By Paul Krugman As evidence grew in 2002 to exonerate the Central Park Five, their supporters demanded an apology from Donald Trump, who, soon after their arrest, had called for the return of the death penalty. Credit: Frances Roberts Let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way. Yes, Donald Trump is a vile racist. He regularly […]
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Jeff Bezos’s $150 Billion Fortune Is A Policy Failure
Growing inequality in the United States shows that the game is rigged. By Annie Lowrey Joshua Roberts / Reuters Last month, Bloomberg reportedthat Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has accumulated a fortune worth $150 billion. That is the biggest nominal amount in modern history, and extraordinary any way […]
Conservatives’ Three Simple Steps for Getting Out of Poverty
What to do when financial stability is beyond one’s grasp? Over the past decade, a coterie of punditsand think-tank scholars have arrived at a surefire answer, a simple one that comes with a snappy title and puts the onus on the individual: pursue the “success sequence.” The slogan refers to a time-honored series of life events: […]
Generation Screwed
Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future of any generation since the Great Depression. By Michael Hobbes Like everyone in my generation, I am finding it increasingly difficult not to be scared about the future and angry about the past. I am 35 years old—the oldest millennial, the first millennial—and for a decade now, […]
The Kingpins of Carbon and Their War on Democracy
Global warming is a potentially devastating problem requiring urgent action by governments. However, to date the U.S. government has remained largely paralyzed. Now new Greenpeace research has shed light on the sources of paralysis, a multi-decade war on democracy by the kingpins of carbon – the coal, oil, and gas industries allied with a handful […]
The Hoarding of the American Dream
In a new book, a Brookings scholar argues that the upper-middle class has enriched itself and harmed economic mobility. ANNIE LOWREY There’s a certain type of financial confessional that has had a way of going viral in the post-recession era. The University of Chicago law professor complaining his family was barely keeping their heads above […]
Finally, the American Realities book was published by Steidl!
You can check it out and order it here. And this is a review on Slate.com. “Anybody Could Fall Into Such Hardship”: A Photographer’s Look at Poverty in America By David Rosenberg Joakim Eskildsen never considered himself to be an assignment photographer. That changed when Kira Pollack, Time’s director of photography, asked him to work on […]
Why the Poor Die Young
By Derek Thompson April 12, 2016 A massive study of health and income found that smoking, obesity, and exercise are the most important determinants of longevity. Poor neighborhoods score worse in all of them. What’s going on? “Geography is destiny.” Economists once used this theory to try to explain the difference between rich and poor […]
Lake Wobegon Days: Half Of American Children Are In Near Poverty
By: Tim Worstall March 3, 2016 The idea that half of all American children are in poverty or near being in poverty is not one that we’d really be comfortable entertaining. It would show that our society isn’t taking care of the most vulnerable people within it for example. And that’s what a new report […]
Why Are White Death Rates Rising?
By ANDREW J. CHERLIN FEB. 22, 2016 IT’S disturbing and puzzling news: Death rates are rising for white, less-educated Americans. The economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton reported in December that rates have been climbing since 1999 for non-Hispanic whites age 45 to 54, with the largest increase occurring among the least educated. An analysis […]
10 States Most (and Least) Likely to Live Paycheck to Paycheck
By Terence Loose The state in which you choose to live can play a big role in how far your paycheck stretches each month. Some states are just more expensive than others, forcing you to spend more of your paycheck on necessities. GOBankingRates has identified the best — and worst — states for avoiding a […]
Lower pay for poor is widening US income gap, study finds
By Josh Boak WASHINGTON (AP) — The income gap in major U.S. cities goes beyond the trend of rising paychecks for those at the top: Pay has plummeted for those at the bottom. Many of the poorest households still earn just a fraction of what they made before the Great Recession began in late 2007. […]
Mismeasuring Poverty
A federal tally of assistance to the poor missed 40% of food-stamp recipients in New York state. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/IKON IMAGES By Robert Doar Here’s good news for policy makers—on the right and left—concerned about poverty in the United States. A new study by economists Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago and Nikolas Mittag […]
‘Poverty pay’ leads Walmart employees to skip lunch – or steal it from coworkers
Workers group Our Walmart announces 15-day fast to protest company’s wages, demanding $15 an hour and full-time schedules ahead of busy holiday season How low can you go? Walmart’s workers don’t want to find out. Photograph: Lucas Jackson/Reuters Walmart employees are so poor that they are skipping lunch, sharing it or, in some cases, stealing […]
What if Everything You Knew About Poverty Was Wrong
Researcher Kathryn Edin left the ivory tower for the streets of Camden—and turned sociology upside down. —By Stephanie Mencimer BLOND AND MIDWESTERN CHEERFUL, Kathryn Edin could be a cruise director, except that instead of showing off the lido deck, she’s pointing out where the sex traffickers live off a run-down strip of East Camden, New […]
The Broken Contract: Inequality and American Decline
This essay by New Yorker writer George Packer does an excellent job of laying out some of the reasons why we are seeing widening economic inequality in America and what this means for our country. In fact, this article is what inspired me to create the American Realities website. I strongly suggest you read it. […]
Child poverty is a moral disgrace. And expensive. New report by the Children’s Defense Fund
It is a national moral disgrace that there are 14.7 million poor children and 6.5 million extremely poor children in the United States of America – the world’s largest economy. It is also unnecessary, costly and the greatest threat to our future national, economic and military security. The 14.7 million poor children in our nation […]
Reducing Our Obscene Level of Child Poverty
By: Charles M. Blow I’m not someone who believes that poverty can ever truly be ended — I’m one of those “the poor will always be with you” types — but I do believe that the ranks of the poor can and must be shrunk and that the effects of poverty can and must be […]
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