The American welfare state is widely regarded as a poor cousin to those of its democratic peers. As the most unequal wealthy country, the United States also does the least to address that inequality through public policy—despite strong historical and international evidence that social spending programs can drastically reduce inequality.
Increasingly complicit politicians, businessmen, and professionals have allowed mafia groups to conquer significant sections of the market economy in Milan—far afield from their traditional base in southern Italy. But a growing anti-mafia movement, led by young people and championed by municipal politicians, is pushing back.
In 2005, the Navajo Nation passed its own version of the Defense of Marriage Act called the Diné Marriage Act. Navajo LGBT activists have recently reignited their struggle to overturn the law, hoping to capitalize on decisions legalizing gay marriage in Utah and New Mexico late last year. In the process, they have raised long-standing questions about the reach of the U.S. legal system onto Native lands.
American inequality is driven not just by the uneven distribution of wages, but also by the uneven distribution of job-based benefits. More than any other country, the United States relies on private employment and private bargaining to deliver basic social benefits—including health coverage, retirement security, and paid leave. The results—on any basic measure of economic security—have been dismal.
Octavio Paz spoke out against American imperialism in Latin America throughout his career, but his outspoken opposition to Stalinism and revolutionary violence got him smeared as a Reaganite. On the poet’s centenary, a look at his politics and his most comprehensive collection in English.
Fewer than 4,000 men and women have been formally designated as trafficked to the United States. This number obscures not only the tens of thousands of forced labor victims whose cases go unreported, but the millions of migrants who face comparable abuse—just not enough to fit the legal definition of trafficking. It’s impossible to tell the story of trafficking without telling their story, too.
Labor standards are a key buffer against inequality, setting both an economic and ethical floor. But, on both scores, the current minimum wage offers a pretty shaky floor. Its value—in historical and international terms—is meager; its coverage is uneven; and it is poorly enforced. How did we get here?
By now much of the world has heard of Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford. But the real story in Toronto is not Rob Ford. How did one of North America’s most diverse cities in one of the west’s most robust democracies come to elect a right-wing populist?
Under the New Deal order, unions not only sustained prosperity but ensured that it was shared. Since the 1970s, however, the attack on unions has reversed these gains. Today, both union membership and inequality stand roughly at 1920s levels.
Last week, the College Board announced changes to the Scholastic Aptitude Test because it had “become disconnected from the work of our high schools.” But can test reforms change the class and racial biases of U.S. college admissions?
Inequality is greater now than it has been at any time in the last century, and the gaps in wages, income, and wealth are wider in the United States than in any other democratic and developed economy. Yet we lack a clear and compelling account of how and why we arrived this point. Our current economic troubles have aimed a spotlight at our inequality problem, but they did not create it. What did?
Ricardo Seitenfus, a former OAS special representative, was dismissed after criticizing international meddling in Haiti’s 2010 election, less than a year after a devastating earthquake struck the country. In this interview, Seitenfus expands on his criticisms of the international presence in Haiti and describes the “silent coup d’etat” he witnessed.
Early in 2013, as Xi Jinping prepared to take over leadership of China, some high-profile Western analysts were cautiously optimistic about where the country was heading. But far from bringing a longed-for “easing” of controls on expression and civil society activities, the Year of the Snake often saw the ratcheting up of mechanisms of control and intimidation. As we move into the Year of the Horse, Jeffrey Wasserstrom brings together four legal experts to discuss.
This month’s “Manif pour tous” was most obviously against a law called Mariage pour tous (Marriage for All). But something bigger is stirring. Is it, as Le Monde put it, “The Awakening of Reactionary France”?
At the University of Illinois Chicago, striking faculty are recalling the founding mission of America’s great public universities.
