OMNI
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY/POVERTY USA AND WORLD
ANTHOLOGY #7, February 19, 2024
Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and
Ecology
HTTPS://Omnicenter.org/donate/
CONTENTS
Books
Mark Paul. The Ends of Freedom: Reclaiming America’s
Lost Promise of Economic Rights.
John Freeman.
Tales
of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation.
Martin Gilens and Benjamin
Page. Democracy in America? What
Has Gone Wrong and What We Can Do About It.
articles
Ian Angus.
“Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class.”
Chris Hedges. “Know Thine Enemy: We are Ruled by
One War Party and One Political Class.”
Katharina Buchholz. “The Living Wage Gap.”
Prabhat Patnaik. “What the GDP Hides.”
Ari Paul. “Source Who Revealed How Taxes Steal
for the Rich Rewarded with Five Years in Prison.”
Ben
Norton. “Global 1% own 43% of financial
assets, 5 richest billionaires doubled wealth while 5 billion workers got
poorer.”
April Holcombe.
“At Davos, the inmates run the asylum—and the world.”
Olúfẹ́mi
O Táíwò. “Elite Capture: How the
Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else)”
John Clarke. “The changing climate
of class struggle.”
Ekaterina Cabylis. “Alienation under capitalism and the conspiracy
pipeline.”
Jacqueline Luqman.
“The history of affirmative action exposes its
reactionary weaknesses.”
Sue Bull. “Patriarchy and the origins of women’s oppression.”
Denis Moynihan. “Everybody should see ‘Every Body’.”
Oxfam International. “Richest 1% bag
nearly twice as much wealth as the rest of the world put together over the past
two years.”
Sam
Pizzigati. “Tax The Rich? We Did That Once”
Staughton Lynd. “¡Presente!”
The Tricontinental. “Discussing pathways towards a more just
world.”
Redflag.
“Capitalism: great for the rich, shit for the poor.”
David Ruccio.
“How to lie with inequality statistics.”
John Bellamy
Foster. “Grand Theft Capital: The
Increasing Exploitation and Robbery of the U.S.”
Ben Hillie. “The ruling class in Australia.”
List of Journal Sources
(22 from around the world)
Agonas
Black Agenda Report
Canadian Dimension
Climate & Capitalism
Democracy Now
Common Dreams
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Geopolitical Economy Report
Inequality.org
International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Marx & Philosophy
Monthly Review
Occasional Links on Economics, Culture &
Society
Oxfam International
Peoples Democracy
Popular Resistance
Portside
Red Flag
Scheer Post
Statista
The Tricontinental
Zinn Education Project
|
|
TEXTS
BOOKS
Scott Ferguson Interviews Mark Paul. The
Ends of Freedom. Mronline.org
(7-2-23).
Mark Paul joins Money on the Left to discuss his
new book, The Ends of Freedom:
Reclaiming America’s Lost Promise of Economic Rights (University of Chicago P, 2023).
In his book, Paul scours U.S. political and economic
history to recover,
reclaim, and adapt the rhetoric of economic rights for our current political
moment.
John Freeman (editor).
Tales
of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation. OR Books,
Thirty-six major contemporary writers
examine life in a deeply divided America—including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett,
Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat,
Richard Russo, Eula Bliss, Karen Russell, and many more
America is broken. You don’t need a
fistful of statistics to know this. Visit any city, and evidence of our
shattered social compact will present itself. From Appalachia to the Rust Belt
and down to rural Texas, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest
stretches to unimaginable chasms. Whether the cause of this inequality is
systemic injustice [tax system], the entrenchment of racism in our culture, the
long war on drugs, or immigration policies, it endangers not only the American
Dream but our very lives.
In Tales of Two Americas, some of the literary world’s most exciting writers look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation. Their extraordinarily powerful stories, essays, and poems demonstrate how boundaries break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches so many people.
PRAISE
“A brilliant anthology… There is so much excellent writing in the
pages of Tales of Two Americas.” —Salon
“Poignant and profound, Tales of Two Americas… unites a
multiplicity of voices into a powerful rallying cry.”—NPR.org
“Each contribution stands out. Each voice is unique. The only common
threads in the collection are theme and excellence… This anthology is
spectacular and devastating and provocative.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“…masterful and affecting stories, essays, and poems by 36 writers profoundly
attuned to the sources and implications of social rupture. These are sharply
inquisitive and provocative works…” —Booklist (starred review)
“Urgent, worthy reportage from our fractious, volatile social and cultural
moment.” —Kirkus
John Freeman (editor). Tales of Two Planets: Stories of Climate Change and Inequality in a
Divided World. 2020.
