Sam Pizzigati Posts

CEOs shouldn’t have a financial stake in the murderous mass violence of modern warfare.

The “wealthiest country in the history of the world” has the highest level of inequality among the world’s major industrial nations. And the U.S. government is letting that inequality get worse — on every major front.

In the 1950s, GM's CEO paid three-quarters of his income in taxes. Today, CEOs pay less than a quarter... and with Donald Trump's help, they'll pay even less.

How much are the mega rich hiding offshore? Independent analysts have been working to pin that figure down. The most recent — and statistically robust — of these estimates comes from the young London School of Economics analyst Gabriel Zucman, a protégé of the widely heralded French economist Thomas Piketty.

It was a good year for greed in 2013, perhaps the best on record. As rampant inequality of wealth expanded, compounded and exponentiated, a very special percentage of the top 1% deserve special attention for their money grabbing ways. You'll surely recognize some of the names on this Top 10 list, and will want to remember the others for the fight ahead in 2014.

In plain yet powerful language, Pope Francis is challenging the givens of our deeply unequal world — and helping inspire resistance to it.

Sometimes you don’t have to say anything “new” to make news. Consider, for instance, the “apostolic exhortation” the Vatican released last Tuesday.

This statement from Pope Francis, observers

In plain yet powerful language, Pope Francis is challenging the givens of our deeply unequal world — and helping inspire resistance to it.

Sometimes you don’t have to say anything “new” to make news. Consider, for instance, the “apostolic exhortation” the Vatican released last Tuesday.

This statement from Pope Francis, observers

Struggling families all across America now have less food on their tables. Budget cuts that kicked into effect November 1 have lowered the nation’s average federal food stamp benefit to less than $1.40 per person per meal.

Over the last 20 years, the annual lists of America’s highest-paid chief executives - ostensibly the ‘best and brightest’ - have included an amazingly high concentration of outright frauds and flops.

Fifty years ago, average Americans lived in a society that had been growing — and had become — much more equal. In 1963, of every $100 in personal income, less than $10 went to the nation’s richest 1 percent. Americans today live in a land much more unequal. The nation’s top 1 percent are taking just under 20 percent of America’s income, double the 1963 level.

House Republicans, with help from some Wall Street-friendly Democrats, are rushing to repeal the most promising Dodd-Frank Act check on excessive executive pay. You won’t believe their rationale.