Sam Pizzigati
Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the Institute for Policy Study's online weekly newsletter on excess and inequality.
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, August 28, 2017 Wisconsin’s Foxconn Deal Enriches Billionaires With Taxpayer Cash Taiwanese billionaire Terry Gou every once in a while likes to think “outside the box.” Back in 2010, for instance, the giant electronics manufacturer that Gou runs — Foxconn — was facing what corporate flacks like to call a major “PR problem.” Working conditions inside Foxconn’s massive Chinese... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 21, 2016 Waging Class War in Comfort In a typical corporate board of directors meeting, what do CEOs see when they look out across their richly lacquered boardroom tables? They see . . . lots of other CEOs. That’s no accident. CEOs today purposively pack their corporate boards with their pals, who often turn out to be current or... Read more |
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Views Sunday, August 28, 2016 A Do-Over for Our Unequal Economy? The basic idea behind the “mulligan” – you flub a shot, you get to take the shot again — may be golf’s most endearing contribution to world civilization. In our real-world economy, unfortunately, we don’t get to take mulligans. We certainly could use one. Here in the United States, a new report... Read more |
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Views Saturday, July 16, 2016 Big Headlines for a Tiny Wage Hike Lloyd Blankfein, one of America’s most powerful bankers, a few years ago told a reporter that his Goldman Sachs financial colossus was doing “God’s work.” That off-hand comment would provoke an instant uproar. An embarrassed Blankfein had to quickly calm the waters . He meant his quip, the Goldman... Read more |
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Views Sunday, July 03, 2016 Philadelphia’s Forgotten Spirit of 1776 Later this summer, just a few weeks after this year’s Fourth of July celebrations, Democrats will be gathering in Philadelphia to make some presidential nomination history. Democrats — small-d variety — gathered in Philadelphia soon after the original Fourth of July, too. Those democrats, all... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, April 26, 2016 Did The Beatles Help Fuel The Reagan Revolution? Overcrowded classrooms. Crumbling bridges. Shuttered libraries. These have become our everyday realities after over a generation of tax-cutting political bravado. A shrinking middle class. Rising dead-end poverty. The splurges of a new super rich. These have also become the markers of our time. Is... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 20, 2016 Here’s What the Millionaires at Davos Can Do About Global Inequality Every winter the world’s political and business elite retreat to the Swiss mountain resort of Davos to think deep thoughts and sup at five-star eateries. The corporate execs, bankers, and finance ministers who frequent this annual Davos World Economic Forum have of late devoted considerable time to... Read more |
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Views Saturday, October 24, 2015 Have We Finally Moved Beyond GDP? Organizers of last week’s fifth OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy could barely contain their sense of satisfaction when the three-day event opened in Guadalajara, Mexico. Why all the good cheer? Officials at the OECD, the official economic research agency of the developed world,... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, April 22, 2015 Why We Need $50,000 Traffic Tickets All of us would like to live in a world where people always do the right thing — without anybody looking over their shoulder. But that world doesn’t exist and never will. So every society on our planet has penalties. You break the rules, you pay a price. But penalties only work if the wrongdoer... Read more |
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Views Friday, January 30, 2015 A Kerfuffle Over Global Wealth Stats Sometimes facts can fly. All around the world. Over the last year or so, no one has been flying facts more effectively than the folks at Oxfam, the activist global charity. A year ago, an Oxfam report revealed that the world’s 85 richest billionaires had as much wealth as the poorest half of the... Read more |