#inequality

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-archaeologists-size-ancient-houses-history.html

#history #archeology #inequality

‘The more unequal the society is, the more severe the climate disaster’

"We are now on track to a three-degree world, which is still a world we absolutely do not want to live in...Capitalism as we know it now would be unviable. We are on track to tear it down by accident." Climatologist Friederike Otto
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/19/climatologist-friederike-otto-the-more-unequal-the-society-is-the-more-severe-the-climate-disaster
#ClimateBreakdown #FossilFuels #disasters #insurance #inequality #ClimateCrisis #floods #bushfires #habitability

#Ancient #Housing Reveals Shocking Patterns of #Inequality Across #Human #History

https://scitechdaily.com/ancient-housing-reveals-shocking-patterns-of-inequality-across-human-history/

Tweet by Sen. Bernie Sanders:

U.S. Oligarchy - 2025:

Elon Musk owns as much wealth as the bottom 53% of U.S households.

The top 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%.

Real weekly wages are $30 lower than 52 years ago.

60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Yes. We can do better than that.

#inequality #oligarchy

Interesting confirmation of what we'd been suspecting. "Austerity, they found, is the key variable: without it, less-educated people are no more likely to vote for rightwing demagogues than highly educated people are. In other words, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are busily handing their core constituencies to Nigel Farage."
https://www.monbiot.com/2025/04/14/the-urge-to-destroy/
#austerity #UKpolitics #inequality

#ClimateCrisis #inequality #FriederikeOtto #interviews

"The German scientist on her new book arguing that inequality, wealth and sexism are making the climate crisis worse – and what we need to do about it

Friederike Otto is a senior lecturer in climate science at Imperial College London. She is also the co-founder of the World Weather Attribution initiative, which seeks to determine the influence of global warming on intensity and likelihood of an extreme weather event. The project also examines how factors such as ill-suited architecture and poverty exacerbate heatwaves, hurricanes, floods and wildfires. This is the theme of her second book, *Climate Injustice: Why We Need to Fight Global Inequality to Combat Climate Change.*"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/19/climatologist-friederike-otto-the-more-unequal-the-society-is-the-more-severe-the-climate-disaster

I'll generalize this. "The more unequal society is, the more severe the disaster".

This goes for climate, healthcare, housing, economy, ...

Equality is a form of resilience. Although disasters can be equalizing (see Rebecca Solnit - A Paradise built in Hell), true billionaires / multi-millionaires will extract themselves from rebuilding a community by virtue of being supremely isolated and protected.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/apr/19/climatologist-friederike-otto-the-more-unequal-the-society-is-the-more-severe-the-climate-disaster

#equality #inequality #LateStageCapitalism #climatecrisis

"In the #MAGA view, #education is about producing MAGA citizens—uncorrupted by the weakening effects of Social-Emotional Learning, and unburdened by the complexities of America’s past and present struggles with racial #inequality and other injustices." https://www.liberalcurrents.com/children-are-the-future-authoritarianism-culture-war-and-making-model-citizens/

It seems that Gary Stevenson, and George Monbiot, are on the same page... Inequality is the problem causing so much pain in the world today.
#inequality
https://www.monbiot.com/2025/04/14/the-urge-to-destroy/

The World Under Capitalism: Observations on Economics, Politics, History, and Culture

Branko Milanovic

John Wiley & Sons, 07/04/2025 - 400 páginas

"Branko Milanovic is best known as one of the world’s leading experts on global inequality. But he is also an unusually wide-ranging and penetrating commentator on subjects across economics and beyond, in politics, history, and culture. This book brings together his most searching, provocative, and entertaining articles of recent years, providing an abundance of vital insights into the evolution and dynamics of the world under capitalism.

The volume features important ideas about the struggle to achieve a more equal and prosperous world against not only the predictable forces of deregulation and distraction but new ideas about shrinking the economy to protect the environment. Further from Milanovic’s speciality, readers will find an extraordinary array of reflections on subjects including migration, globalization, the politics and economics of Russia and China, the crisis of liberal democracy, economic and literary history, and the intellectual giants of economics. The pieces are united by Milanovic’s distinctive voice – humane, wry, and realistic – and by remarkable erudition worn lightly whether the topic is the fall of Constantinople, Jane Austen, or the mores of contemporary soccer.

No one can fail to learn from the book, while the sparkling prose, unexpected observations, and sheer importance of the subjects at hand make it a compelling read from start to finish."

https://books.google.pt/books?id=Q3tUEQAAQBAJ

#Capitalism #Economics #PoliticalEconomy #Inequality #EconomicHistory

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2025-04-17/how-eco-localism-differs-from-tariff-terrorism/

"…winners of the #globalization game include a growing global #billionaireclass and a fast-growing #middleclass in #China, #India, and other manufacturing hubs. Middle-class consumers around the world win by getting cheap goods. Corporations and investors reap a windfall.