Publisher’s
description: Building from his
acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas,
beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest
writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is
hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.
In
the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international
literary magazine, Freeman’s, and
compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is
experienced. In the course of this work, one major theme came up repeatedly:
Climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse, devastating
further the already devastated. But the problems of climate change are not
restricted to those from the less developed world.
Galvanized
by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman
engaged with some of today’s most eloquent storytellers, many of whom hail from
the places under the most acute stress–from the capital of Burundi to Bangkok,
Thailand. The response has been extraordinary. Margaret Atwood conjures up a
dystopian future in a remarkable poem. Lauren Groff whisks us to Florida;
Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh; Yasmine El Rashidi to
Egypt, while Eka Kurniawan brings us to Indonesia, Chinelo Okparanta to
Nigeria, and Anuradha Roy to the Himalayas in the wake of floods, dam building,
and drought. This is a literary all-points bulletin of fiction, essays, poems,
and reportage about the most important crisis of our times.
Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò. Elite Capture:
How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). Reviewed by Kevin Dodson in Marx & Philosophy (August 29, 2023). (More by Marx & Philosophy).
(Posted Aug 30, 2023). Class, Culture,
Ideology,
WarGlobalNewswire,
ReviewOlúfẹ́mi
O Táíwò. Editor. mronline.org (8-31-23).
The
culture wars are back with a vengeance, if they ever actually left us.
Throughout the world, right-wing populist regimes use widespread resentment
against governing elites to stoke anger and fear of marginalized populations,
cutbacks in public services and increased authoritarian repression, all while
claiming the mantle of cultural authenticity. Much of this resentment is
targeted by the political right at the ‘identity politics’ of the left.
With Elite Capture, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò has contributed an important and
insightful critique of the successes and limitations of identity politics as
currently practiced on the center-left and left. In short, Táíwò seeks to
restore the sense of identity politics as originally formulated by the seminal
Combahee River Collective.
The culture wars are back with a vengeance, if
they ever actually left us.
Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page. Democracy in America?: What Has Gone Wrong
and What We Can Do About It. 2017.
With a New Afterword
America faces daunting
problems—stagnant wages, high health care costs, neglected schools,
deteriorating public services. How did we get here? Through decades of
dysfunctional government. In Democracy
in America? veteran political observers Benjamin I. Page and Martin
Gilens marshal an unprecedented array of evidence to show that while other
countries have responded to a rapidly changing economy by helping people who’ve
been left behind, the United States has failed to do so. Instead, we
have actually exacerbated inequality, enriching corporations and the wealthy
while leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
What’s the solution? More democracy. More opportunities for citizens
to shape what their government does. To repair our democracy, Page and Gilens
argue, we must change the way we choose candidates and conduct our elections,
reform our governing institutions, and curb the power of money in politics. By
doing so, we can reduce polarization and gridlock, address pressing challenges,
and enact policies that truly reflect the interests of average Americans.
Updated with new information, this book lays out a set of proposals that would
boost citizen participation, curb the power of money, and democratize the House
and Senate.
articles
Ian Angus. “Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class.” Climate & Capitalism ( December 12, 2021).
Mronline.org (12-20-21). Deprived of land and common rights, the English poor were forced into
wage-labor. (more
by Climate & Capitalism). Class, Imperialism, Inequality, LaborEnglandCommentaryCapital versus Commons, Featured, Part 4, wage-labor
Articles in this series:
Commons and
classes before capitalism
‘Systematic
theft of communal property’
Against
Enclosure: The Commonwealth Men
Dispossessed: Origins of the Working Class
WE ARE RULED BY ONE WAR PARTY AND ONE POLITICAL
CLASS
“Know Thine
Enemy” By Chris Hedges, Scheer
Post. The Congressional decision
to prohibit railroad workers from going on strike
and force them to accept a contract that meets few of their
demands is part of the class war that has defined American politics for
decades. The two ruling political parties differ only in rhetoric. They are
bonded in their determination to reduce wages; dismantle social programs, which
the Bill Clinton administration did with welfare; and thwart unions and
prohibit strikes, the only tool workers have to pressure employers. This latest
move against the railroad unions, where working conditions
have descended into a special kind of hell... -more-
Buchholz, Katharina. ”The Living Wage
Gap.” Statista (December 22, 2023
(Posted Feb 12, 2024). ). (More by Statista). Economic Theory, Financialization, Political EconomyAmericas, United StatesNewswire.
