The Age of Inequality: Corporate America's War on Working People

by Jeremy Gantz, Bernie Sanders (Contributor), Arundhati Roy (Contributor)

The stories behind the inequality crisis—a forty-year investigation by In These TimesWith heart-wrenching reporting and incisive analysis, In These Times magazine has charted a staggering rise in inequality and the fall of the American middle class. Here, in a selection from four decades of articles by investigative reporters and progressive thinkers, is the story of our age. It is a tale of shockingly successful corporate takeovers stretching from Reagan to Trump, but also of brave attempts to turn the tide, from the Seattle global justice protests to Occupy to the Fight for 15. Featuring contributions from Michelle Chen, Noam Chomsky, Tom Geoghegan, Juan González, David Moberg, Salim Muwakkil, Ralph Nader, Frances Fox Piven, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Slavoj Žižek, and many others, The Age of Inequality is the definitive account of a defining issue of our time.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, History, Business, Theory, Labor

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 18, 2017

Reviews

[Thomas Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Age of Inequality: Corporate America's War on Working People: A Forty-Year Investigation by /In These Times/, Jeremy Gantz, ed., 2017, 254 pages, ISBN 9781786631145, Dewey 339.2 Ag31a

Excerpts from /In These Times/ magazine, 1976-2016. Where we're going, and why we're in this handbasket.

The wealthiest .01% of Americans control 22% of the wealth in 2017, up from 7% in 1979. U.S. real median household income is less in 2017 than in 1989. p. 1.

There are many factors driving global society toward a low-wage, low-growth, high-profit future, with increasing polarization and social disintegration. Another consequence is the fading of meaningful and democratic processes as decision-making is vested in private institutions and quasi-government structures. --Noam Chomsky, 1994, p. 151.

We have endured years of right-wing ideology, and we are eager to move in a different direction. --Bernie Sanders, 2009, p. 45.

[Amosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

compendium of incisive essays published in the "In These Times" paper over the past forty years. explains lofty political and socio-economic concepts like neoliberalism, intersectionality, unionism etc. cogently

[محمد شفیعی · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good book about the roots and reasons of inequality in US. This book is a selection of articles of In These Times , if you're eager to know about inequality in capitalism generally and in US specifically, this book is a good starting point

[Cole Bedford · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great way to get some historical perspectives of how our current failing system got to where it is today. As someone not alive during the 70s and 80s, it was helpful to see how the politics of that day have trickled down to the current system. It was a good read since it was broken up and condensed. I highly suggest it for anyone who wants to gain some context to the current political structure.

[Marna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compiled by IN THESE TIMES staff and contributors. Very informative. Both disturbing and hopeful about improvement of equality.

[Bluedisc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. It is a compendium of articles and selected writings. It has a great section and ends on how BLM is helping change America.

[Mark Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A culmination of forty years of reporting by investigative reporters and progressive thinkers focuses on one of the key issues of our time, a steady movement towards an oligarchy in which ever more resources are being concentrated in an every smaller segment of our population. The richest 1 percent of Americans now own more wealth than the bottom 90%, while the country’s median household income is less today than it was in 1989. The great struggles of U.S. history, from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, have at their core been fights over the gap between the promise of equality opportunity and reality.
The In these Times articles are not research but show why the country became so unequal so quickly—and how people pushed back against this reality. The first part of the book examines the causes and effects of growing inequality. Part Two focuses on those who pushed for change. Intensifying globalization is an important theme as it has both undermined and heightened the power of borders, sparking transnational solidarity and protest. If reversing inequality is one of the great challenges of our time, then the great mystery which is also explore in these articles is why so many people for so long seemed to accept a new reality that demands more work for less money.
The articles reveal a number of important trends in the labor market today such as the growing freedom Multinational corporations have to search abroad for the cheapest wages which explains why the country has lost a net 5 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2014. In the introduction of the section, “Welcome to the Precariat” by Rebecca Burns, the reader learns that the number of temporary workers hit an all-time high of 2.9 million in 2015 leading to the emergence of a new class of “permatemps” dominated by the most vulnerable workers: African Americans, Latinos and women are all overrepresented. This change obviously poses serious challenges for unions and organizers.
Another group being negatively impacted by changes in the labor market are Adjunct professors according to Rebecca Burns in her article, “The Adjunct’s Lament.” “Employers have long treated immigrant workers as disposable. A combination of precarious working conditions and exclusion from legal protections have according to Ms. Burns led to “more American workers than ever knowing how they feel.”
Some of the articles reflect issues which will cause growing problems which groups such as illegal immigrants like Dennis Bernstein and Connie Blitt’s article, “Central American Refugees for Profit” written in 1986 where the Corrections Corporation of American teams up with the U.S. Government to create a “sparkling new, state-of-the art prison for profit. One Laredo attorney and refugee advocate considers that the facility “threatens to end children for many refugee youth” and that “boredom created by limited recreational or educational programs at the institution plays right on the hands of another profit-stretching device employed by CCA, the use of “volunteer” labor.”
Another timely article is David Bacon’s, “All Over the World Migrants Demand the Right to Stay at Home”, which points out that the government spends more today on border and immigration enforcement than on all other federal law enforcement agencies combined. And yet many countries are becoming more dependent on their “remittances” which in 2012 worldwide reached $401 billion, over 5 percent higher than the previous year. But most importantly, most migration “is fueled by the need to survive. The alternative according to the US-Mexico Binational Front on Indigenous Organizations is the “right to stay home”—to promote economic development that can make migration a voluntary option” not a necessity.
The challenge for the future is articulated by New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof who concluded, “What American, however well-meaning, is astonishingly oblivious of pervasive inequality.” Something this publication and some of its impressive contributors like Ralph Nader, Michelle Chen and Noam Chomsky are trying to change. In order to change the current political and economic trends, we must begin with an understanding of how we ended up here and this series of articles is a good place to start.
Product details
• File Size: 642 KB
• Print Length: 273 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1786631148
• Publisher: Verso (April 18, 2017)
• Publication Date: April 18, 2017
• Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B01FBZZG3E
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:

[Aida Amirul · Rating 5 out of 5]

im admittedly a bit late to this book lol but holy shittt im obsessed. this is a collection of selected essays (articles) from In These Times magazines from the 70s to mid 2010s. they are arranged in sections/chapters highlighting specific national events that influenced labor and class struggles. as someone who disproportionately consumes contemporary journalism and struggle analysis (because let’s be real- there’s a lot going on and a lot to know), reading a selection of articles across decades was a great way to fill my knowledge gap of the context of past struggles and how they relate to today’s. obvi not all essays were perfect, but i think overwhelmingly most were rooted in anti capitalism and the people’s movement against the ruling class.

also i already think the best books are written by journalists so this was like an extra special treat

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good overview of the several fronts on which war has been waged against ‘the least of these’ in the neoliberal era. A collection of articles from In these Times, it is, inevitably, rapidly becoming dated: All of the topics covered have progressed considerably in the age of Trump. Nonetheless, for those who are less aware of what has been done to workers, minorities, and democracy itself, this is not a bad place to start.

[Noah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This work was a collection of new articles. While some of the articles were extremely interesting and engaging, the book fell short in the end. My issue with this book is that it expects the reader to already have an intimate understanding of what each article was writting about. A summary at the start of each chapter or article about the historic event would have been helpful, otherwise the only articles that are impactful are the more contemporary ones.

[isa]

took me 6 yrs to finish. great amount of information put together