NEW YORK — The revelation that the Dow Jones industrial average and the Standard and Poor’s stock index closed at historic highs this past Thursday afternoon reminded me of an early autumn afternoon a dozen years ago in a glorious San Francisco apartment high in the sky.
To say that poor people don’t have enough hope, tenacity and aspiration is to deny their agency as well as the size of the structural odds they face. (OD Op-ed) — In a recent article in the New York Times, the development economist Seema Jayachandran discusses three studies that used Randomised Controlled Trials (or RCTs) to understand the benefits of […]
“With no jail time for executives and half a trillion in post-crisis profits, the big banks have made out like bandits during the post-crash period.” (CD) — The 2008 financial meltdown inflicted devastating financial and psychological damage upon millions of ordinary Americans, but a new report released by Public Citizen on Tuesday shows the Wall Street banks that caused the crash with […]
(CD) — Deniers like Nikki Haley refuse to admit that mass poverty exists in their prosperous nation. That would reflect poorly on their capitalist beliefs. But if the skeptics would look at the half of America they don’t care to see, the stark display of destitution might shock them. At least until they invent an excuse to remove it all from […]
In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging “credit-card wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts.
(CD) — It is no secret that the United States has among the worst levels of inequality, poverty, and infant mortality of all wealthy nations, but a scathing new United Nations report (pdf) concludes that President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress are “deliberately” working to make these already devastating crises worse by waging war on the poor while lavishing […]
LONDON – The royal wedding between the U.K.’s Prince Harry and American actress Meghan Markle, due to take place today, has been in the headlines for some time, serving as a convenient distraction from other major events – from the mass shooting of unarmed protesters in Gaza to efforts by certain U.S. officials to sabotage the Korean peace talks.
The upcoming presidential election in Mexico — now just eight weeks away — may well prove to be this year’s most significant worldwide referendum on inequality. Mexico, after all, rates as one of the world’s most unequal major nations, and the party of the presidential candidate currently topping the polls — Andrés Manuel López Obrador — is pledging to confront the privileged Mexican few who are concentrating the nation’s “economic and political power.”
In 1848, Marx wrote, “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.”
On this 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx we focus on Marx as a political activist, rather than what he is best known for, an economist and philosopher who wrote some of the most important analyses explaining capitalism and putting forward an alternative economic model.
Most of the world recognizes May 1—May Day—as International Workers’ Day. Here in one of the few countries that doesn’t, it’s worth pausing to ask how U.S. workers are doing.
At an event last December, Fight for $15 organizer Terrence Wise recalled “going to bed at night, ignoring my own stomach’s rumbling, but having to hear my three little girls’ stomachs rumble. That’s something no parent should have to endure.”
Wise was marking the launch of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
