How Inequality Hurts

This category contains 105 posts

Segregation’s Insidious New Look

Racial segregation dominated the American residential landscape for generations. We can’t afford, suggests the research of Stanford’s Sean Reardon, to let economic segregation have anywhere near as long a run.

Our Grand Fortunes, Our Grand Waste

Good things trickle down from the top, cheerleaders for grand fortune like to argue, when wealth concentrates. In real life, suggests economist Robert Frank, inequality makes things worse even for its ostensible beneficiaries.

The Flacks for Plutocrats Need a New Analogy

New research and another dose of on-the-ground reality are shredding what little credibility the rationalizers of inequality have left.

Democracy Lite: All Form and No Substance

America’s most powerful economic policy maker dramatically charges that inequality is choking off opportunity for average families. Political candidates across the nation pay absolutely no attention.

Our Empathetic Rich: The Rarest of Birds

A landmark new study has laid bare the dirty little secret of modern American philanthropy: America’s wealthy don’t particularly care all that much about the rest of us.

Why an Unequal Planet Can Never Be Green

The more wealth concentrates, the greater the strain on our biosphere. Top environmentalists get that connection. Now our societies must.

America’s Distinctly Unequal Playing Fields

Teenagers are learning lessons — about inequality — on America’s high school gridirons. When are their elders going to catch on?

Inside Our Profoundly Unequal ‘New Normal’

Wealth’s current tilt to the top sometimes seems almost eternal. But can our economy ‘self-correct’? A provocative new paper out of the developed world’s official research agency contemplates our tomorrow.

A Private Putsch Against Public Schooling

Deep in the heart of Texas, still another billionaire is scheming to make public education a rewarding business investment opportunity.

The Dark Shadows Grand Fortune Casts

In urban hotspots like New York, the slender luxury towers of the global super rich are assaulting the sky. Inequality is literally blocking out the sun.