The founder of one of the world’s largest hedge funds has slammed capitalism as “broken” in a post published on LinkedIn yesterday. In the post titled The World Has Gone Mad and the System Is Broken, Bridgewater Associates founder Raymond Dalio explained that current economic and market forces are driving the growing gap between the rich and the poor.

The US’s historic economic expansion has so enriched one-percenters they now hold almost as much wealth as the middle- and upper-middle classes combined. The top 1% of American households have enjoyed huge returns in the stock market in the past decade, to the point that they now control more than half of the equity in U.S. public and private companies, according to data from the Federal Reserve.

Facebook, Google, Uber, Amazon - the biggest names in technology - are all in the same business: spying on you. But what does this mean? Author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff traces the currents that led us here and asks how human freedom can be saved.

The next decade is likely to see higher prices and interest rates and a reversal of globalisation, but also a reduction in inequality and increased climate action, predicts one of the world's biggest banks.

Some Caribbean nations have seen an increase in cruise-related revenue through policy changes and simultaneous investments in their ports. While development and investment in the cruise industry may help spark the economy and reduce inequality, it could also exacerbate environmental issues.

One of the biggest ironies of the right-wing trope accusing socialists of wanting “free stuff” is that in reality, the entire capitalist economy would immediately collapse if it couldn’t continue to rely on free stuff. Without free or artificially cheap access to things like natural resources, care work, labor and a whole array of other elements, capitalism could not stay afloat.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) targeted Netflix in a tweet, accusing the company of paying less in federal income taxes than the cost of a monthly subscription.

A new Gilded Age has emerged in America — a 21st century version. The wealth of the top 1% of Americans has grown dramatically in the past four decades, squeezing both the middle class and the poor. This is in sharp contrast to Europe and Asia, where the wealth of the 1% has grown at a more constrained pace.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has defended the existence of monopolies in business while also denying that Apple has a monopoly in any sector. In an interview with Nikkei Asian Review in Tokyo on Wednesday, during which Cook discussed a range of topics including Apple's treatment of competitors, he said a monopoly "by itself isn't bad if it's not abused."

One of the biggest ironies of the right-wing trope accusing socialists of wanting “free stuff” is that in reality, the entire capitalist economy would immediately collapse if it couldn’t continue to rely on free stuff. Without free or artificially cheap access to things like natural resources, care work, labor and a whole array of other elements, capitalism could not stay afloat. In fact, the only way that capitalism was ever able to even emerge was through a process of “primitive accumulation” — where things like slavery and colonialism were utilized to extract free labor and resources.

To understand how some companies have lost their souls, consider what happened after a bank in the US stiffed a customer before Christmas.

“I think there was a common thread among all of us,” says Sheldon Yellen, CEO of Belfor, “that we really are just everyday people, wanting to do everyday good.” This quote is from back in 2013, when Yellen, an incredibly wealthy man and reputed former mobster (Forbes estimated his net worth at $320 million back in 2017) was sitting at a table with other leaders of large American companies.

And when consumers care, capitalism does too. Businesses create stuff. In the process of creating the stuff they intend to offer, they also create a sweet medley of things that are decidedly less good. The list here is long, and we’ve heard it before, even if we’d rather pretend we haven’t.

Some people might think it's a ridiculous conversation, but for the sake of the planet we need to talk about ending capitalism.

The coronavirus shutdown of 2020 is perhaps the most remarkable interruption to ordinary life in modern history. It has been spoken about as a war. And one is reminded of the stories told of the interruption of normality in 1914 and 1939. But unlike a war, the present moment involves demobilisation not mobilisation. While the hospitals are on full alert, the majority of us are confined to quarters. We are deliberately inducing one of the most severe recessions ever seen. In so doing we are driving another nail into the coffin of one of the great platitudes of the late 20th century: it’s the economy stupid.

The month of March has rolled in like a ferocious lion for bullish stock-market investors, leaving little but carnage in its aftermath, as uncertainties about the effects of the coronavirus outbreak abound. The decline for the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -4.54% has been simply gut-wrenching for the average investor, with the monthly plunge so far for the nearly 124-year-old, blue-chip gauge poised to represent its steepest since 1931 — a year that falls within the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in U.S. history.

The U.S. government is enacting measures to save the airlines, Boeing, and similarly affected corporations. While we clearly insist that these companies must be saved, there may be ethical, economic, and structural problems associated with the details of the execution. As a matter of fact, if you study the history of bailouts, there will be.

The coronavirus crisis in the United States is only just beginning. But it's not too early for some Americans to flout social distancing and isolation guidelines and return to work, according to some executives. Dick Kovacevich, the former CEO and chairman of Wells Fargo, told Bloomberg News that healthy workers under the age of 55 should return to work in April if the outbreak is controlled, saying that "some may even die" with his plan.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics April Jobs Day report provides new data on the speed with which the coronavirus recession is impacting the labor market.