Editor. mronline.org
(2-13-24).
According to an analysis from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, the minimum wage does not suffice to pay for a typical set of
living expenses in any state of the United States. Hawaii, Georgia and Utah,
where the living wage gap exceeded $10 per hour, fared the worst.
Prabhat Patnaik.
“What the GDP
hides.” Peoples Democracy (February 4, 2024).
(More
by Peoples Democracy). Capitalism, Economic Crisis, Financialization, Political EconomyGlobalNewswireGDP. Mronline.org
(2-8-24).
There are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross
domestic product as well as with its measurement.
Ari Paul. “Source who revealed
how taxes steal for the rich rewarded with five years in prison." FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy
in Reporting). Feb. 2,
2024. (Posted Feb 07, 2024). Human Rights, Imperialism, Incarceration, InequalityAmericas, United StatesNewswireCharles Littlejohn, Internal Revenue Service (IRS),
Taxes. Mronline.org
(2-8-24).
Because of Charles Littlejohn, we know
that former President Donald Trump and a whole bunch of other rich people pay
next to nothing in taxes, while the rest of us frantically file tax returns and
see our wages sucked away to fund the military, aid for Israel and corporate
subsidies. Littlejohn, a former consultant at the Internal Revenue Service,
leaked these tax returns, which resulted in major investigative findings for
the New York Times (9/27/20) and ProPublica (6/8/21). For leaking this sensitive information,
Littlejohn has been sentenced to five years in federal prison, the maximum jail
term (CNN, 1/29/24).
Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole
Argentieri said in a statement (1/29/24):
Charles Littlejohn abused his position as
a consultant at the Internal Revenue Service by disclosing thousands of
Americans’ federal tax returns and other private financial information to news
organizations. He violated his responsibility to safeguard the sensitive
information that was entrusted to his care, and now he is a convicted felon. Littlejohn’s lawyers (Bloomberg, 1/18/24) had argued that he had acted “out of a deep, moral
belief that the American people had a right to know the information and sharing
it was the only way to effect change.”
The extremity of the sentence “will
chill future whistleblowers from revealing corruption and wrongdoing,” the
Freedom of the Press Foundation (1/30/24) said. Slate writer Alex Sammon (Twitter, 1/29/24) said, “This guy is a hero who showed us how the
super-rich steal from the American public.” Nevertheless, he added, the judge gave him a max sentence, claiming it was ‘a moral
imperative’ to punish him as harshly as possible.
‘Basic unfairness’
After
the ProPublica investigation was released, Republicans called for
investigation into how the documents were leaked, while progressives used the
data to call for a reform in the tax code (ProPublica, 6/9/21). The findings gave new political life to the Occupy
Wall Street movement’s central argument about wealth inequality being enforced
by government policy.
Binyamin
Appelbaum of the New York Times editorial board (6/8/21) wrote that there is a “basic unfairness that the
wealthy are living by a different set of rules, lavishly spending money that
isn’t taxed as income.” He added that the “ProPublica story underscores
the argument for transparency: It allows Americans to judge how well the system
is working.”
In
response to the investigation, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said: ”Tax the
billionaires. Make them pay their fair share. Rebuild our nation’s crumbling
infrastructure” (Twitter, 6/8/21). ProPublica (7/14/21) later reported the leaks reignited congressional
action to tackle regressive taxation:
Elizabeth Warren (D—Mass.) and Sheldon
Whitehouse (D—R.I.) wrote to the [Senate Finance] committee’s chairman, Ron
Wyden (D—Ore.), that the “bombshell” and “deeply troubling” [ProPublica] report
requires an investigation into “how the nation’s wealthiest individuals are
using a series of legal tax loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of
income taxes.” The senators also requested that the Senate hold hearings and
develop legislation to address the loopholes’ “impact on the nation’s finances
and ability to pay for investments in infrastructure, health care, the economy,
and the environment.”
