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

No CEO Should Earn 1,000 Times More Than a Regular Employee

Employees of at least five U.S. corporations would have to work more than a millennium to catch up with their CEO.

Billionaires Won’t Save the World — Just Look at Elon Musk

The “playboy genius” is essentially squandering taxpayer money on pet projects like Mars trips and flamethrowers.

A Media Mogul’s Noble Challenge to Moguldom

The newspaper publishing giant E.W. Scripps would be deeply distressed to see what has become of his namesake company – and beloved country.

How Gary Cohn and Andrew Mellon Both Failed America

Mellon’s failure greased the nation’s way into a decade of Great Depression. Will Cohn’s tax-cuts do the same?

Why We Need to Talk More About Economic Vulnerability

New OECD data reveals nearly 40 percent of people living across 28 of the world’s developed countries are “economically vulnerable.”

The Big Pharma Family that Brought Us the Opioid Crisis

Who will bring to justice the billionaires who have profited so royally from addiction?

Romance in an Age of Grand Fortunes

New research suggests large incomes can doom relationships right from the start.

Do the Poor Deserve Health Care? These Politicians Say No.

Billionaire-backed politicians are turning Kentucky’s health care miracle into a tragedy.

The Government Has Failed the Poor Time and Time Again. Now, They’re Failing the Middle Class,Too.

Since 1980, government programs have been failing America’s poor. The GOP tax legislation essentially re-engineers government to fail America’s middle class, too.

The GOP’s Great Depression Tax Plan

What history will the 2017 tax clash end up making?

How to Stop a Tax Plan Rigged for the Rich

We can take a lesson from 1932.

Trump’s Tax Plan Taunts the Dignity of Labor

If it passes, this plan would have our national tax burden resting overwhelmingly on income from the labor of working people.

Don’t Be Fooled By the Throw-Clayton-Kershaw-Under-the-Bus Tax Plan

the House GOP decided to keep the top federal income tax rate at 39.6 percent. But the really rich won’t be paying taxes at anywhere near that rate.

How To Stop Corporations from Blackmailing Congress

Local institutions should start leveraging their economic clout on behalf of the low- and moderate-income communities that surround them.

If You Want to Collect Social Security, Trump’s Tax Plan Is an Outrage

You probably pay about four times more of your income to Social Security than millionaires, who want to cut their taxes and your benefits.

Luxury Jets Are Getting Cheaper. That Means More Air Pollution and Traffic Jams For the Rest of Us.

The deals on luxury private jets have never been sweeter. The reality of what that means for the rest of us could hardly be more bitter.

Why Do So Many Super Rich Despise the Poor?

Donald Trump’s put-down of Puerto Ricans reflects a mindset that has long afflicted the awesomely affluent.

We Get Sick, They Get Rich

Our “free market” health care system gives CEOs the freedom to squeeze us.

Teachers Shouldn’t Have to Panhandle to Prep for a New School Year

The rich who run America’s retail empires are conniving to slash the tax revenue that goes to America’s public schools.

Democrats’ ‘Better Deal’ Isn’t Much Better

Working Americans are hungering for a policy agenda daring enough to take on corporate greed. The Democratic Party’s “Better Deal” isn’t that.