From Dollars and Sense, James Cypher on the nearly $2 trillion purloined from US workers in 2009; and Dear Dr. Dollar: Are low wages and job loss inevitable? From Monthly Review, Fred Magdoff on the jobs disaster in the United States. Upside down: Why millennials can’t start their careers and baby boomers can’t end theirs. The wealthiest Americans are the real "job-killers": The top 1 percent takes in more than twice the share of national income today than they did 30 years ago, and that's a big reason why consumers are tapped out. A review of Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America by David Callahan. How can inequality be good? Gary Becker says if it prodded people to seek greater productivity, higher pay, and a better standard of living. New York has one of the richest and one of the poorest congressional districts in the country and they’re right next to one another — what money looks like from opposite banks of the Harlem River. Positive changes for the poor will occur only in conjunction with changes to the republic’s rules, in the form of the full implementation of democracy. "Asset bubbles" have been roiling our economy ever since America’s wealthy started supersizing three decades ago — but another bubble, this one enveloping those wealthy, may be just as essential to understand. A review of Someplace Like America: Tales From the New Great Depression by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson (and more and more). How the Great Reset has already changed America: In the wake of the recession, cities and suburbs are being knit into giant city-states, with millions of people and billions — even trillions — of dollars of business. How did 2011 go so wrong? Derek Thompson on America's two-speed recovery. A review of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future by Robert B. Reich. How capitalist is America? Mark Roe wonders.
