Income inequality

I’m a Black, Queer Woman Working as an Adjunct Professor—And I’m Going on Strike

Education, Income inequality, job satisfaction, LGBT / By max cyril

Last fall, after nearly two years of underemployment due to the Covid-19 pandemic, I began teaching at Mercy College in New York as an adjunct professor. I was excited to finally be back in the classroom doing the thing I loved: teaching. I knew the terms of my contract, and while I wished the compensation was better, I accepted the offer in …

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CEO pay rises, average worker pay stagnates, this week, year, decade in the war on workers

Leave a Comment / Income inequality / By max cyril

The pandemic did not change rising economic inequality in the United States—go figure. We’ve seen again and again how existing inequalities instead were exacerbated as people who could work remotely did so and stayed relatively safe while others had to put their health and safety on the line to keep scraping by, as women have been …

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Megan Rapinoe and other soccer stars headed to Congress and the White House for Equal Pay Day

Leave a Comment / equal pay, Income inequality / By max cyril

March 24 is Equal Pay Day—as ever, the occasion for a resoundingly sarcastic “woohoo.” If you start counting on January 1, 2020, Equal Pay Day marks the day on which women have been paid as much as men had been paid by December 31, 2020. Women working full-time and year-round make, on average, 82 cents for …

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Unemployment Money Chaos Redux?; Clawing Back Dough From the Rich

1 Comment / Income inequality, unemployment insurance / By max cyril

How many of you dealt with that chaos when it came to wrestling with the unemployment insurance system last year? Some of the rhetoric we heard was, “well that chaos was just the pandemic crush overwhelming the system”. Yes, that’s true in a very narrow sense—the system collapsed in many places, meaning people who were …

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Pandemic reveals tale of 2 Californias like never before

Leave a Comment / Income inequality, unemployment / By max cyril

As Bay Area tech workers set up home offices to avoid coronavirus exposure, grocers, farm workers and warehouse employees in the Central Valley never stopped reporting to job sites. Renters pleaded for eviction relief while urban professionals fled for suburbs and resort towns, taking advantage of record-low interest rates to buy bigger, better homes. Most …

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Biden’s big challenge: A growing racial wealth gap

Leave a Comment / economy, Income inequality, Transition 2020, wealth / By max cyril

When he takes office on Jan. 20, Joe Biden will face a gap between Black and white wealth that has grown into a yawning chasm during the past 10 months. The pandemic has shuttered tens of thousands of businesses and left millions out of work. And communities of color have borne the brunt of the …

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Voters pass pro-worker laws where the Congress lags, this week in the war on workers

Leave a Comment / election, Income inequality, MinimumWage, paid family leave / By max cyril

The presidential and Senate elections were the headlines on Tuesday and through the rest of the week, but it’s worth noting a few key places where voters said yes to ballot measures making life a little better for working families. In Florida, voters passed a $15 minimum wage amendment. It phases in very slowly, not reaching …

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Women of color suffer as coronavirus takes existing economic inequalities and doubles down on them

Leave a Comment / Income inequality, women's issues, Working Women / By max cyril

The coronavirus economy is crushing women, people of color, and especially women of color. While the economy added 661,000 jobs between August and September, 865,000 women dropped out of the paid workforce. White women have recovered 61% of the jobs they lost in the early months of the pandemic, while Black women have recovered just 39%. As of a September …

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‘Oil on the inequality fire’: How slashing jobless aid could widen the wealth gap

Leave a Comment / Income inequality, unemployment / By max cyril

Congress appears poised to dramatically reduce a federal program that has been providing an extra $600 per week for jobless workers since the spring. How Congress decides to help the tens of millions of unemployed workers during the pandemic could determine whether the stark gap between America’s rich and poor will continue to widen amid …

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The thing about systemic racism is it’s systemic: This week in the war on workers

Leave a Comment / Income inequality, race discrimination / By max cyril

According to government statistics, the wage gap between white men and Black men has shrunk dramatically since the 1950s. But that’s only true, The New York Times’ David Leonhardt points out, if you compare workers—and the problem is, a lot of Black men have been pushed out of the workforce, in significant part by mass incarceration. When comparing …

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