Inequality

By Arvind Magesan | – Applied economists spend a large fraction of their time trying to squeeze meaningful answers — causal effects — out of observational data. Unlike the natural sciences, we can’t run experiments in order to answer the big questions in our field. If we want to know, for example, how raising the […]

Banking

Make them Pay Up: Pandora Leaks show that the Super-Rich rob Public of $200 bn a year in lost Tax Revenues

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their names […]

Inequality

Could Lebanon, Looted and mismanaged by its Plutocrats, become a Failed State?

The Conversation

By Tony Walker | – In the midst of a pandemic that has wrenched the world off its axis, Lebanon’s precipitous decline has not received the attention it deserves given the country’s strategic importance. Bordering Syria to its north and east, and Israel to its south, Lebanon occupies a critical space in the Eastern Mediterranean. […]

Democratic Party

Arguing with Sen. Joe Manchin

John Buell

As I write this piece the so called moderate Democrats are locked in combat with the party’s progressives, but what issues besides numbers to be appropriated receive scant attention. Since Senator Manchin plays so pivotal a role in this conflict it is imperative that progressives understand from where he is coming and formulate careful responses. […]

Corporations

Big Money’s War on Biden’s Popular Build Back Better Plan

OtherWords

By Sondra Youdelman | – ( Otherwords.org ) – Right now, corporations and the ultra-rich are spending millions to derail President Biden’s Build Back Better plan. Behind the scenes, they’re hard at work to keep our elected officials from helping our country recover from the pandemic. Poll after poll tells us that Biden’s plan is […]

Campaign Finance

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema angers Progressives, draws support of 40% of Republicans

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Diannie Chavez and Brenda Rivas | – ( Cronkite News ) – WASHINGTON – Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s refusal to back the Biden administration’s $3.5 trillion social and clean-energy spending package has made her a target for Democrats – and possibly “the most powerful person in Washington right now,” one analyst said. It’s not […]

Inequality

If even the Democratic Party can’t raise Taxes on the Super-Rich, is the US even a Democracy Any More?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The struggle over efforts to revise and reform the tax code offers left and labor activists as well as the “democratic wing” of the Democratic Party an opportunity to test its strength and to clear up some widely circulated but misleading facts about the distribution of wealth […]

Inequality

Fund the Jobs bill by taxing the Billionaires who have made the $1.8 trillion during the Pandemic

OtherWords

By Chuck Collins | – ( Otherwords.org) – As lawmakers scramble to finalize a historic jobs and infrastructure package, huge fights are underway to figure out how to fund it. The simplest, most effective, and most popular way is to tax the extremely wealthy, like the billionaires who’ve seen their collective wealth grow by $1.8 […]

Employment

Unemployment Insurance Isn’t Holding Back the Economy. Inequality Is.

OtherWords

By Rebekah Entralgo | – An estimated 9 million Americans got the rug pulled out from under them over Labor Day weekend as enhanced pandemic federal unemployment benefits expired, leaving millions of families in the lurch during a record-breaking season for COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Some 35 million people — nearly 1 in 10 Americans […]