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(1 comments) SHARE Sunday, August 1, 2021 America's Billionaires: Borrowing Their Way to Ever More Fabulous Fortunes
No widely acclaimed artist in the 20th century baited and battled the rich with as much gusto as Diego Rivera. The Mexican painter's Great Depression-era confrontation with Nelson Rockefeller, then the 20-something grandson of the world's single richest individual.
SHARE Tuesday, February 9, 2021 The Unintentional Honesty of Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO of Amazon. He'll stay on as the executive chairman of Amazon's board, but he'll no longer be managing the company on a daily basis.
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, October 9, 2020 How Taxpayers Funded "Consulting Fees" For Ivanka Trump
Between 2010 and 2018, Trump's hotel projects around the world cleared an income of well over $100 million. On his tax returns, Trump claimed $26 million in "consulting" expenses, about 20 percent of all the income he made on these hotel deals.
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, September 26, 2020 Let's Start Debating What Dooms Democracy: Concentrated Wealth
Tuesday's debate will almost certainly come and go without any serious discussion of how economically unequal we have become as a nation. In these days of despair over the state of our democracy, we desperately need that discussion.
SHARE Monday, September 14, 2020 Why Don't People Call You a Genius? You Don't Have a Billion Dollars
Nearly four decades ago, Big Oil totally dominated the upper reaches of the Forbes 400. Eight of the top 10 owed their fortunes directly to fossil fuels. In other words, America's "smartest" people in 1982 almost all centered their lives around oil. What a coincidence. How odd.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, September 8, 2020 For the Ultra Rich, Those Short Putts Sure Can be Killers
Trying to keep up with the stunningly inappropriate remarks of Donald Trump can sometimes seem a full-time job. Just this past week, for instance, we've seen the president seem to encourage voters in North Carolina to vote twice, once by mail and once by person, a felony under state law.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, May 17, 2020 Civil Disobedience, Billionaire-Style
Musk's successful bullying has vividly revealed that our duly elected leaders and the governments they lead cannot, when push comes to shove, adequately safeguard the health and well-being of average working people. Democracy cannot work particularly well or endure particularly long when those we elect cannot protect us from the wealthy and powerful who loom large so high above us.
SHARE Sunday, March 22, 2020 How to Wage War, FDR-Style, on Our Pandemic
In 1942, in the months right after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt faced the same basic challenge as we do today. To overcome the fascist forces aligned globally against us, FDR understood, the American people were going to have to sacrifice as never before.
SHARE Friday, March 20, 2020 Coronavirus and the "Shock Doctrine"
We need, in effect, a "shock doctrine" in reverse. We need to seize the openings for change the coronavirus presents and challenge the capacity of our rich and powerful to become ever richer and more powerful at the expense of everyone else.
SHARE Monday, January 27, 2020 The Evolution of "Davos Man" into . . . Trump Fan!
Trump loves the Davos deep pockets back, at one point hailing the big-time corporate CEOs gathered around him as "the greatest businessmen in the world."
SHARE Saturday, December 7, 2019 Will The 2020 Contenders Take On Inequality?
Those who seek our nation's highest office -- at least on the Democratic side -- no longer see safe harbor in the warm embrace of the ultra-rich. To be sure, our political class has not yet abandoned the billionaire class. But the political consensus that nurtured our contemporary top-heavy economy has cracked.
(1 comments) SHARE Thursday, November 7, 2019 Inequality and the Iron Law of Decaying Public Services
In communities where wealth is concentrating, the affluent have the clout and the numbers to go beyond grumbling. They mobilize politically to slash budgets and roll taxes back. And they succeed, because fewer people, in an unequal community, have a stake in the public services that taxes support.
SHARE Saturday, October 12, 2019 Inequality is Literally Killing Us
Over recent decades, a steady stream of studies have shown consistent links between rising inequality and shorter lifespans. The trends we see in the United States reflect similar dynamics worldwide, wherever income and wealth are concentrating. The more unequal a society becomes, the less healthy the society.
SHARE Sunday, September 15, 2019 Wealth That Concentrates Kills
The weight of the wealth that sits at the top of America's economic order isn't just squeezing dollars out of the wallets of average Americans. That concentrated wealth is shearing years off of American lives.
SHARE Sunday, July 21, 2019 A Tale of Two Druglords
Some 2,000 American cities, towns, and counties are now suing McKesson and the rest of the corporate drug distribution complex. They're charging that these corporations "conspired to flood the nation with opioids." The companies, the charge continues, didn't just fail to report suspicious orders. They "filled those orders to maximize profits."
SHARE Wednesday, June 5, 2019 In an unequal America, empathy, not just housing, has become too pricey
San Francisco, recent research shows, now has more billionaires per capita than any other city in the world. By one reckoning, San Francisco also has the highest cost of living in the world, as all those billionaires and the rest of the city's ultra rich bid up prices on the most desirable local real estate.
SHARE Monday, April 29, 2019 A Plaintive Plea from America's Rich: Let's Change the Subject!
The rich, after all, simply adore the mainstream "opportunity" gospel. Talking about increasing opportunity distracts attention from how rich people and the corporations they run behave, how what the rich do to become and stay rich keeps poor people poor and most of the rest of us struggling.