Plutocracy

The Ever Given’s Blockage of the Suez Canal and World Trade showed the Downsides of Monopoly Capitalism

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – News media, maritime experts, and a curious public could hardly take their eyes off the Ever Given, the mega cargo ship as long as the Empire State Building is tall. Viewers were stunned to see the ship swung sideways to the canal and thus blocking transit in […]

Inequality

How the Pandemic spelled the end of Trickle-Down Economics: We need Wealth to Percolate up

Jim Hightower

( Otherwords.org) – The past year proves that a lot of conventional economic wisdom is neither true nor wise. For example: 1) “We don’t have the money.” The power elites tell us it would be nice to do the big-ticket reforms America needs, but the money just isn’t there. Then a pandemic slammed into America, […]

Inequality

On Tax Day, the Billionaires must Start Paying their Fair Share

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – On Tax Day, there’s more than one elephant in the room, and they’re all in mansions. Elephants occupy the bulging mansions of 657 American billionaires, 43 of them new this past pandemic year. Their combined wealth soared to $4.2 trillion – up $1.3 trillion – between March 21, […]

Employment

The Decades-Long Struggle Over Big Corporations and Poverty Wages

Inequality.org

By Phil Mattera | – ( Inequality.org ) – The Senate Parliamentarian dealt a strong blow to the Fight for $15 movement by ruling that a federal minimum wage increase could be included in the stimulus bill. Senator Bernie Sanders is pushing back with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations […]

Epidemics

Rich Nations are Getting Vaccines, Poor Countries Not: Which is a Big Danger to Rich Countries

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Our commercial media have followed the ups and downs of the vaccine roll out in the United States even as much less attention is devoted to the experience of poor nations. Pundits and TV anchors periodically acknowledge that lethal viruses don’t respect borders but seldom discuss the […]

Inequality

If We Want to Renew Democracy, We Need to Tax the Ultra-Wealthy

Inequality.org

By Madeleine Johnsson | – ( Inequality.org ) – Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Pramila Jayapal’s Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2021, introduced March 1, could not be a more timely reminder that the United States needs serious policy changes to address massive wealth and income inequality. While eight million Americans slipped into poverty and half […]

Arms Sales

Failing Upward: Pentagon’s more and more Expensive Boondoggles (that don’t even work)

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com) – Cancel culture is a common, almost viral, term in political and social discourse these days. Basically, somebody expresses views considered to be outrageous or vile or racist or otherwise insensitive and inappropriate. In response, that person is “canceled,” perhaps losing a job or otherwise sidelined and silenced. In being deplatformed by Twitter, […]

Epidemics

The Real Threats to America are the Pandemic and Poverty; why Give Ever More Money to the Pentagon?

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This country is in a crisis of the first order. More than half a million of us have died thanks to Covid-19. Food insecurity is on the rise, with nearly 24 million Americans going hungry, including 12 million children. Unemployment claims filed since the pandemic began have […]

Donald Trump

The 7 Deadly Sins of Today’s Conservatives

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – That someone at the conservative political convention, CPAC, thought it a good idea to put up a gilded statue of the odious Trump says it all. Today’s conservatives are literally worshiping a gold calf, for all the world like straying children of Israel who lapsed from their devotion to God. […]