https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2024/02/omni-economic-inequalitypoverty-usa-and.html
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology
HTTPS://Omnicenter.org/donate/
CONTENTS
Books
Mark Paul. The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights.
John Freeman.
Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation.
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page. Democracy in America? What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It.
articles
Ian Angus. “Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class.”
Chris Hedges. “Know Thine Enemy: We are Ruled by One War Party and One Political Class.”
Katharina Buchholz. “The Living Wage Gap.”
Prabhat Patnaik. “What the GDP Hides.”
Ari Paul. “Source Who Revealed How Taxes Steal for the Rich Rewarded with Five Years in Prison.”
Ben Norton. “Global 1% own 43% of financial assets, 5 richest billionaires doubled wealth while 5 billion workers got poorer.”
April Holcombe. “At Davos, the inmates run the asylum—and the world.”
Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò. “Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)”
John Clarke. “The changing climate of class struggle.”
Ekaterina Cabylis. “Alienation under capitalism and the conspiracy pipeline.”
Jacqueline Luqman. “The history of affirmative action exposes its reactionary weaknesses.”
Sue Bull. “Patriarchy and the origins of women’s oppression.”
Denis Moynihan. “Everybody should see ‘Every Body’.”
Oxfam International. “Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years.”
Sam Pizzigati. “Tax The Rich? We Did That Once”
Staughton Lynd. “¡Presente!”
The Tricontinental. “Discussing pathways towards a more just world.”
Redflag. “Capitalism: great for the rich, shit for the poor.”
David Ruccio. “How to lie with inequality statistics.”
John Bellamy Foster. “Grand Theft Capital: The Increasing Exploitation and Robbery of the U.S.”
Ben Hillie. “The ruling class in Australia.”
List of Journal Sources (22 from around the world)
Agonas
Black Agenda Report
Canadian Dimension
Climate & Capitalism
Democracy Now
Common Dreams
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Geopolitical Economy Report
Inequality.org
International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Marx & Philosophy
Monthly Review
Occasional Links on Economics, Culture & Society
Oxfam International
Peoples Democracy
Popular Resistance
Portside
Red Flag
Scheer Post
Statista
The Tricontinental
Zinn Education Project
TEXTS
BOOKS
Scott Ferguson Interviews Mark Paul. The Ends of Freedom. Mronline.org (7-2-23).
Mark Paul joins Money on the Left to discuss his new book, The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights (University of Chicago P, 2023).
In his book, Paul scours U.S. political and economic history to recover, reclaim, and adapt the rhetoric of economic rights for our current political moment.
John Freeman (editor).
Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation. OR Books,
Thirty-six major contemporary writers examine life in a deeply divided America—including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Russo, Eula Bliss, Karen Russell, and many more
America is broken. You don’t need a fistful of statistics to know this. Visit any city, and evidence of our shattered social compact will present itself. From Appalachia to the Rust Belt and down to rural Texas, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest stretches to unimaginable chasms. Whether the cause of this inequality is systemic injustice [tax system], the entrenchment of racism in our culture, the long war on drugs, or immigration policies, it endangers not only the American Dream but our very lives.
In Tales of Two Americas, some of the literary world’s most exciting writers look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation. Their extraordinarily powerful stories, essays, and poems demonstrate how boundaries break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches so many people.
PRAISE
“A brilliant anthology… There is so much excellent writing in the pages of Tales of Two Americas.” —Salon
“Poignant and profound, Tales of Two Americas… unites a multiplicity of voices into a powerful rallying cry.”—NPR.org
“Each contribution stands out. Each voice is unique. The only common threads in the collection are theme and excellence… This anthology is spectacular and devastating and provocative.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“…masterful and affecting stories, essays, and poems by 36 writers profoundly attuned to the sources and implications of social rupture. These are sharply inquisitive and provocative works…” —Booklist (starred review)
“Urgent, worthy reportage from our fractious, volatile social and cultural moment.” —Kirkus
John Freeman (editor). Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a Divided World. 2020.
Publisher’s description: Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.
In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman’s, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced. In the course of this work, one major theme came up repeatedly: Climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse, devastating further the already devastated. But the problems of climate change are not restricted to those from the less developed world.
Galvanized by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman engaged with some of today’s most eloquent storytellers, many of whom hail from the places under the most acute stress–from the capital of Burundi to Bangkok, Thailand. The response has been extraordinary. Margaret Atwood conjures up a dystopian future in a remarkable poem. Lauren Groff whisks us to Florida; Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh; Yasmine El Rashidi to Egypt, while Eka Kurniawan brings us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to Nigeria, and Anuradha Roy to the Himalayas in the wake of floods, dam building, and drought. This is a literary all-points bulletin of fiction, essays, poems, and reportage about the most important crisis of our times.
Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò. Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). Reviewed by Kevin Dodson in Marx & Philosophy (August 29, 2023). (More by Marx & Philosophy). (Posted Aug 30, 2023). Class, Culture, Ideology, WarGlobalNewswire, ReviewOlúfẹ́mi O Táíwò. Editor. mronline.org (8-31-23).
The culture wars are back with a vengeance, if they ever actually left us. Throughout the world, right-wing populist regimes use widespread resentment against governing elites to stoke anger and fear of marginalized populations, cutbacks in public services and increased authoritarian repression, all while claiming the mantle of cultural authenticity. Much of this resentment is targeted by the political right at the ‘identity politics’ of the left. With Elite Capture, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has contributed an important and insightful critique of the successes and limitations of identity politics as currently practiced on the center-left and left. In short, Táíwò seeks to restore the sense of identity politics as originally formulated by the seminal Combahee River Collective.
The culture wars are back with a vengeance, if they ever actually left us.
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page. Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It. 2017.
With a New Afterword
America faces daunting problems—stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools, deteriorating public services. How did we get here? Through decades of dysfunctional government. In Democracy in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who’ve been left behind, the United States has failed to do so. Instead, we have actually exacerbated inequality, enriching corporations and the wealthy while leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
What’s the solution? More democracy. More opportunities for citizens to shape what their government does. To repair our democracy, Page and Gilens argue, we must change the way we choose candidates and conduct our elections, reform our governing institutions, and curb the power of money in politics. By doing so, we can reduce polarization and gridlock, address pressing challenges, and enact policies that truly reflect the interests of average Americans.
Updated with new information, this book lays out a set of proposals that would boost citizen participation, curb the power of money, and democratize the House and Senate.
articles
Ian Angus. “Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class.” Climate & Capitalism ( December 12, 2021).
Mronline.org (12-20-21). Deprived of land and common rights, the English poor were forced into wage-labor. (more by Climate & Capitalism). Class, Imperialism, Inequality, LaborEnglandCommentaryCapital versus Commons, Featured, Part 4, wage-labor
Articles in this series:
Commons and classes before capitalism
‘Systematic theft of communal property’
Against Enclosure: The Commonwealth Men
Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class
WE ARE RULED BY ONE WAR PARTY AND ONE POLITICAL CLASS
“Know Thine Enemy” By Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. The Congressional decision to prohibit railroad workers from going on strike and force them to accept a contract that meets few of their demands is part of the class war that has defined American politics for decades. The two ruling political parties differ only in rhetoric. They are bonded in their determination to reduce wages; dismantle social programs, which the Bill Clinton administration did with welfare; and thwart unions and prohibit strikes, the only tool workers have to pressure employers. This latest move against the railroad unions, where working conditions have descended into a special kind of hell… -more-
Buchholz, Katharina. ”The Living Wage Gap.” Statista (December 22, 2023 (Posted Feb 12, 2024). ). (More by Statista). Economic Theory, Financialization, Political EconomyAmericas, United StatesNewswire. Editor. mronline.org (2-13-24).
According to an analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the minimum wage does not suffice to pay for a typical set of living expenses in any state of the United States. Hawaii, Georgia and Utah, where the living wage gap exceeded $10 per hour, fared the worst.
Prabhat Patnaik. “What the GDP hides.” Peoples Democracy (February 4, 2024).
(More by Peoples Democracy). Capitalism, Economic Crisis, Financialization, Political EconomyGlobalNewswireGDP. Mronline.org (2-8-24).
There are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement.
Ari Paul. “Source who revealed how taxes steal for the rich rewarded with five years in prison.” FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting). Feb. 2, 2024. (Posted Feb 07, 2024). Human Rights, Imperialism, Incarceration, InequalityAmericas, United StatesNewswireCharles Littlejohn, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Taxes. Mronline.org (2-8-24).
Because of Charles Littlejohn, we know that former President Donald Trump and a whole bunch of other rich people pay next to nothing in taxes, while the rest of us frantically file tax returns and see our wages sucked away to fund the military, aid for Israel and corporate subsidies. Littlejohn, a former consultant at the Internal Revenue Service, leaked these tax returns, which resulted in major investigative findings for the New York Times (9/27/20) and ProPublica (6/8/21). For leaking this sensitive information, Littlejohn has been sentenced to five years in federal prison, the maximum jail term (CNN, 1/29/24).
Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole Argentieri said in a statement (1/29/24):
Charles Littlejohn abused his position as a consultant at the Internal Revenue Service by disclosing thousands of Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information to news organizations. He violated his responsibility to safeguard the sensitive information that was entrusted to his care, and now he is a convicted felon. Littlejohn’s lawyers (Bloomberg, 1/18/24) had argued that he had acted “out of a deep, moral belief that the American people had a right to know the information and sharing it was the only way to effect change.”
