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

Our Billionaires Are Blasting Off. Good Riddance!

Could space become the ‘final frontier’ in the struggle for a more equal world?

What Happens Economically When Wealth Tilts to the Top?

Most of us see immoral ugliness wherever wealth concentrates. Much more lurks that we need to see.

An Inequality Even Conservative Justices Can’t Swallow

A unanimous Supreme Court throws a monkey-wrench into a college sports scene that’s minting mega millionaires.

Can We Conquer Our Grand Dynastic Family Fortunes?

We most certainly can. We have history on our side.

Living Ever Larger in the Lap of Luxury

The rich have become so rich that just selling to the rich can make you the world’s richest person.

To Grow Our Economic Pie, Cut More Equal Slices

Redistributing wealth downward, new calculations suggest, can make societies richer.

The Justice McDonald’s Workers Seek Workers at Spain’s Mondragón Have Found

We don’t have to organize our economy around enterprises that pay CEOs over 1,000 times what workers make.

Can We Get a Vaccine for the Greed Pandemic?

The avarice virus escaped decades ago from corporate boardrooms. We can beat it.

Executive Excess 2021

Low-Wage Workers Lost Hours, Jobs, and Lives. Their Employers Bent the Rules — To Pump up CEO Paychecks.

Bill, Melinda, and the Burden of Grand Fortune

We can’t buy happiness, but greater equality could make it more likely.

President Biden’s Tax-the-Rich Plan: Just How Bold?

A little history can help us with the answer.

The Billionaires Who Couldn’t Kick Straight

America’s super rich and their European pals have failed spectacularly in a scheme to kill global football’s most egalitarian traditions.

What Can We Do to Start Civilizing Our Richest?

Worldwide, ever more of us are realizing we need a ceiling on what our greediest can grab.

A Manchester Boldly United for a More Equal Metropolis

A major UK urban center takes on the most ambitious of goals: a fairer future for all.

Hey, Wealthy Tax Cheat, Hearing Any Footsteps Yet?

Our biggest tax evaders have been living high on the hog. They may soon have cause to worry.

A Senator Against CEOs Making Over 50 Times What Workers Make Now Has a Gavel

And that senator is using his gavel to boost a bill that ups taxes on firms that pay executives outrageously more than their workers.

Did America’s Greediest Corporation Just Become Greedier?

Recently added to the Walmart governing board: still another expert in enriching top execs at worker and taxpayer expense.

Why the Amazon Worker Vote in Bessemer Means So Much

Unions don’t just raise worker wages. They help flatten grand private plutocratic fortunes.

Average Americans Pay Tax on Over Half Their Wealth. Shouldn’t Rich Americans?

Our current national confusion over wealth taxes serves only the wealthy.

The ‘Pre-Existing Condition’ That Doomed the U.S. COVID Response?

The answer from a blue-ribbon medical commission on the Trump years: decades of rising inequality.