Category: Income Equality
Rathke: Mass protests are back – what are we waiting for?
New Orleans Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed? If you can make it past the daily Trump wailing wall, there’s one report after another of protests. Not some piddling ten- or twenty-person thing, though there’s…
Rathke: The predatory fight to keep workers temporary and “independent”
Little Rock Once upon a time we might have been able to look at the Department of Labor to lead the way in drawing the bright lines that establish whether a worker is an employee or…
Rathke: New housing law in NY has impact on tenant evictions
New Orleans The Wall Street Journal and its reporters must get a special thrill when they can score an exclusive on the New York Times on New York’s own turf. I bet they didn’t even…
Bezos grew record-setting $13 billion richer on Monday as poor and working class in US face financial cliff
“In ONE DAY Jeff Bezos made well over 4,000 times what the average American earns in their ENTIRE LIFETIME.” by Julia Conley, staff writer Tuesday, July 21 Days before the expiration of federal unemployment benefits is…
Trump team greenlights predatory payday lending
by Wade Rathke New Orleans We can count the days until we pray that’s it is over, but until then the drumbeat of woe is bound to continue. The gutted Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proved…
Data shows half of US workers could make more from unemployment than low-wage jobs; ‘Maybe… pay people more,’ says AOC
“If $600 a week is a big raise, that’s because workers were undervalued.” by Jake Johnson, staff writer Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday that data showing around half of all U.S. workers stand to bring home…
Republican Voters Support $2,000 a Month Payments During Coronavirus Crisis: Poll
A plurality of all respondents cited a wealth tax as their preferred way to pay for the program. by Eoin Higgins, staff writer Thursday, April 16 A majority of Americans—including over half of Republican respondents—support a…
‘Green Stimulus’ demanded to battle convergent crises of coronavirus, economic injustice, and climate emergency
The plan calls for spending at least $2 trillion on millions of green jobs, strategic investments to aid frontline communities, expanding public and employee ownership, and rapidly cutting carbon pollution. by Jessica Corbett, staff writer…
How credit cards make us more unequal
Credit card companies fleece retailers to give high-end spenders cash back — a system the rest of us end up subsidizing. By Sam Pizzigati | February 10, 2020 What happens when we use our credit cards?…
The truth about corporate philanthropists
If they can “give back” so much, it’s probably because they’ve been taking too much. By Jim Hightower | February 5, 2020. Our society has coined expressions like “philanthropist” to encourage and hail people’s charitable spirit….
Rich and clueless? Buy a $500,000 armored car
By Jim Hightower If you’ve got more money than you can spend, you can spend your extra wealth on… guarding your extra wealth. “Imagine being Mark Zuckerberg, whose social media monopoly, Facebook, put another $27.3 billion…
Getting poorer while working harder: The ‘cliff effect’
Susan R. Crandall, University of Massachusetts Boston Forty percent of all working-age Americans sometimes struggle to pay their monthly bills. There is no place in the country where a family supported by one minimum-wage worker with…
Fight for $15 is fight for 14 euros in Europe
Amsterdam In the second meeting of what we are now calling the “The Organizing Forum” or TOF, which I choose to pronounce as TOUGH, more than forty organizers from the Netherlands, France, Brussels, the United Kingdom,…
Debt means “Can’t Win for Losing”
Ponce Arkansas Community Organizations, one of KABF and ACORN’s partners on many projects, especially those involving financial security for low-and-moderate income families, recently released a report about major debt that is oppressing these families. The…
The TurboTax trap: TurboTax tricked customers into paying to file taxes.
Now several states are investigating it. ProPublica revealed that TurboTax maker Intuit charged millions of Americans for tax filing services they were eligible to receive for free. Now multiple state attorneys general have opened investigations into…
