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A protestor holds up a sign which reads "tax the rich."
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The Founders Knew Great Wealth Inequality Could Destroy Us

At the founding of America, leaders predicted that a concentration of wealth would weaken the republic.
by Daniel R. Mandell via Made By History on July 7, 2025
Vintage illustration of three generations of a 1950s American family, sitting in their living room watching television (screen print), 1950.

How Social Reactionaries Exploit Economic Nostalgia

Conservatives think we need traditional hierarchies to reverse social decline; But it’s the economic equality created by strong unions that Americans miss.
by Meagan Day via Jacobin on May 20, 2025

The Surprising Origins and Politics of Equality

Should equality, instead of another political ideal, should be at the center of our politics?
by Samuel Moyn via The Nation on August 27, 2024
Branko Milanovic, 2017.

The Problematic Past, Present, and Future of Inequality Studies

An intellectual history of inequality in economic theory reveals the ideological reasons behind the field’s resurgence in the last few decades.
by Branko Milanović, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on March 20, 2024
Exhibit

Economic Inequality

Histories of wealth disparity in the US, those who have challenged it, and those who have exploited it.
A man walking down an unpaved street in an impoverished Appalachian neighborhood.

What the Best Places in America Have in Common

The Index of Deep Disadvantage reflects a more holistic view of how we can define "poverty."
by H. Luke Shaefer, Timothy J. Nelson, Kathryn J. Edin via The Atlantic on August 5, 2023
United States Capitol

America Is Headed Toward Collapse

How has America slid into its current age of discord? Why has our trust in institutions collapsed, and why have our democratic norms unraveled?
by Peter Turchin via The Atlantic on June 2, 2023
Oxford University.

Elite Universities Gave Us Effective Altruism, the Dumbest Idea of the Century

The result has been reactionary, often racist intellectual defenses of inequality.
by Linsey McGoey via Jacobin on January 19, 2023
Painting of people on a fishing boat

A Cosmic Lie

A conversation about "Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World."
by Peter S. Goodman, Lewis H. Lapham via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 4, 2022
Men wearing tuxedos carry a coffin and a "Here Lies Jim Crow" sign down a street as a demonstration against "Jim Crow" segregation laws in 1944.

No Quick Fixes: Working Class Politics From Jim Crow to the Present

Political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. discusses his new memoir.
by Adolph Reed Jr., Jon Queally via Common Dreams on February 1, 2022
The Titanic sinking.

How The Titanic Haunts Us

We have good reason to remember the story of what happened to hubristic rich people, and the imprisoned poor, in an enormous opulent floating palace.
by Nathan J. Robinson via Current Affairs on October 26, 2021
"Law and Political Economy Project" logo.

Public Money without Public Goods

By documenting how public debt produced our present nightmare, Destin Jenkins allows us to dream about using public money to mend the ills of our era.
by David Stein via LPE Project on August 19, 2021
Cover page of the August 1957 issue of Nation's Business, featuring a clamp tightening in on dollar signs.

Preferred Shares

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said America faces an economic crisis fifty years in the making. But how can we name the long crisis, much less explain it?
by Tim Barker via Phenomenal World on June 24, 2021
American Revolution-era political cartoon showing elites signing trade document at behest of working-class.

Fight For Economic Equality Is As Old as America Itself

Fears of great wealth and the need for economic equality go back to the country’s origins.
by Daniel R. Mandell via The Conversation on August 4, 2020
Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty Takes On the Ideology of Inequality

In his sweeping new history, the economist systematically demolishes the conceit that extreme inequality is our destiny, rather than our choice.
by Marshall Steinbaum via Boston Review on March 25, 2020

The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever, Can They?

Inequality comes in waves. The question is when this one will break.
by Liaquat Ahamed via The New Yorker on August 26, 2019

Philanthropists Will Not Save Us

All of Andrew Carnegie’s arguments were devoted to explaining why inequality ultimately was good: not only for its beneficiaries, but for poor people as well.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via Public Books on October 17, 2018

The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

The class divide is already toxic, and is fast becoming unbridgeable. You’re probably part of the problem.
by Matthew Stewart via The Atlantic on May 16, 2018
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at podium giving "I Have A Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King Jr. Had a Much More Radical Message than a Dream of Racial Brotherhood

King Jr., remembered today for his non-violent resistance, was a radical reformer who called for fundamental redistribution of economic power and resources.
by Paul Harvey via The Conversation on March 30, 2018

What These Early-20th-Century Scholars Got Right About 21st-Century Politics

Unlike many economists today, they questioned fundamental social structure.
by Branko Milanović via Vox on January 10, 2018
A row of wood frame houses in an African American neighborhood of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. (Credit: Marion S. Trikosko, Library of Congress)

Discourse on Race and Inequality in the United States

We must understand America's history of inequality to confront the racial wealth gap.
by Kasturi DasGupta via Black Perspectives on November 30, 2017

Massive Rise Of Top Incomes Is Mostly Driven By Capital

All top 1 percent income growth after 2000 came from ownership of capital.
by Matt Bruenig via People's Policy Project on August 9, 2017

What We Still Get Wrong About What Happened in Detroit in 1967

One of the key factors in what happened in 1967 in Detroit has long gone overlooked
by Lily Rothman via TIME on August 3, 2017

A Billionaires’ Republic

A new book argues that the Constitution’s framers believed that vast concentrations of wealth were the enemy of democracy.
by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via The Nation on July 11, 2017

The Racial Wealth Gap and the Problem of Historical Narration

The roots of inequality run a lot deeper than is often acknowledged.
by Destin Jenkins via Process: A Blog for American History on June 27, 2017

Why Poverty Is Like a Disease

Emerging science is putting the lie to American meritocracy.
by Christian H. Cooper via Nautilus on April 20, 2017
Demonstrators in the June 1968 Poor People's March in Washington, DC.

Why Liberals Separate Race from Class

The tendency to divorce racial disparities from economic inequality has a long liberal lineage.
by Touré F. Reed via Jacobin on August 22, 2015
John D. Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr. wearing top hats.

The Rockefellers and Class Warfare

Viewed purely in terms of statistics, the recycling of the Gilded Age moniker makes sense, but comparison masks what’s unique about today’s inequality crisis.
by Beverly Gage via Slate on October 19, 2007
A Los Angelas police officer walks away from a police cruiser with a damaged windshield.

"Corporate America’s Security Guards In-Blue": State Violence and Latinx Protest in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has a history of Latinx protest; one that is often marred by police violence.
by George Francis-Kelly via The Metropole on June 30, 2025
William Sentner address a crowd of union workers at a small arms plant

The Radical Midwest of Bill Sentner

St Louis organizer Bill Sentner led some of the most successful labor battles in Midwestern history by uniting workers across race and gender lines.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Jacobin on June 23, 2025
Portrait of Henry George

“The Great Enigma of Our Times”

The 1881, Henry George’s ”Progress and Poverty” proposed a land value tax — helping to usher in the Progressive Era.
by Hunter Dukes via The Public Domain Review on May 21, 2025
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