, wealth, employment, wages, housing, income, and poverty all contribute to greater susceptibility to the virus—both economically and physically.

Poor Neighborhoods Are Only Getting Poorer

June 2, 2020 Marie Patino, CityLab. Educate! Cities, COVID-19, Poverty, wealth inequality

The latest maps of coronavirus cases in the U.S. confirm much of what we already know about the economics of location: People in poor neighborhoods have it worse. Health care isn’t as accessible, the ability to socially distance is less, and many residents fall into the role of essential workers, unable to work from home. What new research shows is that number of poor neighborhoods in metropolitan areas has actually doubled from 1980 — and most existing low-income areas only fell deeper into poverty. In two reports released by the Economic Innovation Group this month, researchers Kenan Fikri and August Benzow analyze poverty data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau between 1980 and 2018.

US Firms Shield CEO Pay As Pandemic Hits Workers, Investors

May 31, 2020 Jessica DiNapoli and Ross Kerber, Reuters. Educate! Recession, Wall Street, wealth inequality, Workers

New York/ Boston - Sonic Automotive Inc (SAH.N), which operates 95 U.S. car dealerships, started laying off and furloughing about a third of its workforce as the coronavirus pandemic crushed its sales. Then it changed its executives’ pay packages - handing them a multimillion-dollar windfall. On April 10, Sonic’s board gave its top executives stock options to replace performance-based share awards, regulatory filings show. The options it gave Chief Executive David Smith, whose family controls the company, are now worth about $5.16 million - more than four times the value of the performance-based stock awards he got last year. Some of Sonic’s terminated employees, meanwhile, face hard times.

Educators Have Opportunity To Revolutionize Education For All Students

May 29, 2020 Tussanee Reedboon, Truthout. Create! Education, Pandemic, Teachers, wealth inequality

Imagine a world where the exam would already be translated in multiple languages and students were able to use grammar and dictionary tools. An exam with more manageable time requirements and where the content students analyze is a more accurate reflection of their communities’ contributions to United States history. Perhaps then the focus of the exam would more definitively be on showing their historical thinking skills instead of how to interpret a language or a history that is often completely foreign to students in classes like mine. In the end, is that not what we want students’ college-level thinking to truly be about — making broader and more extensive connections? Students can take grammar and language courses once in college to work on how to show those thinking skills.

The Race To Replace A Dying Neoliberalism

May 20, 2020 By Walden Bello, Foreign Policy In Focus. Educate! Capitalism, COVID-19, Neoliberalism, wealth inequality

In response to the cataclysm occasioned by the coronavirus, three lines of thinking are emerging. One is that the emergency necessitates extraordinary measures, but the basic structure of production and consumption is sound, and the problem lies only in determining the moment when things can return to “normal.” A second line of thinking is that we are now in the “new normal,” and while the global economic system is not significantly out of kilter, important changes must be made to some of its elements. A third response is that the pandemic provides an opportunity for transforming a system that is ridden with deep economic and political inequalities and is profoundly destabilizing ecologically.

Alternatives To Killing People For The Economy

May 18, 2020 Cynthia Kaufman. Create! Capitalism, climate crisis, COVID-19, wealth inequality, Workers Rights and Jobs

Rather than sacrificing people for the economy, we need to rethink what we mean by “the economy.” No one needs to be killed for us to have a healthy economy. We live in a world where there is enough of everything we need for us all to live well and to do so within the ecological limits of the planet. And yet, as the Covid-19 crisis has laid bare, the social systems we live in lead to grotesque wealth for some, extreme devastation for many, dangerous underinvestment in the public infrastructure we need to be safe, and political systems controlled by those who profit from the destruction of our environment and shared social fabric. As we work to keep people safe from Covid-19, while protecting their livelihoods, we can shift our economies to build a world where we all have enough. If we keep ourselves focused on tackling our inequality crisis, even as we build toward environmental sustainability, we can develop an economic system that meets our human needs, without anyone needing to die for it.

The US Response To Covid-19 Has Lavished Wealth On The Rich

May 18, 2020 Miles Kampf-Lassin, In These Times. Educate! Congress, COVID-19, Taxes, wealth inequality

According to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies, America’s billionaires saw their wealth shoot up by $282 billion in just 23 days as the country was sheltering in lockdown. Overall, U.S. billionaire wealth grew by nearly 10% at the same time over 20 million people filed for unemployment, and by April 10 had passed $3.2 trillion—topping last year’s level. To take just one example, Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO and already the richest person in the world, saw his fortune inflate by $24 billion in the first three months of the year, a surge the report’s authors say is “unprecedented in the history of modern markets.” Meanwhile, his workers have staged a series of walkouts and other labor actions to protest a lack of basic workplace protections as warehouse employees have fallen ill with the virus, and some have died.

Racial Health And Economic Disparities Are Two Sides Of The Same Coin

May 17, 2020 By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Sally Sim, Inequality. Create! Poverty, Recession, Systemic Racism, wealth inequality

In Baltimore, like in the rest of the United States, Covid-19 exacerbates racial inequality and economic marginalization. The legacy of discrimination and the continued corruption and disenfranchisement take shape in the city’s biggest issues – homelessness, food insecurity, crime, poverty, and lack of access to resources. Covid-19 magnifies these issues and shows that they cannot be fixed without systemic change. The Baltimore Brothers, a nonprofit organization serving the city’s most vulnerable people, have been providing food and necessary resources to the communities who aren’t reached by local agencies or state government. After a devastating shooting on March 17, the Brothers fed the community for 3 days straight after watching the city fail to provide any kind of social aid.

