When Big Money Votes, Wealth Gaps Widen
How changes to California’s Proposition 13 could reduce inequality.
November 13, 2019
VIDEO
Why is Robert Reich so stressed out?
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How changes to California’s Proposition 13 could reduce inequality.
The Democratic frontrunner’s mixed economic record leaves him vulnerable to progressive opponents.
A struggling bellwether county in Pennsylvania appears to be back in the Democratic column. But is it?
Co-published by Fast Company
Many economists say the president can’t claim credit for the current economy and that his policies have contributed to rising inequality.
Co-published by The Guardian
Months after the federal shutdown, a Detroit childcare worker still struggles to make up for lost pay.
Today we embark on a yearlong project exploring what has become another “inconvenient truth” – the pain that economic inequality has brought to America.
Co-published by The Guardian and Fast Company
A crop of presidential candidates is pushing proposals aimed at Americans who work hard but feel they’re not getting their share of the pie.
An estimated 41.4 percent of the total U.S. population — 135 million people — are either poor or low-income.
Here’s what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who narrated this video on the series, has said about the project: “It’s so important for fact-based news outlets to shine a light on the defining issue of our time. ‘United States of Inequality’ is a timely reporting project.”
Capital & Main’s special series, The United States of Inequality, will feature articles, interviews, videos and infographics weekly till the 2020 elections. Sign up to be the first to get the content as it is being published.
An estimated 41.4 percent of the total U.S. population — 135 million people — are either poor or low-income.
One in four African-American families have a net worth of zero or less.
The median white family has 41 times more wealth than the median black family and 22
times more wealth than the median Latino family.
CEO compensation has grown 940 percent since 1978, while typical worker compensation has risen only 12 percent during that time.
More than 30 percent of black children and over 26 percent of Hispanic kids live in poverty.
The top 0.1 percent’s earnings grew 15 times faster than the bottom 90 percent’s earnings between 1979 and 2017.
Three men own as much as the bottom half of Americans.
The richest five percent of Americans own 66 percent of the nation’s wealth.
The richest one percent own more than half of stocks.
U.S. men have three times more than women in retirement savings.
Today – exactly one year before the 2020 presidential election – Capital & Main is launching a 12-month series on economic inequality in America. “United States of Inequality: 2020 and the Great Divide” will examine how tens of millions of Americans increasingly struggle to make ends meet, and how this reality will affect one of the most consequential elections in America’s history.
Conceived by Capital & Main and produced in partnership with the Guardian US, Fast Company and The American Prospect, “United States of Inequality” will feature at least one story or multimedia feature every week for 52 weeks through the November 2020 election.
Here’s what former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who narrated this video on the series, has said about the project: “It’s so important for fact-based news outlets to shine a light on the defining issue of our time. ‘United States of Inequality’ is a timely reporting project.”
The series content will fall into the following five thematic areas:
We hope you will follow “United States of Inequality” in the weeks and months to come as the nation grapples with an issue that will shape the 2020 election in profound ways — and that ranks as the other inconvenient truth of our era.
Capital & Main is an award-winning nonprofit publication that reports from California on the most pressing economic, environmental and social issues of our time. Winner of the 2016 Online Journalist of the Year prize from the Southern California Journalism Awards and a 2017 Best in the West award, Capital & Main has had stories co-published in more than 30 media outlets, from The Atlantic, Time, Reuters, The Guardian and Fast Company to The American Prospect, Grist, Slate and the Daily Beast. Working with top writers, editors and visual artists, we cover income inequality, climate change, the green economy, housing, health care, public education, immigration, race, and criminal justice. Capital & Main is a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization.
