検索キーワード： 社会階級・経済格差

Capitalism as a system has spawned deepening economic crisis alongside its bought-and-paid-for political establishment. Neither serves the needs of our society. Whether it is secure, well-paid, and meaningful jobs or a sustainable relationship with the natural environment that we depend on, our society is not delivering the results people need and deserve.

The United States is becoming a nation of rich and poor, with few families in the middle. In this book, MIT economist Peter Temin offers an illuminating way to look at the vanishing middle class. Temin argues that American history and politics, particularly slavery and its aftermath, play an important part in the widening gap between rich and poor. Temin employs a well-known, simple model of a dual economy to examine the dynamics of the rich/poor divide in America.

In this provocative book, Jonathan Rothwell draws on the latest empirical evidence from across the social sciences to demonstrate how rich democracies have allowed racial politics and the interests of those at the top to subordinate justice. He looks at the rise of nationalism in Europe and the United States, revealing how this trend overlaps with racial prejudice and is related to mounting frustration with a political status quo that thrives on income inequality and inefficient markets. But economic differences are by no means inevitable.

Using dozens of vivid examples to show how society overprescribed competition as a solution and when unbridled rivalry hurts consumers, kills entrepreneurship, and increases economic inequality, two free-market thinkers diagnose the sickness caused by competition overdose and provide remedies that will promote sustainable growth and progress for everyone, not just wealthy shareholders and those at the top.

With unequaled insight and brio, David Brooks, the New York Times columnist and bestselling author of Bobos in Paradise, has long explored and explained the way we live. Now, with the intellectual curiosity and emotional wisdom that make his columns among the most read in the nation, Brooks turns to the building blocks of human flourishing in a multilayered, profoundly illuminating work grounded in everyday life.

Was bedeutet es, eine Ost-Identität auferlegt zu bekommen? Eine Identität, die für die rasant wachsende gesellschaftliche Spaltung verantwortlich gemacht wird? Der Attribute wie Populismus, ein mangelndes Demokratieverständnis, Rassismus, Verschwörungsmythen und Armut zugeschrieben werden? Der Leipziger Germanist Dirk Oschmann zeigt in seinem augenöffnenden Text, dass der Westen sich über dreißig Jahre nach Mauerfall als Norm definiert und den Osten als Abweichung. Unsere Medien, Politik, Wirtschaft und Wissenschaft werden von westdeutschen Perspektiven dominiert.

Since the Great Recession, recent college grads have confronted an alarming reality: the economic engine that propelled earlier generations into the middle class has begun to stall out. Millions of workers with degrees faced crushing debt while settling for jobs below their qualifications. The anger of this college-educated working class finally boiled over during the Covid pandemic, when workers at companies like Apple and Starbucks shocked corporate America by voting to unionize.

The United States is the richest country on earth, yet has more poverty than any other advanced democracy. One in seven Americans live below the poverty line, a line which hasn't shifted over the last fifty years, despite the efforts of successive governments and extensive relief programs. Why is there so much scarcity in this land of dollars? In Poverty, by America, acclaimed sociologist Matthew Desmond examines the nature of American poverty today and the stories we tell ourselves about it.

An exploration of forceful communication strategies and their application in society.

Grace Blakeley erfindet Kapitalismuskritik neu. Theoretisch fundiert, erfrischend klug und mit umfassender Recherche zeigt sie, dass kapitalistische Strukturen Freiheitnicht fördern, sondern bedrohen. Die Krisen dieser Welt sind keine Ausnahmen, sondern logische Folge des real existierenden Kapitalismus. Nur wenn die Macht von Großkonzernen und der Finanzwelt eingehegt wird, kann die Politik der Alternativlosigkeit überwunden und die Demokratie gerettet werden.

Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flourish. In this powerful polemic, formerly incarcerated activist, essayist, and organizer Emile Suotonye DeWeaver argues that the root of the problem is white supremacy.

Haben wir ohne reiche Eltern keine Chance mehr? In kaum einem anderen westlichen Land ist Vermögen so ungleich verteilt wie in Deutschland. Die Schere geht immer weiter auf – aufgrund steigender Mieten und Lebensmittelpreise, weil heutzutage jeder Paketzusteller prozentual mehr von seinem Lohn abgibt als ein Milliardär, aber auch weil Steuern auf Vermögen runtergeschraubt werden und die Reichen unaufhörlich reicher werden. Diese Ungerechtigkeit ist gesellschaftliches Dynamit. Reichtum durch Arbeit? Fast unmöglich. Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied? Nur im Märchen.

For centuries, the developed Western world has exploited the less-developed “Rest” in the name of progress, conquering the Americas, driving the Atlantic slave trade, and colonizing Africa and Asia. Throughout, the West has justified this global conquest by the alleged material gains it brought to the conquered. But the colonial experiment unintentionally revealed how much of a demand there was for self-determination, and not just for relief from poverty. In Violent Saviors, economist William Easterly examines how the demand for agency has always been at the heart of debates on development.

At 22 years old, Kristin Collier was on the verge of college graduation, applying for a credit card to cover expenses before her teaching career began. She handed the banker her social security number and birthdate, excited to embark on her adult life. But the man returned, unsmiling and holding a lengthy copy of her credit report. He told her in no uncertain terms that she didn’t qualify for even the lowest line of credit. In fact, she had a shocking amount of debt already.

Through compelling examples from business, economics, literature, art, fashion, and beyond, Anointed demonstrates how status cascades through society, creating winners and losers in ways that often have little to do with merit. And how new technology offers a glimpse of a more equitable future.

The ultrarich hold more of America’s wealth than they did in the heyday of the Carnegies and Rockefellers. Here, Evan Osnos’s incisive reportage yields an unforgettable portrait of the tactics and obsessions driving this new Gilded Age, in which superyachts, luxury bunkers, elite tax dodges, and a torrent of political donations bespeak staggering disparities of wealth and power. With deft storytelling and meticulous reporting, this is a book about the indulgences, incentives, and psychological distortions that define our economic age.

Syeda X left the holy city of Banaras (now Varanasi) for Delhi with her young family in the aftermath of riots and communal violence in the early '90s. In Delhi, she settled into the life of a poor migrant, juggling multiple jobs a day - from sewing soccer balls and removing the stems from raisins, to shelling almonds sold in bulk to multinationals and assisting in illegal abortions. Syeda has held over 50 different jobs in 30 years, earning paltry sums in the process. And if she ever took a day off, her job would be lost to another faceless migrant.

Bankruptcy is the busiest federal court in America. In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many—a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. Legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America.

Elite networks are informal social networks between politicians in power and top executives of politically connected firms where personal ties and long-term interactions build trust and loyalty between involved actors. Both groups draw benefits from these interactions; politicians stay in power, and corporate executives extract rents for their firms. Firms reward connected executives with higher salaries thus widening the dispersion of earnings in society. In Elite Networks, Vuk Vukovic offers a different perspective on the long-run origins of inequality.

Poverty is big business in America. The federal government spends about $900 billion a year on programs that directly or disproportionately impact poor Americans, including antipoverty programs. States and local governments spend tens of billions more. Ironically, these enormous sums fuel the "corporate poverty complex," a vast web of hidden industries and entrenched private-sector interests that profit from the bureaucracies regulating the lives of the poor.