As Corporations Adapt To A COVID-19 Economy, The Working-Class Prepares For A Paradigm Shift

May 16, 2020 By Raul Diego, Mintpress News. Educate! COVID-19, Recession, wealth inequality, Worker Rights and Jobs

For the vast majority of us, the move to a completely digital economy represents an even more unfair deal than we already have as low-level participants in a billionaires’ economy. When Elon Musk tweeted that he was going to sell off “most” of his earthly possessions, many cheered the Tesla CEO for taking what appeared to be such an ‘enlightened’ step. But, what isn’t readily apparent to most people is that in this post-COVID-19 economy that McKinsey is promoting, Elon and all his friends will be moving into your house. With the so-called “remote-first” organizational model for corporations, our homes will become their new office space. Companies all over the United States can then enrich themselves further by selling off or renting out their real estate assets, while your living room becomes your boss’ new conference room.

Coronavirus Is Making The Case For Black Reparations Clearer Than Ever

May 15, 2020 By William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, Black Agenda Report. Create! Black America, COVID-19, Racial inequality, Reparations, wealth inequality

Mounting statistics confirm disturbing evidence of racial disparities in reported coronavirus deaths. In Wisconsin, perhaps the state with the most extreme ratio of black morbidity, black people represent 6 percent of the population and 40 percent of the deaths. Those African American deaths have occurred at a rate 700 percent higher than black people's share of the state's population. In our home state of North Carolina, black people account for 22 percent of the population but close to 40 percent of the deaths. So what explains these disproportionately large numbers of black people dying of the coronavirus? Black people are overrepresented in jobs designated as socially essential but paying low wages in transportation, food and health services, as well as child and elder care.

The Disconnect Between The Stock Market And The Real Economy Is Destroying Our Lives

May 6, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Educate! COVID-19, Recession, Wall Street, wealth inequality

In the month of April—as 30 million Americans filed for unemployment, and destitute small businesses closed forever, and rent strikes were demanded, and city and state governments forecast years of grim austerity—the U.S. stock market had its best month in more than 30 years. Day after day, we were treated to stories of absolute ruin in the real economy, right next to another glorious rise in stocks. After a sharp selloff in March, the S&P 500 index has bounced back to where it was in the fall of 2019, as if that little devastating global pandemic were nothing more than a fleeting, momentary annoyance. The glaring disconnect between the real economy, of working humans with jobs and bills to pay, and the investor class economy, embodied by the stock market, is one of the most brutal and devious political issues of this age of crisis in which we’re living.

How The Super Rich Are Cheating The United States

May 5, 2020 Paul Bucheit, Nation of Change. Educate! Billionaires, COVID-19, Recession, Universal Basic Income, wealth inequality

Media outlets keep telling us that we’re all together in this pandemic. But we’re not. The super-rich have separated themselves from the rest of us, with concierge medicine, private travel accommodations, isolated but well-stocked resort homes, and a variety of other advantages that allow them to look beyond the hardships endured by average Americans. A few billionaires have contributed to the fight against Covid-19. But Luke Hildyard, Executive Director of the High Pay Centre, says, “Very generous individual grants can obscure the fact that on the whole, wealthy people’s charitable giving is pretty minimal.” In the most flagrant example of disregard for the rest of us, one company has installed private ‘doomsday’ bunkers in New Zealand with “luxury bathrooms, game rooms, shooting ranges, gyms, theaters and surgical beds.”

US Coronavirus ‘Bailout’ Scam Is $6 Trillion Giveaway To Wall Street

April 29, 2020 Michael Hudson, Moderate Rebels. Resistance Report CARES Act, COVID-19, Recession, wealth inequality

Just think of when, in the debates with Bernie, Sanders during the spring, you had Biden, and Klobuchar keep saying, ‘What we’re paying for Medicare-for-All will be $1 trillion over 10 years.’ Well here the Fed can create $1.5 trillion in one week just to buy stocks. Why is it okay for the Fed to create $1.5 trillion to buy stocks to prevent rich people from losing on their stocks, when it’s not okay to print only $1 trillion to pay for free Medicare for the entire population? This is crazy! The idea that only the rich should be allowed to print money for themselves, but the government should not be allowed to print money for any public purpose, any social purpose — not for medicine, not for schools, not for personal budgets, not for full employment — but only to give to the 1 percent. People hesitate to think that.

Billionaire Bonanza 2020

April 29, 2020 Chuck Collins, Omar Ocampo and Sophia Paslaski, IPS-DC.org. Educate! Billionaires, Pandemic, Taxes, wealth inequality

Billionaires dominate our politics, culture, and economy. Their wealth, as this report shows, has concentrated mightily over the last four decades — even as the number of U.S. households with zero or negative net worth is increasing and most of us are living paycheck to paycheck. The current pandemic is exposing our central economic and social reality: Extreme wealth inequality has become America’s “pre-existing condition.” In this report, we show how billionaire wealth has grown astoundingly over the last few decades — and, for some “pandemic profiteers,” even more dramatically since the COVID-19 crisis — even as billionaire tax obligations have plummeted. If this inequality isn’t treated with both short and long-term tax reforms and oversight, America’s “pre-existing condition” of extreme inequality could overwhelm not only our economy, but our democracy itself.

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