As the wealthy continue sucking the country dry, the question isn’t if the US will cease to provide a decent standard of living for its people. Rather it is how many people will be sacrificed on the way down. In America, the richest nation in the world when measured by raw GDP, children are getting sick from living by open pools of raw sewage.. [...]

World’s richest 1% bagged 82% of global wealth in 2017, while poorest half got nothing – Oxfam The inequality crisis is worsening, according to a new study by global charity Oxfam, which found that the world’s richest 42 people own the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50 percent worldwide. [...]

America is often referred to as the "Land of the Free," but as citizens prepare to celebrate the Fourth of July, their satisfaction with the country's freedom is significantly lower than it was a decade ago, according to a newly released Gallup poll. The survey found that although 91 percent of Americans were satisfied with the freedom in their lives in 2006, only 75 percent feel the same way t [...]

The answer is crystal clear. For years, Social Security has served as a key source of income for millions of retired Americans. In fact, these days, an estimated 61% of retirees rely on their benefits to provide at least half of their income. The problem, however, is that Social Security was never designed to cover seniors' living costs in their entirety. So when we ask whether the average America [...]

Here’s hoping there's rent control in China: Employees at a factory that manufactures apparel for Ivanka Trump’s clothing business earn just $62 each week, for 60 hours of work, it has been revealed. There are 80 workers at the plant, which produces clothing for Ivanka Trump’s eponymous brand as well as for Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, The Washington Post reported. [...]

One-fifth of Medicare recipients are covered through Medicaid, including nursing homes and long-term care. The House Republican leadership’s Obamacare repeal bill will not only cause upwards of 24 million people to lose their health care coverage over the next decade, as the Congressional Budget Office has said, but it will also push millions of seniors already on the financial edge into deep an [...]

One in three American kids live in poverty, according to UNICEF. With 32.2 percent of children living below this line, the U.S. ranks 36th out of the 41 wealthy countries included in the UNICEF report. The United States ranks near the bottom of the pack of wealthy nations on a measure of child poverty. Nearly one third of U.S. children live in households with an income below 60 percent of the nati [...]

On this week’s episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges is joined by Linh Dinh, author of “Postcards from the End of America”. Dinh traveled across the US lift up the voices of those who have been disappeared by our corporate state. RT Correspondent Anya Parampil reveals the stark statistics of those living in poverty in America. The Plight of the Underclass with Linh Dinh [...]

The major takeaway from the US Presidential election, and from the events which have shaped the first two weeks of Donald Trump’s Presidency - both his actions and the reactions of his opponents - is that America is tired. It is not difficult to see why since the US has for decades been behaving in a way that was guaranteed eventually to exhaust it. [...]

Federal data released Aug. 9 shows that Americans’ wages are dropping again, seven years after President Barack Obama declared the economy had recovered from the property-bubble — and three months before the 2016 election. [...]

The US Justice Department cautioned local courts that it is unconstitutional to jail someone for not paying fines without determining whether they are able to pay, and warned against using court fees to generate revenue for cities. The warnings came as part of an effort to reform court practices that “perpetuate poverty and result in unnecessary deprivations of liberty,” the Justice Depar [...]

The 2008 Wall Street crash resulted from a combination of unrestrained greed and political contempt for government regulators who might have prevented the devastation. In The Big Short, the tale is told from the perspective of a few players who saw the inevitable and made money on the crash, writes James DiEugenio. If you read Michael Lewis’s book The Big Short or see the movie by the same na [...]

The goal? A total revamp of the economic system that sidelines the interests of the majority. The time? Now. And the stakes couldn't be higher. At issue is the global inequality crisis that is "spiraling out of control," an alliance of nine groups including Amnesty International, Association for Women's Rights in Development, Greenpeace, International Trade Union Confederation, and Oxfam says, [...]

The US economy is generating breathtaking wealth for an elite minority of the population at the expense of millions of people now tumbling through the gaping cracks of the system. So why do we continue to watch the painful spectacle year after year? America’s once-glorified middle-class is on its way to being relegated to the history books; an artifact of a bygone era when good-paying jobs, c [...]

Sure, last year was the first pre-election year stock market loss since the Great Depression. And admittedly, last week was the worst opening week of any year … EVER. But that’s not the big news. The bigger news is that the Baltic Dry Index has crashed. [...]

America presents itself to the world as “the land of the free” but – for the vast majority – it is a place of enslaving indebtedness, a reality for much of “the 99%” that has deep historical roots hidden or “lost” from our history, as Jada Thacker explains. Since its center-stage debut during the Occupy Wall Street movement, “the 99%” – a term emblematic of extreme economi [...]

US stocks tumbled after China's stock market crashed seven percent overnight on Thursday and crude fell to the lowest level in more than 12 years. In the recent four days, the Dow Jones index has plummeted 911 points, or more than five percent so far in 2016, making it the worst four-day percentage loss to start a year on record since 1897. [...]

Social movements calling for raising the minimum wage to $15/ hour with yearly adjustments for increases in the cost of living deserve support. However, earning $15/ hour will not guarantee a decent standard of living. An individual working forty hours a week at $15/ hour for an entire year earns $31,200, an income that is more than two and a half times the 2014 official poverty threshold of $1 [...]

A few months ago, entrepreneur Charles Devenish contacted me to tell me about his plans to develop various mining enterprises across India. He spoke about the massive amounts of untapped mineral resources lying beneath India that is just lying there and has been for a long time. [...]

Activists who think that Ukraine’s 2016 budget screams death to the agricultural sector have brought a dead pig in a coffin to the Verkhovna Rada building in Kiev and held a mock funeral ceremony. The angry protesting farmers and their supporters demand to keep a simplified tax system and special VAT rules for the agricultural sector in 2016, something the announced budget lacks as Ukraine ha [...]

Patrick Schmidt was unemployed and living in California when he bought an old school bus for $4,500 in March. He drove it to Vegas where he and his father renovated it into a home on wheels. They spent $9,000 to turn the bus into a house, before Patrick took it for a spin all the way to Florida, traveling through 30 states. [...]

As a way to improve living standards and boosts its economy, the nation of Finland is moving closer towards offering all of its adult citizens a basic permanent income of approximately 800 euros per month. The monthly allotment would replace other existing social benefits, but is an idea long advocated for by progressive-minded social scientists and economists as a solution—counter-intuitive [...]