Inequality Archives

Economics

The Not-So-Surprising Way Your Parents’ Income Predicts Yours

Just as you suspected, there’s a reason inequality is structural and self-perpetuating. But you might be shocked by just how few of the most well-off individuals are able to out-earn the generation before them. It isn’t the one percent we should be focusing on, but the 0.1 percent.

Kyle Chayka

Social Justice

The Heirs of Steinbeck: Who Are the Fiction Writers Taking on Poverty and Inequality Today?

Seventy-five years after its first publication date, The Grapes of Wrath is still a staple in most American classrooms. Is that because we haven’t yet written anything that does a better job of portraying the devastation of not having enough?

Anna Clark

Education

Security Guards Outnumber High School Teachers in the United States

Growing inequality in America has been matched by a surge in security guards—for gated communities, upscale residential buildings, and more. That trend—more inequality, more guards—is matched across industrialized countries.

Martin Hart-Landsberg

Economics

Why Income Inequality Will Likely Keep Getting Worse

Embracing a system based on maximizing the returns to private owners of capital is a mistake for the great majority of working people.

Martin Hart-Landsberg

Economics

The Dead Are Wealthier Than the Living: Capital in the 21st Century

Patrimonial capitalism—and the landed or urban gentry living off of inherited wealth—was dealt a mortal blow by the Great Depression and World Wars. But it's making a comeback, and the only way to stop it might be a worldwide tax on capital.

Timothy Noah

Education

What Causes Inequality? Systemic and Individual Frames for Racism in Media

Race Forward takes a close look at how newspapers and cable television outlets cover one type of inequality.

Lisa Wade

Economics

The Psychological Need the Wealthy Can’t Fulfill

And why you can expect more off-color and out-of-touch commentary like Tom Perkins’ op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that warned of a “Progressive Kristallnacht.”

Eric Horowitz