Whether you paid $8.99 for basic, $12.99 for standard, or splurged for the $15.99 premium package so you would have the privilege of watching endless streaming shows and movies on Netflix last month, a new analysis shows you still paid much, much more than the company paid in federal and local income taxes for the entire year. According to Matthew Gardner, senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), "The popular video streaming service Netflix posted its largest-ever U.S. profit in 2018­­—$845 million—on which it didn't pay a dime in federal or state income taxes."

Anand Giridharadas is the Aspen Institute Fellow and former McKinsey consultant whose book Winners Take All is a must-read indictment of the way that charitable activities are used to launder the reputations of billionaires who have looted and boiled our planet, amassing titanic fortunes while starving the public coffers, and still retaining sterling reputations and massive influence thanks to the trickle of funds they release through "philanthropy."

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville produced one of the earliest accounts of the American dream. In his famous study of the Jacksonian U.S., the Frenchman wrote that Americans possessed “the charm of anticipated success” — a ubiquitous optimism that he attributed to our country’s democratic character, and to the “general equality of condition” that prevailed among its “people.”

The reason why this article on inequality is being published and the reason why you are reading it is because income and wealth inequalities have risen, often dramatically, in most countries in the world over the past 40 years. This is a well-known fact which is nevertheless worth emphasizing because the United States is often mistakenly singled out, and the impression is created that such increases were small or non-existent everywhere else.

The American middle-class ideal was forged in the decades after World War II, when economic growth and wage increases climbed in lockstep for nearly 30 years. That pairing dissolved abruptly in the 1970s. Between 1973 and 2017, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the productivity of the economy grew 77%—but average compensation rose only 12.4%, adjusted for inflation.

As we head into 2019, leaving the chaos of this year behind, a major question remains unanswered when it comes to the state of Main Street, not just here but across the planet. If the global economy really is booming, as many politicians claim, why are leaders and their parties around the world continuing to get booted out of office in such a sweeping fashion?

The image of the standing Sand Palace amid the ruin caused by Hurricane Michael tells us one thing: only the rich will survive climate change. By Kate Wagner.

Anand Giridharadas's Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World has been tearing through the world, changing the way we think about inequality, philanthropy and elites;

The middle class in America has been declining for decades, and we continue to get even more evidence of the catastrophic damage that has already been done. According to the Social Security Administration, the median yearly wage in the United States is just $30,533 at this point. That means 50 percent of all American workers make at least that much per year, but that also means that 50 percent of all American workers make that much or less per year.

There is an increasing fascination among political scientists with the concept of anti-politics, an apparently growing sentiment of distrust with existing political institutions. It may be worth recalling then, that distrust in politics has economic roots. Bluntly, the economically marginalised do not trust politicians and this makes sense- if you’re not doing so well out of society, you will not trust those who run it.

The 1% has never had it so good. The average wage for the 1% of income earners hit $719,000 per year in 2017, up 3.7% on the year, exceeding their peak of $716,000 per year just before the Great Recession, according to a report released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive, nonprofit think tank, citing data from the Social Security Administration. The average wage for the top 0.1% reached $2.7 million in 2017, the second-highest level ever, just 4% below their level in 2007.

In America’s tech capital, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

Almost 4 million children in the UK live in households that would struggle to afford to buy enough fruit, vegetables, fish and other healthy foods to meet the official nutrition guidelines, a groundbreaking food poverty study reveals. The research, by the Food Foundation thinktank, says the diminishing ability of low-income families to pay for healthy food is consigning the least well-off to a greater risk of diet related illness, such as obesity and diabetes, as well as widening health inequalities across society.

In many countries, young people from wealthy and poor backgrounds spend roughly the same amount of time online. But it’s how they’re using the internet, not how long they’re using it that really matters. This is according to new research from the OECD, which found that richer teenagers were more likely to use the internet to search for information or to read news rather than to chat or play video games.

The global rich have demolished institutions that once protected the working class and dismantled our democracy to orchestrate the largest transfer of wealth upward in over a century. By Chris Hedges.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has a simple idea for keeping big business accountable to the American public, not just shareholders. By David Dayen.

Four nineteenth-century authors offered blueprints for a better world—but their progressive visions had a dark side. By Adam Gopnik.

Homeless encampments, glassy offices, RVs, and tech buses.

Astronomical gap between the pay of workers and bosses exposed in report on earnings of America’s top 350 CEOs

A boom in construction for the high end of the market comes as prices continue to rise for the poorest.