Departments

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inequality

  • SOURCE: The Baffler
    5/4/2022

    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.

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    4/4/2022

    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.

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    2/7/2022

    The Economy is Good, Actually

    by Zachary D. Carter

    An economic historian says that the recovery from the pandemic is historically good in terms of the share of gains going to low-income workers, but the politics are not working in the Democrats' favor. 

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    2/1/2022

    How the Left Lost the Constitution

    by Benjamin Morse

     Law professors Joseph Fiskin and William Forbath revisit the Reconstruction Amendments to argue that they represent a fusion of a "democracy-of-opportunity" tradition in the law that embraces an affirmative government duty to redistribute wealth. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    1/25/2022

    Abortion isn't a "Choice" without Racial Justice

    by Sara Matthiesen

    The recent failure of the broad social spending initiatives of Build Back Better and the impending judicial overthrow of Roe are connected, and signal the need for a movement for reproductive freedom that goes beyond "choice" to address systemic inequalities. 

  • SOURCE: Noēma
    12/7/2021

    Michael J. Sandel on the Dark Side of Meritocracy

    by Nils Gilman

    "The growing awareness of the problems with meritocracy in recent decades is a direct result of the deepening divide between winners and losers. The divide has poisoned our politics and set us apart."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    10/5/2021

    The Lesson of Venice's 17th Century Plague? Tax the Rich

    by Yong Kwon

    By making only a temporary commitment to public works funded by taxing the city's merchant elite, Venice emerged from the plague with an overburdened workforce, less ability to attract labor, and a declining economy. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    9/16/2021

    Homelessness and Eviction in the Land of the Free

    by Liz Theoharis

    Homeless activists in the 1980s and 1990s began to push back against the narrative that mass homelessness reflected the defects of individuals instead of a profit-driven housing system. As the Supreme Court has thrown out a federal eviction moratorium, that lesson is more relevant than ever. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    8/25/2021

    Not Everyone Can Afford to ‘Learn to Live With’ COVID-19

    by Kyle Harper

    "This two-track recovery, where protection against the disease mirrors wealth and power, unfortunately reflects a historical pattern that is several centuries old. The world’s only hope lies in breaking it."

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    8/19/2021

    The Real Political Danger of Inflation

    by Andrew Elrod

    Democrats have not lost elections because of inflation, but because they have imagined austerity politics as the only solution to inflation. 

  • SOURCE: Public Books
    8/18/2021

    Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance State

    by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber

    Landlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis. 

  • SOURCE: TomDispatch
    8/17/2021

    Debt and Disillusionment

    by Rebecca Gordon

    "We know, in other words, that there are only a relatively small number of spaces in the cockpit of today’s economic plane. Nonetheless, we tell our young people that the guaranteed way to get one of those rare gigs at the top of the pyramid is a college education."

  • SOURCE: Commonweal
    8/17/2021

    Scrapping the Color Code: A Post-Racial America is Inevitable

    by Jim Sleeper

    The 2020 Census is showing that whiteness is no longer the civic and cultural norm, but also that bureacratic color-coding can't support a version of civic Americanism that can stand up to a growing white backlash. 

  • SOURCE: Jacobin
    7/20/2021

    The U.S. Tax Code Should Not Allow Billionaires to Exist

    by Josh Mound

    There have been historical precursors to the recent ProPublica report on the extremely low taxes paid by the ultrawealthy. Will this revelation lead to more lasting changes in the tax code that thwart the hoarding of wealth?