inequality

Two New Books Take the 1990s as a Pivotal Decade

by Henry M.J. Tonks

Books by Lily Geismer and Nicole Hemmer look at the changes that took place within the Democratic and Republican parties (respectively) during a decade that was supposed to be the end of history. 

SCOTUS Arguments in Debt Relief Cases Show the Fracturing of the Bipartisan "Education Myth"

by Jon Shelton

Two Justice's preoccupation with the fairness of relieving student debt proclaimed a concern that the government not pick economic winners and losers. But the student debt crisis reflects a decades-long bipartisan sales pitch, backed by policy, that college is the individual's path to prosperity. That pitch is now wearing thin. 

Julie Livingston and Andrew Ross See the Car as a Machine for Unfreedom

The automobile is an object made to symbolize freedom that actually physically embodies a host of coercive relationships to work, debt, surveillance and policing, and the basic right of free movement, according to the authors of a new study. 

Don't Bother Looking for a Place to Rent in DC

by Rebecca Gordon

New congressman Maxwell Frost's struggles to find an apartment in the capital echoes the "Bourgeois Blues" Leadbelly sang in 1937. What does it say about democracy if representatives of the people can't live in Washington? 

2022's Lesson? Billionaires Bad, Actually

Tech historian Margaret O'Mara says Musk, like other tech moguls, has long been supported by a myth of the individual genius that is only now being overturned by his erratic decisionmaking, boosting of right-wing conspiracy theories, and incredibly thin-skinned reaction to criticism. 

Americans Have Always Imagined and Demanded Better Alternatives; Those Alternatives Have Been Hidden

by Jamelle Bouie

Thomas Skidmore's critique of inequality held that the inequality of private property consigned the majority of humanity to toil for the enjoyment of a minority, a situation irreconcilable with democracy. 

The Biggest Threat to America's Stability is the Class Divide

by Kim Phillips-Fein

We mistakenly bemoan "polarization" instead of reckoning with the economic power of radical right-wing elites, who have the resources to fund growing organizations, and the growing number of people disaffected from the social order who are susceptible to their messages. 

Grad Workers: Choose Solidarity with New Haven

by Adom Getachew and Sarah Haley

Two former Yale PhD students argue that the university's graduate student union offers not just benefits and protection to graduate student workers, but the chance for them to work in solidarity with other university and New Haven workers across the vast racial and socioeconomic divides separating city and campus. 

The Robber Barons Had Nothing on Musk

by David Nasaw

Like the Gilded Age robber barons, Elon Musk's self-made mythos hides the government subsidies supporting his businesses. Unlike them, he has the werewhithal to move financial markets to his advantage through Twitter. 

Higher Ed's Past is Gilded, Not Golden

by Elizabeth Tandy Shermer

Despite unfavorable comparisons between today's college costs and labor conditions and those prevailing in the 1960s, public higher education was never based on a deep commitment to egalitarianism, and has long financed, rather than funded, college. 

The Selective Politics of the "Learning Loss" Debate

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Discussions of the disruption to learning caused by COVID-related school closures often ignore the endemic inequalities in American education and exposure to harm from COVID, and sideline the voices of teachers who have been sounding the alarm about the dangerous state of their facilities for years. 

The Ongoing Problem of Segregation in America

by Aziz Rana

The thoroughness of racial segregation through the housing markets is a profound obstacle to the kind of interracial political organizing the left wants to accomplish. 

Barbara Ehrenreich Challenged Readers to Examine Themselves

by Gabriel Winant

The journalist and social theorist wrote to force her readers to examine their own positions in society's hierarchies, not to encourage cynicism of futility, but to encourage them to see change as a long haul. 

Historians Respond to Biden's Student Debt Relief Order

How are historians responding to the Biden administration's order to forgive $10,000 of student debt for borrowers with incomes under $125,000?

The Dems' IRA Message Would Be More Effective If It Weren't Afraid of Touting Taxes

by Molly Michelmore

The last four decades of tax-cutting have crippled democracy. Democrats need to learn lessons from a time when paying taxes was popular and patriotic. 

Raymond Craib: Rich Tech Libertarians Have Fantasies of Escape, but a Desire for Power

by Jacob Bruggeman

The most striking lesson from the history of failed attempts to create societies without states is that the libertarian impulse to strip the state of its power to control capital has already profoundly reshaped every society on earth. 

Would We Be Better Off Without Philanthropists?

Do the gifts of the super-wealthy cancel out the damage done by the unequal system that allows them to accumulate it? 

The Rent is Too Damn High(ly Central to Modern Economies)

by Trevor Jackson

Historian Trevor Jackson reviews Brett Christophers's book on rent, which places the power of the rentier class at the center of the inequality and dysfunction of modern capital and brings Marx's original investigations into the 21st century.

Lily Geismer: The Clinton Legacy is Well-Intentioned Failure

"I wanted to challenge the common view that the story of US politics after 1968 is solely about the rise of the right, and that the Democrats adopted the policies that they did as a way of playing electoral defense."

Your House Makes More Money than You Do

Rising real estate values are bringing more wealth to Americans than wages and salaries are. This is a big problem for economic equality.