November/December 2012

Zapping Labor: The Sharp Rise of Income Inequality Initiated in the Early 1980s

How Federal Reserve policies, the recession they triggered, and broader political and economic changes weakened workers’ power and helped usher in an era of extreme inequality.

“Free-Market” Outcomes Are Not Fair
—and Not Free

By Marty Wolfson

True or false?: “Since 1980, the U.S. government has reduced its intervention in the U.S. economy, which has become much more of a free market. Conservatives embrace this outcome, while progressives object to it.” Read more »
Highway Robbery

By Darwin Bondgraham

How “public-private parternships” extract private profit from public infrastructure projects. Read more »
Structural Adjustment, Here and There

By Arthur Macewan

Dear Dr. Dollar: What are the similarities and differences between structural adjustment in the rest of the world/Third World and structural adjustment in the United States? Read more »
The Big Lie About the “Entitlement State”

By Alejandro Reuss

Is New York Times columnist David Brooks right that growth in “entitlements”—government programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—“will bankrupt the country”? Read more »