How Did America's Wealth Inequality Reach This Level of Toxic?

We are just beginning to understand one further dimension of toxic inequality: a devastating emotional and physiological phenomenon we might call “toxic inequality syndrome.”

Thomas Piketty’s best-selling 2014 book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, brought attention to a different kind of inequality with a focus on capital. Yet many popular and academic accounts of inequality, spurred by media coverage and the emerging national discourse, continued to focus on income disparities, economic class, and the mega-rich. A preoccupation with income led to an insufficient understanding of the new inequality that left wealth out of the picture. President Barack Obama provided perhaps the crowning moment in this new public attention to economic inequality when he proclaimed in a December 2014 speech that inequality “is the defining challenge of our time.” But the president’s speech referenced income inequality eleven times and wealth inequality once. Leaving wealth out of the conversation is a crucial mistake, giving fodder to those who would make personal poverty the result of personal failings.

Read more >

Comments

George Carlin Explains How the System is Rigged | Video

George Carlin was more than just a comedian - he was an insightful social/political commentator as is demonstrated here. In this monologue from eight years ago, no punches are pulled, no sacred cows are exempt when he reveals the truth about the America we presently live in.

Schools Must Equip Students to Navigate Alt-right Websites That Push Fake News

More than 60 percent of America’s middle and high school students rely on alt-right internet sites as credible sources for their research papers. The students are using alt-right sites to write papers on topics that range from free speech and the Second Amendment to citizenship, immigration and the Holocaust. These were among the key findings of a preliminary survey of 200 teachers I conducted recently to develop a snapshot of how common it was for middle and high school students to turn to alt-right websites. As a researcher who specializes in teaching what is known as “ hard histories ,” including slavery, the Holocaust and other genocides, this finding is of concern, particularly as the nation approaches the one-year anniversary of the tragedy in Charlottesville, Virginia . Who they are The alt-right is a connected set of far-right groups , beliefs and individual people . They believe in white supremacy, and that it is under attack by multiculturalism, ...

More mental health care alone will not stop gun violence

Gun safety advocates hold signs during a rally to honor victims of gun violence on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver, 2013. AP/Brennan Linsley Jonathan Spiegler , Michigan State University and Jacob Smith , University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill Gun violence remains a highly controversial issue in the wake of school shootings in Parkland, Florida, and other communities . At such times, politicians seem compelled to offer the public solutions. The two most prominent solutions put forth are stricter gun control laws and addressing mental illness . The frequency with which these two solutions are proposed might suggest that they are equally important. Yet, there is little research that directly tests the relative effectiveness of stricter gun control versus a mental illness solution. We are political scientists who have studied this issue. In a forthcoming paper from Policy Studies Journal , we report on our study ...

Illusions Revolt!

Search This Blog