Extreme Poverty Returns to America

Premilla Nadasen The Washington Post
U.N. study finds growing numbers of Americans are living in the most impoverished circumstances. The growth of extreme poverty in the land of plenty is an indicator that we shouldn't be talking about how to slash spending on social programs, but how to expand services and better meet the needs of the vulnerable among us. One and a half million American households live in extreme poverty today, nearly twice as many as 20 years ago.

Jeremy Corbyn's Geneva Speech in Full

Jeremy Corbyn Morning Star
British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking in Geneva in honor of International Human RIghts Day cited the need to: Build a new social and economic system with human rights and justice at its core. Deliver climate justice and a better way to live together on this planet. Recognise the humanity of refugees and offer them a place of safety. Work for peace, security and understanding. The survival of our common humanity requires nothing less.

GOP Tax Plan Is Igniting a Movement for a Moral Economy

Sarah Anderson OtherWords.org
On December 4, prominent faith leaders announced plans for one of the largest waves of civil disobedience in U.S. history. Dubbed the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival,” this effort will mark the 50th anniversary of a similar initiative in 1968 that was undercut by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Your Boss Is Worth That Much? Really?

Lawrence S. Wittner History News Network
Why should 20 million Americans working at full-time jobs (sometimes two or three jobs) receive such pitiful incomes that they are forced to rely on food stamps while their CEOs grow ever wealthier?

Capitalism

The first and last rule of capitalism is this: Make More Capital. And it's killing us. But we can build better systems. There are plenty of options. We can change the rules.

America’s Broken Democracy

Jeffrey Sachs Project Syndicate
Behind the formal structures of a once-functioning democracy is a political system run by corporate interests with the cynical aims of cutting taxes on the rich, selling weapons, and polluting with impunity. In Trump, they have found a shameless frontman.

books

Why Are Economists Giving Piketty the Cold Shoulder?

Marshall Steinbaum Boston Review
Piketty's radical and largely on-target critique of contemporary capitalism, the reviewer says, was mostly greeted with hostility by the economics establishment, when not simply ignored, stonewalling Capital in the Twenty-First Century, so it would not have the impact on economics research agendas that it merits, particularly in explaining inequality — in effect a dead zone in mainstream economic analysis. The reviewer thinks much can be gleaned from Piketty's work.
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