Levels of economic inequality are glaring.  That we know.  But they're actually getting worse in the US: between 2010 and 2013, inflation adjusted incomes for the bottom 90 percent of Americans actually fell, while it rose for the top 10 percent.  No wonder that Americans are so despondent about the country's direction.  We're on the road to serfdom, to co-opt the famous expression. Continue Reading...

Here's one business model: Pay your workers so little that half of them have to rely on public assistance, but you get to reap massive profits.  Here's another: Pay your workers a living wage, give them good benefits, and still make a profit, albeit not quite as handsome a one.  Which is better?  The latter, most would say.  Guess which business model we Americans practice?  The former.  It's called lowest common denominator capitalism, and it's Continue Reading...

London is a Tier I international city.  Global capital of culture?  Check.  International financial hub?  Check.  Gathering place for the world's ambitious and upwardly mobile?  Check.  Bastion of economic inequality and home of unhappy residents?  Check.  Keep calm and take in the paradoxes of perhaps the world's most dynamic and infuriating city. Continue Reading...

The executive at the head of the Wall Street entity - hedge fund, in this case - responsible for the biggest insider trading scandal ever remains free, fat, and happy.  That is Steven Cohen of SAC Capital, that is.  Amazing story of how ambition gone a muck sinks one of SAC's bright young things while Cohen slips the noose.  A must read, if lengthy. Continue Reading...

The Arab World is defunct.  The onetime progenitor of modern civilization, it has fallen into decrepitude, particularly in the wake of the Ottoman Empire's demise.  Now it's a mess - poor, autocratic, and sclerotic.  It's not going to get any better anytime soon, according to the author.  Welcome to a real-life dystopia.     Continue Reading...

“If an individual wants to discriminate against Negroes or others in selling or renting his house, it is his right to do so."  So said Ronald Reagan when running for governor of California in 1966.  Shocked?  You shouldn't be.  Racism and, more specifically, the backlash to the civil rights movement and its legal victories inspired and continues to inspire the GOP.  A party of and for bigots?  You decide. Continue Reading...

Stalin may now occupy an inner sanctum of hell, but to Vladimir Putin he occupies a hallowed place.  No wonder given the Russian leader's tyrannical disposition, which, for the keen observer, was evident before he assumed power over a decade ago.  Now the ugly unvarnished truth is clear to all.  His tenure won't end well - that much is guaranteed. Continue Reading...

America, it is often said, is formed around an idea: the idea that an individual - any individual - free and unencumbered, can achieve whatever his talents and ambition allow.  That's the stuff of the "American Dream."  But what if it's called the American Dream because, as George Carlin once said, you have to be dreaming to believe it?  That is, what if inequality has crushed the meritocracy beyond recognition?  What then? Continue Reading...

Special interests exert enormous and outsized influence in American politics.  Think of the NRA or Cuba lobby.  Then there's the pro-Israel lobby, with AIPAC at its head, which is arguably the most powerful of its kind in Washington.  According to Stephen Waltz, this comes at enormous cost to all involved, not least Israel, which is on a path of self-destruction. Continue Reading...

Debate about the 100-year-plus Jewish-Palestinian conflict is full of hyperbole.  Some critics of Israel utilize terms like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" and minimize the indefensible deeds of Palestinian militants.  Meanwhile, ardent Zionists often downplay or ignore the consequences of the Jewish state's multi-decade-long occupation of the West Bank and its isolation of Gaza.  It's an orgy of willful ignorance.  What a relief, then, to Continue Reading...

If you want a good example of why a winner-takes-all society of the sort that warms the Koch Brothers' cockles is eventually self-defeating, take a look at La Liga, the Spanish Football League. Two teams are world beaters - Barca and Real - while half of the entire League's clubs are in bankruptcy. A good metaphor for US income distribution. Continue Reading...

The acrimonious debate over abortion, contrary to what you might think, doesn't date to the Supreme Court's seminal decision, Roe vs. Wade. That generated a reliability muted response from the right. So what turned abortion into the wedge issue par excellence? An IRS decision to rescind Bob Jones University's tax exempt status because of its racist policies. Amazing, but true. Telling, too. Continue Reading...

Are you poor? If so, you're at fault. That's at least according to half of all self-identified Republicans, as well as a host of leading GOP luminaries, such as Paul Ryan. That 47 percent gaffe wasn't a gaffe whatsoever. The right really believes that poverty is moral failing. Continue Reading...

Remarkable interview of a remarkable man, anthropologist and academic David Graeber, by another remarkable man, author Thomas Frank.  The scope of Graeber's ideas, including about why right-wing populism appeals to the working class, precisely who are subjugated by the right, is astoundingly insightful.  A must read.  Pithy and perspicacious. Continue Reading...