Sam Pizzigati

Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org. His recent books include: "The Case for a Maximum Wage" (2018) and "The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970" (2012).
Articles by this author
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Views Saturday, August 03, 2019 Can Inequality Be Hardwired into Our DNA? Remember the college admissions scandal? Earlier this year we learned that awesomely affluent parents have been spending small fortunes on scams to get their undeserving teenage offspring into America’s most elite colleges and universities. This admissions scandal crept back into the news cycle... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 30, 2019 A Lesson from West Africa, a Global Inequality Ground Zero Should we care how much wealth our wealthiest are grabbing? The flacks who seek deep-pocket favor have a ready response. Of course not, they tell us. Kvetching about the wealth of the wealthy just distracts us from the more important work we all ought to be doing—like growing our economic pie and... Read more |
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Views Sunday, July 21, 2019 A Tale of Two Druglords Last week didn’t go so well for the Mexican druglord Joaquín Guzmán Loera. A federal district court sentenced the notorious “El Chapo” to life in prison. The 62-year-old will almost certainly, notes the New York Times , be “spending the rest of his life behind bars.” El Chapo certainly deserves his... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 18, 2019 How The Super-Rich Avoid Paying Their Share We have a great deal of statistical data, in America today, about the economic circumstances of Americans who live in poverty. We know far less, by contrast, about Americans who live amid great wealth. And much of what we do know, suggests a revealing new study, turns out to be wrong. America’s... Read more |
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Views Saturday, May 11, 2019 Netizens of the World, Unite! Step into the world of the awesomely affluent and you’ll find plenty of super rich with a simple explanation for their good fortune. I’m creating wealth, the claim typically goes, with the brilliantly “disruptive” new product or service I’ve invented. Our high-tech rich have always seemed... Read more |
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Views Monday, April 15, 2019 How Progressives Can Fix the Progressive Income Tax This year on Tax Day, for the first time in decades, America’s wealthiest have some genuine reason to worry: The bargain-basement tax rates they’ve enjoyed for over a generation may be on the way out. That prospect would have seemed ridiculously remote just a year ago. The recently passed GOP tax... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 30, 2019 Extreme Wealth Threatens Our Very Planet We either keep fossil fuels in the ground, or we fry. That’s the conclusion of another new blockbuster study on climate change, this one from the National Academy of Sciences . Our fossil-fuel industrial economy, the study details, has made for the fastest climate changes our Earth has ever seen... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 23, 2019 What LA Teachers Tell Us About Rising Inequality Back during the 1960s and 1970s, in cities, suburbs, and small towns across the United States, teacher strikes made headlines on a fairly regular basis. Teachers in those years had a variety of reasons for walking out. They struck for the right to bargain. They struck for decent pay and benefits... Read more |
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Views Sunday, January 20, 2019 The Deep-Pocket Push to Deep-Six Public Schools Back during the 1960s and 1970s, in cities, suburbs, and small towns across the United States, teacher strikes made headlines on a fairly regular basis. Teachers in those years had a variety of reasons for walking out. They struck for the right to bargain. They struck for decent pay and benefits... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 18, 2018 Jeff Bezos Has Enough! It’s Time for a Maximum Wage For Republican members of Congress and cable news pundits, a cap on the earnings of the super rich might sound like a dystopian nightmare. Yet, as author Sam Pizzigati argues in his new book, The Case for A Maximum Wage , those who are not ardent free marketeers should give the idea some serious... Read more |