Plutocracy

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Conservatives in both political parties want citizens to believe opposition to an increase in the minimum wage is a simple matter of supply and demand economics. If government regulators increase the price of hamburger, consumers will buy less hamamburger. Increase the price (wages) of labor and businesses […]

Inequality

Taxes on the Rich: One-Sixth of What They Used to Be

Inequality.org

By Bob Lord and Chuck Collins | – ( Inequality.org) – America hasn’t stopped taxing its wealthiest citizens entirely. But that’s where we’re headed. According to a new IPS briefing paper, the richest .01 percent of Americans, about 33,000 lucky souls today, now pay just one-sixth of what they used to pay in tax, when […]

Epidemics

Covid-19 Demonstrated How This Country Fails Its Most Vulnerable: A Field Guide to Our Threadbare Social Safety Net

Rajan Menon

( Tomdispatch.com) – Economic crises shine a spotlight on a society’s inequities and hierarchies, as well as its commitment to support those who are most vulnerable in such grievous moments. The calamity created by Covid-19 is no exception. The economic fallout from that pandemic has tested the nation’s social safety net as never before. Between […]

Featured

Ted Cruz vacationing in Cancun while millions freeze is par for the Course for the US Filthy Rich and their G.O.P Lapdogs

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Sen. Ted Cruz abandoning Texas to its fate, with millions suffering without power, to go off on a vacation in Cancun, Mexico, is the perfect metaphor for America in the age of monopoly capital. After all, many American corporations have taken a prolonged tax holiday in the Caribbean. Some 18 […]

Climate Crisis

From Covid to Power outages in Ice Storms, the Texas Republican Party has created a Failed State

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Republican Party has had a lock on Texas politics for over two decades, and has reduced it to a failed state. Even Texans like Beto O’Rourke are making this observation. Millions are without electricity in the midst of one of the state’s worse winter storms ever. This massive failure […]

Donald Trump

Who were the Republican Senators afraid of when they Acquitted their own attempted murderer?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The odious Trump once smugly observed that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” When it comes to the Republican base, he was clearly correct. The opinion polling shows that registered Republicans still overwhelmingly support Trump even after he unleashed […]

Democracy

America’s Transition Away from Democracy and the World’s Wave of De-Democratization

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The twentieth century was in the eyes of some observers an uneven but steady march to democracy. Those who study transitions from authoritarian governments to democracy have defined a successful transition as characterized by two elections in a row, where all parties agree on the rules of the game, and […]

Inequality

The Gamestop Affair shows that America is over-financialized and needs a tax on speculation

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – It would be unfair to suggest that the titans of Wall Street are oblivious to poverty. One of their central themes is the role that financial literacy can play in teaching citizens how wealth is acquired and maintained. In their worldview saving and investing in the stock […]

Djibouti

City-State or Empire? The United Arab Emirates Seeks dominance in the Horn of Africa

Middle East Monitor

By Usman Butt | – ( Middle East Monitor) – Since the 2011 Arab Spring the United Arab Emirates has been taking an active role in a number of hotspots from Egypt, Libya to Yemen. The Gulf nation has spent $26 billion annually on its defence budget since 2016 and this is expected to increase […]