NEW YORK—The United Nations Commission on Human Rights will open debate June 21 on a special report by its lead investigator, who said the U.S. not only “is the most unequal society in the developed world,” but that Trump administration policies – notably the $1.5 trillion tax cut for the rich – have made a bad situation worse.
According to Emptywheel, tomorrow is going to be a big day for Señor Trumpanzee and his world. Center stage: Robert Mueller, not whispers and suppositions. If Marcy is right-- and she usually is-- Mueller is ready to reveal the first cards in his case for conspiracy.
Back in the 1980s, the decade that saw researchers start detailing America’s increasing concentration of income and wealth, flacks for the emerging Reagan economic order disdainfully dismissed the significance of the alarming new data.
That America’s income distribution has grown dramatically more unequal in the past 40 years is beyond debate. The share of the top 1 percent has doubled since 1980, to over 20 percent of all income.
Could it get any worse? A look at America’s large, privately held corporations suggests it could.
When Americans think of large corporations, most of us think of corporations like Pepsi or ExxonMobil, whose shares are publicly traded.
If you follow Austin Frerick, the Blue America-endorsed candidate for Iowa's 3rd congressional district on Twitter-- and you should: @AustinFrerick-- you are probably already familiar of the term Second Gilded Age or New Gilded Age. This morning Austin, a former Treasury Department economist, told me that "The 1st Gilded Age lasted from the 1870s to about 1900.
As the rich get ever richer — courtesy, in countries like the United States, of corporate-friendly deregulation and tax “reform” — does the planet get ever warmer and dirtier? New research suggests economic balance is linked to environmentally-friendly practices. Countries with lower rates of economic disparity have citizens who enjoy a better quality of life and leave a significantly smaller carbon footprint.
Among the stranger features of the 2016 election campaign was the success of Donald Trump, a creature of globalization, as an America First savior of the white working class.
Opinion — According to a nationwide study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a greater number of U.S. Americans died (approximately 65,000) from drug overdoses last year than were killed during the course of the Vietnam War.
At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”
I don't have a private jet; never did. But... I sort of did. I was the president of a division of TimeWarner and the company had private jets. All I had to do was call and say I need a jet and I could fly anywhere I wanted. You knowhow many time I did that? Zero, never once. That's because it's incredibly expensive and a horrifying waste of money that could have been spent on helping break out artists (for example).
Since the 1980s, Republicans have insisted that tax cuts for the rich will benefit working people, but the rich just sock away their money and national needs are neglected. Yet, the same cycle is back again, says JP Sottile. By…Read more →
