Portside

As CAPITAL & MAIN's “State of Equality” series has documented, economic inequality poses a grave threat to California’s future. Conditions would be far worse if not for progress made by activists, community leaders and lawmakers. In the last several years, California has generated some of the nation’s most innovative and effective strategies to reverse inequality. Here Judith Lewis Mernit lists 10 landmark achievements worth celebrating,emulating and strengthening.

If the top one percent were taxed at the same rate as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would raise $68 billion per year. Similarly, if the top 20 percent paid the same as the middle 20 percent, states and localities would generate $128 billion each year.

Runaway CEO Pay in 30 Seconds. Jimmy Greene -- Where Is the Love? Delta Flight Attendants: Vote Union. Baba Brinkman – So Infectious. Vindicating Freedom Fighters.

Increasing inequality and poverty are very far from inevitable. They’re the result of political and economic decisions.

Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz talks about what forces are driving economic inequality and a policy framework for reversing the trend.

Given the pressing worldwide realities of disinvestment, land grabbing, rent increases, evictions and displacement; a class analysis applied to housing and urban issues is more urgent than ever. Gentrification is the neighborhood expression of class inequality. Its positives are only felt by those who profit from the loss of housing opportunities of others. And there is nothing remotely natural about it.

The so-called Uber or “on-demand” economy is a rerun of the oldest sort of business: middlemen insinuating themselves between buyers and sellers. The vital ingredient, without which this new economy would fall apart, is inequality. All that modern technology has done is make it easier, through omnipresent smartphones, to amass a fleet of increasingly desperate jobseekers eager to take whatever work they can get.

Chokehold Death Protests. Economic Agenda for America. Springsteen: My Oklahoma Home. She's Beautiful When She's Angry. The Feather and the Cannonball.