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

Paying for Poor Performance

Over the past two decades, the myth of CEOs earning their runaway pay packages has grown into the ultimate scam.

Executive Excess 2013: Bailed Out, Booted, and Busted

Nearly 40 percent of the CEOs on the highest-paid lists from the past 20 years were eventually “bailed out, booted, or busted.”

In America’s West, Equality Takes a Hit

Utah may be losing its egalitarian advantage.

The Bezillionaire Times

Amazon’s take-no-prisoners business model made founder Jeff Bezos staggeringly rich while stranding thousands of warehouse workers on the borderline of poverty.

Blowing the Whistle on Philanthropy

A scion of one of America’s top fortunes has just exposed our “charitable-industrial complex.”

What’s Driving America’s Flagging Vital Signs?

Inequality is behind the nation’s dismal life expectancy rates.

Predistribute the Wealth

The market has stopped working for working people.

A More Perfect Union

Our elites have lost that selfless spirit.

Runaway CEO Pay Gets a Free Pass

The House Financial Services Committee has just moved to repeal the only statutory provision now on the books that puts real heat on overpaid top executives.

A Tax System that Targets Workers

U.S. rates on wealth have fallen while rates on labor income have gone up. That’s unsustainable.

Snooping Makes an Easy Road to Riches

Corporate execs at firms like Booz Allen have a vested self-interest in pumping up demand for their snooping services.

They Can’t Stop Beethoven, Can They?

For the grasping managers of Corporate America – and the institutions their wealth dominates – no workers deserve dignity, not even the most amazingly accomplished.

The Wealthy’s Free Pass

Our tax code pads the bottom line of the Americans who need help the least.

These Hedges Need Trimming

Are hedge funds a financial service or a racket?

Money Still Can’t Buy Happiness

And we finally have a nation that’s taking that reality to heart.

A Primer for Taming Corporate Power

For social change, slow and steady may win the race.

How We Pay for CEO “Performance”

A gaping tax loophole pads executive pay and the federal debt.

Austerity Will Leave Us Crying ’96 Tears’

But America’s wealthy don’t seem to mind.

Tracking CEO Pay

The most important executive compensation indicator is the gap between what CEOs and their workers are paid.

The Art of Inequality

Monumental gifts to museums are coinciding with the erosion of arts programs at the nation’s public schools.