The extremity of the sentence “will chill future whistleblowers from revealing corruption and wrongdoing,” the Freedom of the Press Foundation (1/30/24) said. Slate writer Alex Sammon (Twitter, 1/29/24) said, “This guy is a hero who showed us how the super-rich steal from the American public.” Nevertheless, he added, the judge gave him a max sentence, claiming it was ‘a moral imperative’ to punish him as harshly as possible.
‘Basic unfairness’
After the ProPublica investigation was released, Republicans called for investigation into how the documents were leaked, while progressives used the data to call for a reform in the tax code (ProPublica, 6/9/21). The findings gave new political life to the Occupy Wall Street movement’s central argument about wealth inequality being enforced by government policy.
Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times editorial board (6/8/21) wrote that there is a “basic unfairness that the wealthy are living by a different set of rules, lavishly spending money that isn’t taxed as income.” He added that the “ProPublica story underscores the argument for transparency: It allows Americans to judge how well the system is working.”
In response to the investigation, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said: ”Tax the billionaires. Make them pay their fair share. Rebuild our nation’s crumbling infrastructure” (Twitter, 6/8/21). ProPublica (7/14/21) later reported the leaks reignited congressional action to tackle regressive taxation:
Elizabeth Warren (D—Mass.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D—R.I.) wrote to the [Senate Finance] committee’s chairman, Ron Wyden (D—Ore.), that the “bombshell” and “deeply troubling” [ProPublica] report requires an investigation into “how the nation’s wealthiest individuals are using a series of legal tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of income taxes.” The senators also requested that the Senate hold hearings and develop legislation to address the loopholes’ “impact on the nation’s finances and ability to pay for investments in infrastructure, health care, the economy, and the environment.”
The New York Times (9/27/20) reported that Trump’s tax returns “show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.”
At the time of the investigation, I noted (FAIR.org, 6/17/21) that the outrage against the leaks among Republicans, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times was proof that the ProPublica report was something more than momentarily important.
How power works. . . . MORE click on title
Ben Norton. “Global 1% own 43% of financial assets, 5 richest billionaires doubled wealth while 5 billion workers got poorer.” Geopolitical Economy Report (January 18, 2024) . Editor. mronline.org (1-28-24).
(Posted Jan 27, 2024)
Capitalism, Class, Imperialism, InequalityGlobalNewswire1%, Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk, Global North, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Oxfam, Warren Buffett, World Economic Forum (WEF), Worlds Richest
The world’s richest 1% own 43% of global financial assets, and the wealth of the top five billionaires has doubled since 2020, while 60% of humanity—nearly 5 billion people—collectively got poorer, according to a report by Oxfam, a leading international humanitarian organization. Oxfam published the study, “Inequality Inc.”, to coincide with the World Economic Forum meeting of corporate oligarchs and Western government officials in Davos, Switzerland this January.
April Holcombe. “At Davos, the inmates run the asylum—and the world.” Red Flag (January 24, 2024 ).
(more by Red Flag) | (Posted Jan 26, 2024).
Capitalism, Class, Climate Change, EnvironmentEurope, Global, SwitzerlandNewswireWorld Economic Forum (WEF). Editor. mronline.org (1-27-24).
Davos, a small skiing town in Switzerland, once a year becomes the world’s most consequential insane asylum. On Europe’s highest populated mountaintop, 3,000 of the global elite meet to ponder why the climate they pollute is so polluted, why the people they impoverish are so poor and why the world they fight over is at war. The World Economic Forum (WEF) is the ruling-class Comic-Con, a fantasy fortress where the 1 percent’s 1 percent can save the world that they are sending to hell. MORE click on title
John Clarke. “The changing climate of class struggle.” Canadian Dimension ( August 28, 2023). Editor. mronline.org (8-31-23). (more by Canadian Dimension) | (Posted Aug 30, 2023)
Class, Climate Change, Environment, HealthAmericas, Canada, United StatesNewswire https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-changing-climate-of-class-struggle
Clarke: The social and economic consequences of climate change will play out along deeply entrenched fault lines of inequality.
Ekaterina Cabylis. “
Alienation under capitalism and the conspiracy pipeline.” Agonas (August 21, 2023). (More by Agonas) (Posted Aug 28, 2023).
Capitalism, Economic Crisis, Economic Theory, Political EconomyGlobalNewswire
Editor. mronline.org (8-29-23). https://agonas.substack.com/p/alienation-under-capitalism-and-the
When class analysis is absent from discussions about systemic problems, issues like income inequality, access to resources, and power imbalances are often oversimplified or ignored.
