Using a language-based family tree and statistical methods developed by evolutionary biologists, we were able to model how human sacrifice and social inequality evolved in the prehistory of Austronesia. By Joseph Watts.

The gospel of wealth comes for Dharavi. By Daniel Brook.

Some private equity firms that came in as the cleanup crew for the housing crisis are now repeating errors that banks committed.

If you say workers should accept that their pay is what they’re “worth” rather than collectively bargaining for higher wages, you are saying that all Americans are neatly organized from top-to-bottom based on their hard work and merit. You’d be wrong.

A new injunction limits the city's ability to seize and destroy the property of Skid Row residents. By Elijah Chiland.

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative? By George Monbiot.

How can cities grow their economies without alienating poorer residents?

A key empirical question in the inequality debate is to what extent rich people derive their wealth from “rents”, which is windfall income they did not produce, as opposed to activities creating true economic benefit.

The biggest scandal in the Panama Papers leak, which revealed that political leaders around the world were hiding money in offshore accounts, isn't about corruption or organized crime. The 11.5 million files stolen from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca revealed just how unequal the world is. The economist Gabriel Zucman estimated in his 2015 book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations, that worldwide more than $7.5 trillion...

Surprisingly little is known about the causes of inequality. A Serbian-American economist proposes an interesting theory.

Silicon Valley’s sunny outlook on technology and opportunity ignores systematic inequalities. By Adrienne LaFrance.

Here's what the reported 600 guests experienced inside this lavish Moscow wedding. By Avianne Tan.

Ironically, the American dream is more of a reality for other countries than it is for America: genetic influences on IQ were uniform across levels of SES in Western Europe and Australia, but, in the United States, were much higher for the rich than for the poor.

It's shone a spotlight on racial and class disparity in the South American country. By Jesselyn Cook.

Inequality, immigration, stagnant wages -- the forces shaping the disruption of global politics have been building for years and aren't about to diminish. By Andre Tartar, Mira Rojanasakul, Jeremy Diamond and John Fraher.

American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created. Market forces played a role, but it was not market forces alone. In a sense, that should be obvious: economic laws are universal, but our growing inequality— especially the amounts seized by the upper 1 percent—is a distinctly American “achievement.” That outsize inequality is not predestined offers reason for hope, but in reality it is likely to get worse. The forces that have been at play in creating these outcomes are self-reinforcing.

A more democratic and equal election system is the first step toward a more democratic and equal economy.

Lochner v. New York is one of the Supreme Court’s great anti-precedents. Typically taught in law schools as an example of how judges should not behave, Lochner rested on a fabricated “right to contract” that, in effect, gave employers broad license to exploit their workers. The so-called right invented in Lochner and similar cases later formed the basis for decisions striking down the minimum wage and laws protecting workers’ right to organize.

**Submitter's Note: view this site in Privacy/Incognito mode.** How rich do we need the rich to be? That’s not an idle question. It is, arguably, what U.S. politics are substantively about. Liberals want to raise taxes on high incomes and use the proceeds to strengthen the social safety net; conservatives want to do the reverse, claiming that tax-the-rich policies hurt everyone by reducing the incentives to create wealth.

The Supreme Court has engineered a massive shift in the civil justice system that is having dire consequences for consumers and employees. By enabling large corporations to force customers and employees into arbitration to adjudicate practically all types of alleged violations, the Court now permits corporations to write the rules that will govern their relationships with their workers and customers and design the procedures used to interpret and apply those rules when disputes arise.