wealth inequality

Half Of The World’s Population Owns Just 2% Of Global Wealth

December 19, 2025 Abdul Rahman, People's Dispatch. Educate! Global Economy, Global South, Taxes, wealth inequality

Neoliberal free-market economic policies are creating an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few, leaving the majority of the world population with little or no means to make a decent life and almost no power over their destiny, claims the 2026 World Inequality Report published earlier this month. The report claims, “inequality today is not confined to income or wealth; it affects every domain of economic and social life” resulting in the world facing unequal access to basic material resources, gender disparities, territorial divides and climate change, among others.

The American Dream, We Hardly Knew You

December 9, 2025 John Miller, Dollars and Sense. Educate! American Dream, Capitalism, Social Mobility, Wages, wealth inequality

If Americans’ hopes of getting ahead have dimmed, as the Wall Street Journal reports yet again, it could only be because the lid of the coffin in which the “American Dream” was long ago laid to rest has finally been sealed shut. The promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will get ahead, or if you don’t, surely your children will, was broken long ago. And today’s economic hardships have left young adults distinctly worse off than their parents, and especially their grandparents. This long decline has stripped away much of what there was of U.S. social mobility, which never did measure up to its mythic renderings.

Chile’s Solidarity Economy Is Growing

October 21, 2025 Nicolás Chesta, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Chile, Neoliberalism, Solidarity Economy, wealth inequality

Chile has emerged from decades of often brutal dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet with a dynamic and growing economy—and deepened social and economic inequalities. Pinochet’s neoliberal economic policies have concentrated wealth among the few and left significant portions of the population behind. In 2017, 56 percent of the lowest-income population earned, on average, only $258 per month. In contrast, the richest 5 percent of the population had a per capita income of over $2,900 per month—11 times higher, according to Observatorio Social, a division of the Chilean Social Development and Family Agency, in 2018.

Canadians Are On Year Three Of A People’s Recession

October 16, 2025 James Hardwick, Canadian Dimension. Educate! Canada, Finance and the Economy, GDP, Recession, wealth inequality

A new Deloitte report is projecting 1.3 percent GDP growth for Canada this year. The same report says that as long as Donald Trump keeps the CUSMA carve-outs in his tariff plan—meaning that most of the goods we export to the United States won’t face tariffs—we can look forward to 1.7 percent growth next year. This would mark a return to the growth rates we saw in 2023 and 2024. Economists seem cautiously optimistic that Canada will avoid a recession and return to a period of relative stability. This should be great news. On paper, the economy has proved its resilience in the face of serious challenges. But why then do things feel increasingly precarious?

Billionaire Wealth Concentration Is Even Worse Than You Imagine

October 4, 2025 Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo, Inequality.org. Educate! Billionaires, Capitalism, Poverty, wealth inequality

The share of the U.S. wealth pie owned by the top 0.1 percent grew 59.6 percent from 1989 to 2024, according to an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Federal Reserve data, while the share of the U.S. wealth pie owned by the bottom 50 percent of households has declined 26.1 percent, adjusted for inflation. This bottom half of households in America — 66 million of them — had $4.1 trillion all together at the end of 2024. The 905 billionaires in the United States hold a combined $7.8 trillion in wealth, according to Forbes data from September 29, 2025. This alarming narrowing of wealth has given those at the very top political influence and power that undermines our democracy.

Could A ‘Maximum Wage’ Combat Billionaire Power?

September 24, 2025 Celeste Pepitone-Nahas, In These Times. Create! Billionaires, Finance and the Economy, Maximum Wage, wealth inequality

In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term, the power of the extremely wealthy over public policy has never been more evident. As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has asserted, “Trump has… said it loudly and clearly: we are a government of billionaires.” The troubling extent to which we are ruled by the rich is hardly debatable. The real question is: what can we do about it? One solution that has been proposed in the past is implementing a “maximum wage.” Such a cap would limit the amount any individual can earn over a given period. There are a couple different ways that this limit could be accomplished. One way would be to use tax policy: We could simply levy a 100% tax rate on income over a particular level. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed such a measure during his administration in the 1940s.

Meet The Low-Wage 100

August 23, 2025 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Educate! Low wages, Profiteers, wealth inequality, Worker Rights

The gap between CEO compensation and median worker pay at Starbucks hit 6,666 to 1 last year. In other words, to make as much money as their CEO made last year, typical baristas would’ve had to start brewing macchiatos around the time humans first invented the wheel. Starbucks takes the prize for the most obscene corporate pay disparities of 2024. But jaw-dropping gaps are the norm among America’s leading low-wage corporations. This year’s edition of the annual Institute for Policy Studies Executive Excess report finds that CEOs of the 100 S&P 500 firms with the lowest median wages, a group we’ve dubbed the “Low-Wage 100,” have enjoyed skyrocketing pay over the past six years.

How Wall Street’s Grip On School Finance Deepens Inequality

July 13, 2025 Claire Cahen, Inequality.org. Educate! Budget Cuts, Public Education, Wall Street, wealth inequality

Public school districts are bracing for cuts after the Trump administration’s decision to withhold $6.8 billion of education funding. But the financial squeeze is not new. For years, private finance has quietly shaped public education budgets. Schools have become deeply reliant on Wall Street debt to finance everything from basic infrastructure and classroom upgrades to day-to-day operations. The deeper schools fall into debt, the more they are bound by a set of financial rules that prioritize investors over students and teachers. School districts turn to debt financing when they face costs that their immediate budgets cannot cover.

