Exclusive: The documentary, “Citizen Koch,” was deemed unfit for PBS as the network sidles up to David Koch’s wealth, but the film’s weakness actually is that it doesn’t focus enough on how the Koch brothers have corrupted the U.S. political process,…
Tag: Income Inequality
Tracing the Source of Income Inequality
Exclusive: Economist Thomas Piketty traces the explosion of income inequality in America to political decisions, especially the right-wing policies of Ronald Reagan who simultaneously slashed taxes for the rich and decried government intervention in the economy, writes Jim DiEugenio.
Piketty’s Exploration of Modern Capital
Exclusive: Despite some predictable griping from the Right, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century has reinforced the case that Western societies and especially America are concentrating wealth at the very top and shortchanging almost everyone else, as Jim DiEugenio…
Learning the Lessons of the 1 Percent
America’s transformation into a bifurcated society of a few rich and then the rest is occurring in academia as well, with bloated salaries for top administrators combined with the exploitation of poorly paid “adjunct” professors and a financial squeeze on students, as Lawrence…
Money and Second-Class Citizenship
As America divides more and more into a class-stratified society, the idea of “gated communities” has spread into other areas of separation in which the rich get special benefits, the middle class is treated shabbily and lower-income people face outright disdain, Lawrence Davidson reports.
The Proud Message of Utah Phillips
It is often forgotten that the path to the Great American Middle Class was forged in large part by labor activists and social reformers during the first six decades of the last century, a struggle that left behind a proud…
Jesus Mandate: Peace and Stewardship
Modern biblical scholarship has enabled critically thinking Christians to understand what the historical Jesus actually said and what was tacked on later to serve the interests of Rome and early church leaders, but those original messages remain politically inconvenient today, writes…
The Inconvenient Truth about Jesus
There is much religiosity in the U.S., with the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority even approving Christian prayers at the start of government business. But there is little appreciation of the radical political and economic message at the center of Jesus’s teachings,…
The Fat Cats of Fast-Food
Pay inequity has worsened across the U.S. economy, but perhaps nowhere more than in the fast-food industry where CEOs and other top executives fatten their compensation as their fast-food workers subsist on taxpayer-provided food stamps, as Michael Winship explains.
The Age of the Oligarchs
Exclusive: The concentration of power in the hands of billionaire “oligarchs” may be most alarming in places like Ukraine but the United States is moving in the same direction as wealth is consolidated at the top — and both elections…