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Class & Inequality, Politics

Portrait of the United States as a Developing Country

A sweeping new history of U.S. capitalism finds that economic gains have always been driven by the state.

Justin H. Vassallo

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Class & Inequality

Class & Inequality, Science & Nature

Workplace Training in the Age of AI

To support the work of the future, we must promote workers’ skills as crucial to technological progress.

Nichola Lowe

Class & Inequality, Politics

Why Neoliberalism Needs Neofascists

The neofascist assault on democracy is a last-ditch effort on the part of neoliberal capitalism to rescue itself from crisis. The only solution is a decisive retreat from globalized finance.

Prabhat Patnaik

Class & Inequality

China and the Lure of Global Capitalism

Markets have played a central role in the country’s explosive development since the 1980s. But as GDP rose, inequality has soared—a stark turn away from earlier socialist ideals.

Macabe Keliher

Class & Inequality

Neoliberalism’s Bailout Problem

Mainstream economics ignores the massive government interventions that “free market” capitalism requires.

Robert Pollin, Gerald Epstein

Class & Inequality, Philosophy & Religion

We Don't Know, But Let's Try It

For economist Albert O. Hirschman, social planning meant creative experimentation rather than theoretical certainty. We could use more of his improvisatory optimism today.

Simon Torracinta

Class & Inequality, Politics

Our Insurance Dystopia

Private insurance companies have long dominated the provision of social security in the United States, but resistance is growing.

Caley Horan

Class & Inequality, Politics

In the Common Interest

How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South in the run-up to the Civil War.

Chris Hong, Robert Manduca, Nic Johnson

Class & Inequality, Law & Justice

Housing Is a Social Good

The American Jobs Plan mirrors past efforts at affordable housing that contributed to our problems and failed Black Americans. We need to take housing out of the private market.

Gianpaolo Baiocchi, H. Jacob Carlson

Class & Inequality, Politics

How Biden Could Save Welfare

Direct payments to families should replace backdoor tax breaks, which obscure the failures of capitalism to sustain social reproduction.

Ben Zdencanovic

Class & Inequality, Politics

The Ever Given and the Monstrosity of Maritime Capitalism

Two timely new books unmask the colossal shipping industry behind global trade, whose monstrous pursuit of profit has long wreaked havoc on laborers and the seas they sail through.

Charmaine Chua

Class & Inequality, Race

“Progress for People of Color Doesn’t Come at White Folks’ Expense”

A conversation with Heather C. McGhee about the zero-sum thinking that has long dominated American attitudes to race and wealth—and how to organize to secure public goods for everyone.

Heather C. McGhee, Archon Fung

Class & Inequality

Employers, Not Immigrants, Hurt American Workers

Non-college-educated U.S.-born workers have every reason to be enraged by declining wages and living standards, but more restrictive immigration policies won’t solve these problems.

Ruth Milkman

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