History News Network

inequality

Originally published 07/18/2014
Why Are Campus Administrators Making So Much Money?

Whatever the plight of faculty and students, these are boom times for campus administrators.

Originally published 07/15/2014
Which Historians Have Made Bank in the United States?

An old joke goes, “Become a historian. Get rich.” But for some historians it’s no joke.

Originally published 05/23/2014
Has Rising Inequality Brought Us Back to the 1920s? It Depends on How We Measure Income

Though most experts on income measurement are aware of the shortcomings of the standard income measures, it is surprising how little of this knowledge has seeped into popular discussion of inequality.

Originally published 05/22/2014
University Presidents Are Laughing All the Way to the Bank While the People Who Work for Them Are on Food Stamps

The lucrative nature of these positions appears to have had little to do with the intellectual distinction of the universities.

Originally published 05/09/2014
What We Can Learn from the Progressives Is What Not to Do

Progressive reforms made material differences in the lives of U.S. workers, but they failed in their larger goal of slowing or reversing inequality.

Originally published 09/25/2013
Black History Not Reflected in New Rugby Museum: Nkohla

Local rugby players believe the newly opened rugby museum in Cape Town does not properly portray black influence.

Originally published 03/20/2013
Historian and economist Gar Alperovitz on the possibilities of the Great Recession

A couple of weeks ago, a wonky data visualization became a viral sensation. Titled "Wealth Inequality in America," it provided a stark illustration of the distribution of wealth in this country. While many of us already know that this country's wealth is tilted in one direction, it's even more shockingly skewed than we thought. To date, the video has received more than 4.3 million views on YouTube.The data in the video wasn't news to Gar Alperovitz, an economist, historian and prolific writer on alternatives to capitalism. The 76-year-old University of Maryland professor wears many hats as a teacher, researcher, activist and filmmaker. His most well-known book, America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy, lays out the remarkable array of grassroots ownership strategies that local communities can pursue. Many of them are already familiar, such as food co-ops, and others, like credit unions, have become newly valued in the wake of Occupy Wall Street....

Originally published 06/28/2014
50 Years of Mischief: The Triumph and Trashing of the Civil Rights Act

July 2 marks the 50th anniversary of the most famous Civil Rights Act in U.S history. Passed after the longest debate in congressional history, the Civil Rights Act (CRA) promised to secure justice for all regardless of race, color, creed, sex, or national origin. As I wrote in Race and Liberty: The Essential Reader, the law “was understood to mean ‘colorblindness’ by nearly every observer at the time.” The plain meaning of the act might be summed up as: “Nondiscrimination. Period.”