Veteran labor journalist and Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org, the Institute’s weekly newsletter on our great divides. He also contributes a regular column to OtherWords, the IPS national nonprofit editorial service.

Sam, now retired from the labor movement, spent two decades directing the publishing program at America’s largest union, the 2.8-million-member National Education Association, and before that edited the national publications of three other U.S. trade unions.

Sam’s own writing has revolved around economic inequality since the early 1990s. His op-eds on income and wealth concentration have appeared in periodicals all around the world, from the New York Times to Le Monde Diplomatique.

Sam has authored four books and co-edited two others. His 2004 book, Greed and Good: Understanding the Inequality that Limits Our Lives, won an “outstanding title” honor from the American Library Association’s book review journal. His 2012 title, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970, explores how average Americans ended the nation’s original Gilded Age. Sam’s most recent book, The Case for a Maximum Wage, offers a politically plausible path toward ending that Gilded Age’s second coming.

Latest

How Wealthy Have Our Super Wealthy Become?

We now have some new clues, thanks to the tax-evasion records whistleblowers have been so generously sharing.

In an Unequal America, Empathy, Not Just Housing, Has Become Too Pricey

The wealthy feel aggrieved by the presence of homeless folks, yet they’re the ones driving the affordable housing crisis.

Great Fortunes are Suffocating Great Art

How can we save art from the soul-crushing dynamics that our extreme inequality imposes?

For Equality, This Labor Leader Gave a Maximum Effort

The transit worker union’s Larry Hanley lived a life that reminds us what beating back inequality truly takes.

User Data Could Help Curb Inequality Spurred by the Tech Industry

The work we do online is making a precious few fabulously rich. Now stirring in California, a movement to share the wealth our data create.

America’s Wealthy Want to Silence the Income Inequality Discussion

The richest among us are preaching the ‘opportunity’ gospel. Don’t fall for it.

Gentrification Now Has More than Landlubbers Worried

Deep pockets have displaced modest-income people from plenty of prime urban terra firma. Could our offshore be next?

How Progressives Can Fix the Progressive Income Tax

Taxes on the wealthy should be linked not just to the top of the income ladder, but also to the bottom.

Big Pharma Runs Roughshod Over American Democracy

People of modest means face endless political gridlock when they want systems — like the drug industry — reformed. People of privilege face no such frustration.

Should We Tax Capital Gains?

Tax-the-rich proposals just keep coming. The latest, a capital gains tax, would hit households earning over $10 million annually the hardest.

Stop Saying We Can’t Afford a Green New Deal

If top U.S. corporations can afford to spend over $5 trillion buying back their own shares of stock, the United States can afford a Green New Deal.

A New Moneyball for Our Deeply Unequal Age

Outfielder Mike Trout has just signed the richest contract in pro sports history, and no one may be happier than America’s staggeringly overpaid CEOs.

Climate-Striking Young People Get Climate Change. Why Can’t Their Elders?

In deeply unequal societies, the rich and powerful never feel the environmental pain.

Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia Each Received Over a Billion Dollars in New Donations Last Year

Inequality in America’s system of higher education runs deep. Here’s why you should care.

A New Statistical Shell Game for Justifying Billionaires

Some daring conservatives are using the successes of Scandinavia to rationalize gran private fortunes.

Helicopter Parenting Linked to Economic Inequality?

China and the United States — two nations notorious for their helicopter parenting — just happen to sport two of the world’s deepest economic divides. Coincidence?

Have the Rich Always Laughed Stiff Tax Rates Away?

Fans of grand fortune want us to believe that the rich have never paid much more of their income in taxes than they do now. History says otherwise.

Taxing the Rich Is Bold — Can It Be Sustainable Too?

Innovative proposals like tying income tax rates for America’s riches to the minimum wage for America’s poorest could help high tax rates survive over the long haul.

The Best Month for Egalitarians on Capitol Hill Since 1932

Those rare moments when our political class suddenly starts viewing the nation’s richest through a skeptical lens can help trigger real social change.

The Beauty Industry Profits from Inequality

In a world where wealth concentrates ferociously, we can’t escape the ugliness our grand divides engender.