Maglev Isn’t The Transit Future Our Cities Need

July 5, 2025 Martin Mitchell, Next City. Educate! MagLev, Maryland, Transportation, wealth inequality

Like many Marylanders, I want a faster, more reliable way to get around. But speed without equity, sustainability, or connection to real community needs isn’t progress — it’s just a flashy detour. The proposed Superconducting Maglev (SCMaglev) train between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore is being marketed as a bold leap forward in transportation. In reality, it risks becoming another expensive infrastructure project that bypasses the people it claims to serve. For nearly a decade, I’ve followed the SCMaglev proposal through public meetings, community briefings and presentations to elected bodies. Its proponents have promised everything from reduced traffic congestion to job creation to futuristic innovation.

Trump Is Setting The US Economy Up For Another Great Financial Crisis

June 27, 2025 C. J. Polychroniou, Truthout. Educate! Donald Trump, Economic crisis, Finance and the Economy, Trump Administration, wealth inequality

The financial system of the United States has always been prone to instability and crises. Now, however, under the new Trump administration, which is pushing for major cuts in regulation, including in the cryptocurrency sector in which the Trump family has a major financial stake, the financial system has become more vulnerable than ever, posing serious risks to the wider economy. Of course, this matters very little to Donald Trump, his family, and his billionaire friends. For Trump, the actual meaning of “America First” is “self-enrichment.” In the interview that follows, progressive economist Gerald Epstein, a leading expert in finance and banking, talks about the changing nature of the U.S. finance system under Trump 2.0.

Hundreds Of Millions Are Dying Of Hunger

May 30, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Famine, Food and Agriciulture, Hunger, Poverty, Wars and Militarism, wealth inequality

I have written this newsletter before. In fact, I could write this newsletter every year when a new Global Report on Food Crises is published. The report rests on four points: The number of people who are hungry is greater now than last year. The amount of food produced this year is greater than that produced last year. There is enough food to feed the total world population, and more. How do we explain why people are hungry? Let’s add in the data. Point no. 1: 733 million people faced chronic hunger in 2023, according to studies from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), World Food Programme, World Health Organisation, International Fund for Agricultural Development, and United Nations Children’s Fund.

Our Future Is Not Determined By The US Or Europe

April 11, 2025 Erika Gimenez, People's Dispatch. Strategize! Brazil, Development, Global South, Mexico, Socialism, Sovereignty, wealth inequality

“Debating the resources of the Global South is becoming urgent, but it is even more urgent to discuss how it is that most of the resources for the production of technology and goods are from the Global South and yet it is the North that takes all the wealth,” Cassia Bechara began her presentation, adding: ”in 2024 the wealth of the world’s richest millionaires was the greatest in history.” Although the speakers focused on the Global South in their presentations, they expressed different views on the same topic, as in the case of Márcio Pochmann, President of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE).

‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Will Concentrate Wealth Even More

April 5, 2025 Omar Ocampo, Inequality.org. Educate! Tariffs, Tax cuts for the rich, Trump Administration, wealth inequality

Trump’s trade policies have been wildly unpredictable in the first two months of his second presidency. Tariff deadlines have come and been delayed with no rhyme or reason, leaving cross-border trade in the lurch. Such volatility was a nightmare for investors in the top one percent, but they are now given some clarity thanks to the inauguration of Trump’s so-called “Liberation Day” — a comprehensive set of retaliatory tariffs imposed on all imported products from trading partners who allegedly disadvantage US exports through their own regulatory regime.

An Inequality Tale Of Two Capital Cities

March 11, 2025 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Billionaires, Class Struggle, Taxes, wealth inequality

Nine of the world’s ten wealthiest billionaires now call the United States home. The remaining one? He lives in France. And that one — Bernard Arnault, the 76-year-old who owns just about half the world’s largest maker of luxury goods — is now feeling some heat. What has Arnault and his fellow French deep pockets beginning to sweat? Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have just given a green light to the world’s first significant tax on billionaire wealth. “The tax impunity of billionaires,” the measure’s prime sponsor, the Ecologist Party’s Eva Sas, exulted last month, “is over.”

I Saw Firsthand How Excessive CEO Pay Harms Workers And Customers

March 6, 2025 Kieran Cuadras, Inequality.org. Resist! Capitalism, Congress, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality, Wells Fargo

"Remember the 2016 “phony accounts” scandal at Wells Fargo? Executives relentlessly pressured employees to meet extreme sales quotas, leading them to create millions of fraudulent accounts without clients’ consent. As these fake accounts grew, the CEO of Wells Fargo at the time, John Stumpf, raked in bigger and bigger bonuses. After the scandal blew up, regulators hit Stumpf with fines totalling $20 million — only a small dent in the estimated $130 million he walked away with in compensation when he resigned. This is just one of countless stories of CEOs taking reckless actions to pump up their own paychecks while putting their employees and the general public at risk.

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