inequality 
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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.
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SOURCE: The Nation
4/20/2022
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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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12/19/2021
It's Time to Confront Special Privilege in Admission to Elite U.S. Colleges
by Lawrence Wittner
Merit-based admission at the nation’s most elite colleges is severely undermined by those colleges' preferential treatment of the children of the 1%.
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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."
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SOURCE: The Nation
11/27/2021
Selective Conscience: New Book Dissects Rawls's Theory of Fairness
by Olúfémi O. Táíwò
Katrina Forrester's book shows the influence of John Rawls on the study of ethics, but also reveals the limits of abstract theory for understanding historical injustice.
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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.
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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.
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SOURCE: The Drift
9/14/2021
XOXO, Ruling Class: Gossip Girl, The O.C., and the New Gilded Age
David Klion looks at TV producer Josh Schwartz's jump from "The OC" to "Gossip Girl" and argues that, after the 2007 financial crisis, popular culture was able to show the sociopathy of the super-rich. `
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9/19/2021
Inequality Tends to Reach Political Tipping Points – Is That Happening Today?
by Richard Vague
"Proposals for a $15 minimum wage, more support for childcare and education, and even an alternative minimum income did not emerge out of nowhere as radical notions imported from Western Europe."
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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?
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SOURCE: The Nation
6/29/2021
Many Children Left Behind: How American Schools Became so Unequal
Christina Groeger's new book upends the American faith in education as an engine of social mobility and a cure for inequality.
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