The New York Times (9/27/20) reported that Trump’s tax returns “show that he
depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential
and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.”
At
the time of the investigation, I noted (FAIR.org, 6/17/21) that the outrage against the leaks among Republicans,
the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times was proof
that the ProPublica report was something more than momentarily
important.
How power works. . . . MORE click on title
Ben Norton. “Global 1%
own 43% of financial assets, 5 richest billionaires doubled wealth while 5
billion workers got poorer.” Geopolitical Economy Report (January 18, 2024) . Editor. mronline.org (1-28-24).
(Posted Jan 27, 2024)
Capitalism, Class,
Imperialism,
InequalityGlobalNewswire1%,
Bernard
Arnault, Elon Musk, Global
North, Jeff Bezos, Larry
Ellison, Oxfam, Warren
Buffett, World Economic Forum (WEF), Worlds
Richest
The
world’s richest 1% own 43% of global financial assets, and the wealth of the
top five billionaires has doubled since 2020, while 60% of humanity—nearly 5
billion people—collectively got poorer, according to a report by Oxfam, a
leading international humanitarian organization. Oxfam published the study, “Inequality Inc.”,
to coincide with the World Economic Forum meeting of corporate oligarchs and
Western government officials in Davos, Switzerland this January.
April Holcombe. “At Davos, the inmates run the
asylum—and the world.” Red Flag (January 24, 2024 ).
(more by Red
Flag) | (Posted Jan 26, 2024).
Capitalism, Class,
Climate
Change, EnvironmentEurope,
Global,
SwitzerlandNewswireWorld Economic Forum (WEF). Editor. mronline.org (1-27-24).
Davos,
a small skiing town in Switzerland, once a year becomes the world’s most
consequential insane asylum. On Europe’s highest populated mountaintop, 3,000
of the global elite meet to ponder why the climate they pollute is so polluted,
why the people they impoverish are so poor and why the world they fight over is
at war. The World Economic Forum (WEF)
is the ruling-class Comic-Con, a fantasy fortress where the 1 percent’s 1
percent can save the world that they are sending to hell. MORE click on title
John Clarke. “The changing climate of
class struggle.” Canadian Dimension ( August 28, 2023). Editor. mronline.org (8-31-23). (more
by Canadian Dimension) | (Posted Aug
30, 2023)
Class, Climate Change, Environment, HealthAmericas, Canada, United StatesNewswire
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-changing-climate-of-class-struggle
Clarke: The social and
economic consequences of climate change will play out along deeply entrenched
fault lines of inequality.
Ekaterina Cabylis. “
Alienation under capitalism and the conspiracy
pipeline.” Agonas (August 21, 2023). (More by Agonas)
(Posted Aug 28, 2023).
Capitalism,
Economic Crisis, Economic
Theory, Political EconomyGlobalNewswire
Editor. mronline.org (8-29-23). https://agonas.substack.com/p/alienation-under-capitalism-and-the
When class analysis is
absent from discussions about systemic problems, issues like income inequality,
access to resources, and power imbalances are often oversimplified or ignored.
Jacqueline Luqman. “The history of affirmative
action exposes its reactionary weaknesses.” Black Agenda Report , July 12, 2023. (More by Black Agenda Report). (Posted Jul 19, 2023)
Empire,
History,
Human
Rights, RaceAmericas,
United StatesNewswire. MRonline Editor. https://www.blackagendareport.com/history-affirmative-action-exposes-its-reactionary-weaknesses
Affirmative action began as a reparations
program but ends as a "diversity" project which barely benefits Black
people.
Sue Bull.
Patriarchy and the origins of
women’s oppression. International
Journal of Socialist Renewal. July 16, 2023. MRONLINE
Editor.
Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. (Posted Jul
19, 2023)
Class,
Culture,
Feminism,
InequalityGlobalNewswireOppression,
Women's
Oppression. https://links.org.au/patriarchy-and-origins-womens-oppression
Any vision of a world beyond capitalism
involves the liberation of women from oppression, exploitation and
discrimination. But just because we might have been able to win revolutionary
social change, it does not mean that equal economic, social and cultural rights
will be automatic for women.
