Disenfranchised by Debt
Court fines, fees, and restitution payments fund government operations—and hold millions of people in dire financial straits.

Court fines, fees, and restitution payments fund government operations—and hold millions of people in dire financial straits.
Introducing our Fall 2020 special section, “Technology and the Crisis of Work.”
If Democrats take back political power in November and want to seriously address the plight of migrants and the undocumented, they’ll need to rebuild immigration policy from the ground up.
Democrats are starting to take green investment seriously. To move these plans anywhere near a Green New Deal—and avoid ceding power to Wall Street—will require a political mobilization from the bottom up.
The diversity of the initial roster of Democratic presidential candidates pushed all of them to speak about their commitments to battle racism and gender inequity. But it wasn’t enough to transform the political landscape in which they competed.
Telehealth has become a necessity during the pandemic. But its promises to increase access will fall apart if it becomes yet another profit center in a consolidated healthcare system.
At each step, poor implementation has weakened the U.S. recovery effort.
Calls to rent strike have yet to cohere into a national political movement. But as the economic crisis deepens, tenants’ fates will ultimately be decided by their level of collective organization.
Unless we win serious changes now, the worst is yet to come.
The author of The Deficit Myth on why national debt is not an obstacle to progress—and why the government can afford to fund its priorities.
No group is better positioned than organized teachers to force Washington to develop a national plan to deal with the pandemic.
The COVID crisis has cast into stark relief what has always been true: the wealth and prosperity of the U.S. economy rests on the labor, and the lives, of black and brown people.
Conservative state governments are rolling back local public health initiatives, intentionally putting their citizens in harm’s way.
The conservative response to COVID-19 has been defined by its heterogeneity: a blur of contradictory recriminations, confirmation biases, and conspiracy peddling.
Black people suffer disproportionately from police violence. But white skin does not provide immunity.