economic inequality

The 2020 presidential election in the United States may be the most critical political event in human history. At no time in the history of global civilization have human beings faced existential crises on a global scale. Regional crises of the past 10,000 years reveal that economic regimes have often outstripped local and regional resources, but these crises remained regional in scope. Today, however, the excesses of global capitalism have driven all of humanity to the brink of ecological and civilizational collapse.

Bernie has been driving the narrative on student debt, and along with Elizabeth Warren, forcing the other candidates to take positions they're not entirely comfortable with. Biden, for example, would prefer the whole topic never come up at all. He's an actual Republican-grade villain in the world of student debt.

North, Central, and South America were named after Amerigo Vespucci.  In “Letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici,”1 Amerigo Vespucci describes the New World.  Lorenzo de’ Medici is a member of the Medici family, a stupendously wealthy family of bankers and importers, who ruled the city of Florence, Italy for most of the 1400s.  The Medici family’s patronage of the arts promoted the Renaissance by sponsoring many of the most significant artistic achievements.

Trump’s 2020 budget proposal reflects another significant increase in military spending along with corresponding cuts in spending by Federal agencies tasked with the responsibility for providing critical services and income support policies for working class and poor people. Trump’s call for budget cuts by Federal agencies is mirrored by the statutorily imposed austerity policies in most states and many municipalities. Those cuts represent the continuing imposition of neoliberal policies in the U.S.

Last week Barbara Lee and Bernie Sanders introduced the Inclusive Prosperity Act, which is meant to make Wall Street fund the progressive agenda. "Through a small sales tax on Wall Street trades," she wrote, "our government could gain billions of dollars to invest in critical programs like Medicare for All, Debt-Free College, affordable housing, and more.

If one searches “theory of alienation” in Google, predominately Marx’s theory comes out because other theories of alienation in a political and economic level do not exist. The question is why? What is so incredible in Marx’s statement that workers get alienated from the products of their labour, which alienates them from themselves? It just does not hold much water because everyone who produces for the market gets alienated from the product at the moment of purchase.

In 2017, Sociology Professor Rachel Sherman wrote Uneasy Street: The Anxiety of Affluence, a book which drew upon 50 in-depth interviews with Uber-wealthy New Yorkers in order to obtain a picture of just how they perceived their status.

Establishment Democrats have always hated Bernie. Most people are unaware that when Bernie first ran for Congress-- as an independent-- the Democratic Party ran establishment candidates against him. In his first congressional campaign (1988) the Democrats ran a conservative spoiler, Paul Poirier, state House majority leader, who allowed a Republican, Peter Smith win the seat:

Some people do it right-- and some don't. Three that came in early that demonstrate how to do it are by a progressive candidate in Georgia, Marqus Cole, a progressive Northern California candidate, Audrey Denney, and a new progressive action committee run by Randy Bryce. Let's start with Cole, who's running to flip a Republican seat in the suburbs northwest of Atlanta.

Rajan Menon looks at two recent scandals and what they show about the nexus between wealth and power in America.  By Rajan Menon TomDispatch.com Despair about the state of our politics pervades the political spectrum, from left to right. One source of…Read more →