Denis Moynihan. “Everybody should see ‘Every Body’.” DemocracyNow! July 13, 2023. (Posted Jul 19, 2023). Editor. mronline.org (7-20-23). Culture,
Human
Rights, LGBTQ, MediaAmericas,
United StatesNewswire"Every
Body" https://mronline.org/2023/07/19/everybody-should-see-every-body/
A wave of exclusion is sweeping the nation, in
state legislatures and federal courts, including the Supreme Court.
Oxfam. “Richest 1% bag nearly twice as much wealth as the
rest of the world put together over the past two years.” CADTM - Committee for the Abolition
of Illegitimate Debt. (Jan. 27, 2023). Editor.
Mronline.org (1-20-23).
According to a new
report published by Oxfam, the richest 1 percent grabbed nearly two-thirds of
all new wealth worth $42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much
money as the bottom 99 percent of the world’s population, reveals a new Oxfam
report today. During the past decade, the richest 1 percent had captured around
half of all new wealth.
Sam Pizzigati.
“Tax The
Rich? We Did That Once” By Inequality.org. Popular
Resistance.org (12-8-22).
Once upon a time, the United States seriously taxed the nation’s
rich. You remember that time? Probably not. To have a personal memory of that
tax-the-rich era, you now have to be well into your seventies. Back at the
tail-end of that era, in the early 1960s, America’s richest faced a 91 percent
tax rate on income in the top tax bracket. That top rate had been hovering
around 90 percent for the previous two decades. In the 1950s, a Republican
president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, made no move to knock it down. -more-
“Staughton
Lynd, ¡Presente!” November
17, 2022.
Zinn Education Project, Portside (11-20-22).
Lynd explored the biggest little secret, one people
everywhere should heed: We who do the work can build a better world, and we can
best do it without the parasitic Super Rich who contribute nothing and weigh us
down like a monstrous ball and chain.
“Discussing pathways towards a more just world.”
The
Tricontinental.
Mronline.org (10-27-22). This dossier is about inequality, or
inequalities, between the North and South, between the rich and poor, and
between the classes that labour and those that profit.
|
David Ruccio. “How to lie with inequality statistics.”
Mronline.org
(2-12-22).
https://anticap.wordpress.com/2022/02/07/how-to-lie-with-inequality-statistics/
Occasional Links on
Economics, Culture and Society
It’s a “simple story,”
with clear political implications. Maybe that’s the reason the Krugmans of the
world don’t want to tell it. . .
Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy
Foster. “Grand Theft Capital:
The Increasing Exploitation and Robbery of the U.S. Working Class.” Monthly Review. mronline.org (5-14-23).
The
working class is being robbed, both through outright expropriation and the more
hidden exploitation of countless workers who are struggling to make ends meet
while capitalists pocket the surplus value they produce. Fred Magdoff and John
Bellamy Foster dissect the neoliberal assault on the working class that is
spurring a new generation of labor organizing.
|
Dan La Botz. “When the Rich Get a Global Rescue Mission and the
Drowning Poor Get... Nothing.”
Common Dreams (6-24-23). |
|
A story of two sinking vessels in a world of
extreme inequality. |
“The ruling class in Australia.” Red Flag.
Editor. Mronline.org (5-20-22).
https://redflag.org.au/article/ruling-class-australia
Who rules Australia?
The politicians, the ultra-wealthy class of capitalists or the high-powered
bureaucrats who run the state—the military generals, court justices, heads of
government departments and so on? The answer is all three. Together, they make up
the Australian ruling class.
ECONOMIC INEQUALITY NEWSLETTER #6
February 7, 2022
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-economic-inequality-newsletter-2.html
Eric Schutz. Inequality,
Class, and Economics.
Sanjay Roy. “World Inequality Report 2022.”
Meagan Day. “The Rich Are Committing Crimes Against
Nature.”
Vijay Prashad. “A Programme for a future society that we will build in
the present.” (2022)
Nicole Aschoff.
“Smooth Criminals.” Jacobin (Fall 2021).
Martin Hart-Landsberg. “The dollar costs of inequality: they are greater than you think.”
Tomgram: Liz Theoharis. “The Politics of the Poor in an America on
Edge.”
UN Wire.
75% of innoculations so far went to only 10 countries.
Rupa Marya and Raj Patel. Inflamed:
Deep Medicine and the Anatomy of Injustice.
END INEQUALITY
ANTHOLOGY #7
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