However, society and nature are losers when globalization worsens #inequality while speeding up depletion and #pollution…"

#EcoLocalism

‘Our moral intuitions about merit and personal worth are changing.’

an interview with Marion Fourcade about her book "The Ordinal Society" co-written by @kjhealy: https://news.berkeley.edu/2024/04/23/from-uber-ratings-to-credit-scores-whats-lost-in-a-society-that-counts-and-sorts-everything/

#TheOrdinalSociety #concentration #merit #meritocracy #MarionFourcade #Fourcade #school #credit #scores #scoring #reward #rewards #sociology #psychology #socioPsych #socioPsychology #ranking #selfWorth #universalism #digitalization #inequality #inequalities #recognition #data #AIRisks #AIEthics #gaming #socialization #Tracking #surveillance #power #socialControl #governance #regulation #rules #socialMedia #attention #reintermediation #intermediation #enshittification #risk #derisking #vulnerability #morality #confidence #trust #dataDon

As The High Pay Centre suggest, following Green Party policy, a cap on CEO earnings would likely be pretty popular.

Where that cap might be pitched is between the £213k income that people seem to think indicates you are wealthy, and the 20 times average pay (around £700k) that most people think should be the maximum CEOs are paid!

Will it happen? not with this political class... but yet another reason to think about voting Green?

#inequality #politics

h/t HPC newsletter

"Income from financial assets even among those 5-10% of the world population and 40% of Americans who receive it, is extraordinarily skewed toward the rich. Inequality of financial income is not like inequality of labor income. It is much higher. For example, labor income (before taxes) Gini in the United States is typically around 0.55; capital income Gini is above 0.9. The same is true for virtually every country in the world. Income from financial assets is like wealth: it is disproportionately received by the very top of the distribution. In the United States about 90% of all different financial instruments and assets are owned by only 10% of the richest Americans (see Ed Wolff, “A century of wealth in America”, Kuhn, Schularick and Steins, “Income and Wealth Inequality in America, 1949-2016”). Thus, saying that 40% of Americans have some income from financial assets is somewhat misleading because most of them have very little of it—and just a few receive the Gargantuan share. Which means that we should be even less worried if the stock market goes South.

So to summarize: there are several reasons for cheering up the decline in the stock market: it reduces wealth inequality by obliterating the wealth at the very top; it does not affect the incomes of most people (60% of Americans and 90-95% of the people in the world); and among those who are affected, it is la crème de la crème who lose the most and thus they are de facto taxed (a policy which otherwise is difficult to implement)."

https://braveneweurope.com/branko-milanovic-the-stock-market-fetish

#Capitalism #Finance #Financialization #StockMarket #Inequality

"This is not what a resilient system looks like and the outcomes of each crash reveals further weaknesses within that system, especially as it relates to #Inequality, environmental devastation and of course to the challenge far more massive than any economic system: #ClimateChange."

PODCAST: https://www.podcastics.com/episode/357264/link/

#WellBeingEconomy #Parkland #Oligarchy #Climate #TrumpCrash #DonutEconomics #cdnpoli #abpoli #yyc #ClimateAction

#SCOTUS has been redistributing our civil rights and giving more to the rich and powerful.

“They’ve disenfranchised the marginalized while making it easier for the corrupt to commit crimes. The gap between the two tiers of justice is growing as fast as the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us.”

#inequality #civilrights #ruleoflaw #justice

https://www.muellershewrote.com/p/the-supreme-courts-redistribution?r=1meiee&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Remember the famous Rand Institute study that showed the rich had stolen $ 50 Trillion from the rest of us between 1975 and 2007?

There is an update:

$ 79 Trillion between 1975 and 2023.

That's more the twice (2x) the official US government debt, which is just about $ 36 Trillion.

https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html

#inequality #income #robbery #capitalism #taxes #uspol

@camille Structural #inequality and #thanaticism are not inevitable outcomes of human nature or the simple invention of #agriculture but rather the product of a historical dynamic: the confiscation of technical and scientific knowledge by small groups, to the detriment of mutual aid, social justice, and ecological balance.

1/2

#humannature #history #mutualaid #socialjustice #ecology #share #technototalitarism

@camille Did agriculture really create inequality from the very start, as Harari claims in Sapiens? Recent research offers a more nuanced story: the transition was long, complex, and often egalitarian for centuries. #History #Inequality #Sapiens https://homohortus31.wordpress.com/2025/04/16/agriculture-inegalites-et-recit-de-sapiens-entre-mythe-et-complexite/

White Americans in areas with higher Black poverty more likely to attribute racial disparities to lack of effort: Study

https://phys.org/news/2025-04-white-americans-areas-higher-black.html

#racism #culture #inequality #black #survey #publicopinion #socialscience #politics