Jacqueline Luqman. “The history of affirmative action exposes its reactionary weaknesses.” Black Agenda Report , July 12, 2023. (More by Black Agenda Report). (Posted Jul 19, 2023)
Empire, History, Human Rights, RaceAmericas, United StatesNewswire. MRonline Editor. https://www.blackagendareport.com/history-affirmative-action-exposes-its-reactionary-weaknesses
Affirmative action began as a reparations program but ends as a “diversity” project which barely benefits Black people.
Sue Bull. Patriarchy and the origins of women’s oppression. International Journal of Socialist Renewal. July 16, 2023. MRONLINE Editor.
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. (Posted Jul 19, 2023)
Class, Culture, Feminism, InequalityGlobalNewswireOppression, Women’s Oppression. https://links.org.au/patriarchy-and-origins-womens-oppression
Any vision of a world beyond capitalism involves the liberation of women from oppression, exploitation and discrimination. But just because we might have been able to win revolutionary social change, it does not mean that equal economic, social and cultural rights will be automatic for women.
Denis Moynihan. “Everybody should see ‘Every Body’.” DemocracyNow! July 13, 2023. (Posted Jul 19, 2023). Editor. mronline.org (7-20-23). Culture, Human Rights, LGBTQ, MediaAmericas, United StatesNewswire“Every Body” https://mronline.org/2023/07/19/everybody-should-see-every-body/
A wave of exclusion is sweeping the nation, in state legislatures and federal courts, including the Supreme Court.
Oxfam. “Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past two years.” CADTM – Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt. (Jan. 27, 2023). Editor. Mronline.org (1-20-23).
According to a new report published by Oxfam, the richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around half of all new wealth.
Sam Pizzigati. “Tax The Rich? We Did That Once” By Inequality.org. Popular Resistance.org (12-8-22).
Once upon a time, the United States seriously taxed the nation’s rich. You remember that time? Probably not. To have a personal memory of that tax-the-rich era, you now have to be well into your seventies. Back at the tail-end of that era, in the early 1960s, America’s richest faced a 91 percent tax rate on income in the top tax bracket. That top rate had been hovering around 90 percent for the previous two decades. In the 1950s, a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, made no move to knock it down. -more-
“Staughton Lynd, ¡Presente!” November 17, 2022.
Zinn Education Project, Portside (11-20-22).
Lynd explored the biggest little secret, one people everywhere should heed: We who do the work can build a better world, and we can best do it without the parasitic Super Rich who contribute nothing and weigh us down like a monstrous ball and chain.
“Discussing pathways towards a more just world.”
The Tricontinental. Mronline.org (10-27-22). This dossier is about inequality, or inequalities, between the North and South, between the rich and poor, and between the classes that labour and those that profit.
| “Capitalism: great for the rich, shit for the poor.” Editor. Mronline.org (2-12-22). https://redflag.org.au/article/capitalism-great-rich-shit-poor Red Flag Capitalism has generated the highest level of economic inequality in human history. |
David Ruccio. “How to lie with inequality statistics.”
Mronline.org (2-12-22).
Occasional Links on Economics, Culture and Society
It’s a “simple story,” with clear political implications. Maybe that’s the reason the Krugmans of the world don’t want to tell it. . .
Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster. “Grand Theft Capital: The Increasing Exploitation and Robbery of the U.S. Working Class.” Monthly Review. mronline.org (5-14-23).
The working class is being robbed, both through outright expropriation and the more hidden exploitation of countless workers who are struggling to make ends meet while capitalists pocket the surplus value they produce. Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster dissect the neoliberal assault on the working class that is spurring a new generation of labor organizing.
| Dan La Botz. “When the Rich Get a Global Rescue Mission and the Drowning Poor Get… Nothing.” Common Dreams (6-24-23). |
| A story of two sinking vessels in a world of extreme inequality. |
“The ruling class in Australia.” Red Flag.
Editor. Mronline.org (5-20-22).
https://redflag.org.au/article/ruling-class-australia
Who rules Australia? The politicians, the ultra-wealthy class of capitalists or the high-powered bureaucrats who run the state—the military generals, court justices, heads of government departments and so on? The answer is all three. Together, they make up the Australian ruling class.
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY NEWSLETTER #6
February 7, 2022
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-economic-inequality-newsletter-2.html
Eric Schutz. Inequality, Class, and Economics.
Sanjay Roy. “World Inequality Report 2022.”
Meagan Day. “The Rich Are Committing Crimes Against Nature.”
Vijay Prashad. “A Programme for a future society that we will build in
the present.” (2022)
Nicole Aschoff. “Smooth Criminals.” Jacobin (Fall 2021).
Martin Hart-Landsberg. “The dollar costs of inequality: they are greater than you think.”
Tomgram: Liz Theoharis. “The Politics of the Poor in an America on
Edge.”
UN Wire. 75% of innoculations so far went to only 10 countries.
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. Inflamed: Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.
END INEQUALITY ANTHOLOGY #7