In Zambia, a People’s Budget Campaign Demands a Budget that Works for Women

By Daisy Lutangu Mwilima, Open Democracy

The national budget in any country is one of the key instruments a government can use to fight inequality and bridge the gap between the rich and the poor. For this reason, Fight Inequality Alliance Zambia has been carrying out a People’s Budget campaign in the last couple of months to advocate for a more equal budget that represents the needs of the majority poor and not the elite.

Apartheid in the Global Governance System

By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog

Ultimately, the voting system at the WB/IMF contributes to the perpetuation of global inequality.  The system ensures that the very countries that became rich by plundering the global South during the colonial period are now, by dint of their plunder, empowered to determine the rules of the global economy in their own interests, indefinitely.  Inequality begets inequality.

For the Sake of Life on Earth, We Must Put a Limit on Wealth

By George Monbiot, The Guardian blog

A meaningful strike in defence of the living world is, in part, a strike against the desire to raise our incomes and accumulate wealth: a desire shaped, more than we are probably aware, by dominant social and economic narratives. I see myself as striking in support of a radical and disturbing concept: enough.

Tax the Rich Before the Rest

By Chuck Collins, Common Dreams

Presidential candidates should take a pledge: The middle class should not pay one dollar more in new taxes until the super-rich pay their fair share.

Why a Hipster, Vegan, Green Start-up Service Economy Lifestyle cannot be Sustainable

By Vijay Kolinjivadi, Daniel Horen Greenford, Uneven Earth

Any gains in technological efficiency must be accompanied by an economy built not on growth, profit and self-interest, but care and responsibility if they are to be effective. This, not hipsterized eco-efficiency, is where we should channel our desires for sustainability—something that so many of us are so dearly committed to, and something that we all urgently need.

A Response to Noah Smith about Global Poverty

By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog

The debate about global poverty is important. But our collective understanding of this matter will only be served by intellectually honest and sincere engagement with the arguments at hand.

Why You Don’t Hear Trump or Farage Talking About the Tech Revolution

By John Harris, The Guardian blog

This is the basic argument of a book I have been lost in for the last 10 days: The Technology Trap, by the Swedish-German economist and historian Carl Benedikt Frey. His basic thesis is that this phase of the 21st century is turning out to be very like the early 19th, in the sense that technology is causing a great crisis of status, security and trust in institutions.

Taxing the (Very) Rich: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

By Chuck Collins, Inequality.org

Six months ago you might have been hesitant to say the words.  But thanks to a political season of bold ideas – and the furious response of the U.S. public to four decades of extreme inequalities of wealth and power – you can now utter the words in polite company.  It is time to tax the very rich.

Inequality Metrics and the Question of Power

By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog

One of the main reasons we are concerned about inequality in the first place is that it allows rich people to exercise power over the lives of the poor.

Global Inequality in a Time of Climate Emergency

By Tom Athanasiou, Inequality.org

If we had to choose one voice, one single slogan, to represent the pivot we’re now passing through, as Wen Stephenson suggests in the Nation, we might well pick the Czech playwright and ex-president Vaclav Havel and his notion of “living in truth.”