Of all the costs imposed on our society by the top 1 percent, perhaps the greatest is this: the erosion of our sense of identity in which fair play, equality of opportunity, and a sense of community a...
Minimum wages have not kept up with inflation (so that the real federal minimum wage in the United States in 2011 is 15 percent lower than it was almost a third of a century ago, in 1980);
In truth the macroeconomic models placed too little attention on inequality and the consequences of policies for distribution. Policies have been based on these flawed models both helped create the cr...
El aumento de las desigualdades corroe la confianza; tiene un impacto económico similar al de un disolvente universal. Crea un mundo económico en el que hasta los ganadores son precavidos. Y los perde...
During the nineties a new culture had developed, one in which firms focused on the bottom line—today’s profits, not long-run profits—and took quick and decisive actions when they faced problems. Firms...
As we look out at the world, the United States not only has the highest level of inequality among the advanced industrial countries, but the level of its inequality is increasing in absolute terms rel...
Americans all benefit from the physical and institutional infrastructure that has developed from the country’s collective efforts over generations.
As the good middle-class jobs—requiring a moderate level of skills, like autoworkers’ jobs—seemed to be disappearing relative to those at the bottom, requiring few skills, and those at the top, requir...
What’s worrying is that those in the 1 percent, in attempting to claim for themselves an unjust proportion of the benefits of this system, may be willing to destroy the system itself to hold on to wha...
The economic elite have pushed for a framework that benefits them at the expense of the rest, but it is an economic system that is neither efficient nor fair. I explain how our inequality gets reflect...
Opponents of regulation always complain that it’s bad for business. Regulations that prevent pollution, of course, are bad for businesses that would have otherwise polluted. Regulations that prevent c...
Most importantly, it became clear that the name free trade agreement was itself a matter of deceptive advertising: it was really a managed trade agreement, managed especially for special corporate int...
Lack of health insurance is one factor contributing to poorer health, especially among the poor. Life expectancy in the United States is 78 years, lower than Japan’s 83 years, or Australia’s or Israel...
Jean-Claude Juncker, the proud architect of Luxembourg’s massive corporate tax-avoidance schemes and now the head of the European Commission, has taken a hard line—perhaps understandably, given that h...
In other advanced industrial countries, families don’t have to worry about how they will pay the doctor’s bill, or whether they can afford to pay for their parent’s health care. Access to decent healt...
If economic power in a country becomes too unevenly distributed, political consequences will follow. While we typically think of the rule of law as being designed to protect the weak against the stron...
A) Recent U.S. income growth primarily occurs at the top 1 percent of the income distribution. (b) As a result there is growing inequality. (c) And those at the bottom and in the middle are actually w...
The powerful try to frame the discussion in a way that benefits their interests, realizing that, in a democracy, they cannot simply impose their rule on others. In one way or another, they have to co-...
Some U.S. states spend as much on their prisons as they do on their universities.62 Such expenditures are not the hallmarks of a well-performing economy and society. Money that is spent on security—pr...
In America the share of national income going to the top .01% (some 16,000 families) has risen from just over 1% in 1980 to almost 5% now—an even bigger slice than the top .01% got in the Gilded Age.9