inequality

Your Pay Is About to Go Up

Hamilton Nolan · 04/25/16 02:30PM

If you make less than $50,000 per year, you will soon be entitled to overtime pay. “Me?” you wonder, glancing around with uncertainty. Yes: You.

The Misery of Adjunct Professors Keeps Higher Education Booming

Hamilton Nolan · 04/21/16 11:30AM

Being an adjunct professor at a college may be the job with the single biggest discrepancy between the (high) education level required to hold it and the (astoundingly low) level of pay. How long until this system blows up?

We Still Suck at Getting Poor Kids Into College

Hamilton Nolan · 04/20/16 09:15AM

American colleges and universities are constantly working to diversify their student bodies (or at least appear to diversify on the cover of brochures). A new study finds that we have failed to do much at all to get poor people college educations, though.

Automation and Basic Income

Hamilton Nolan · 03/25/16 12:46PM

Without meaning to, the CEO of a restaurant corporation that is busily trying to automate employees out of existence is becoming one of the best spokesmen for the idea of providing all Americans with a universal basic income.

Hamilton Nolan · 03/07/16 05:37PM

Canada’s relatively radical fight against economic inequality is hobbled by “the government’s insistence that the chief beneficiary of that fight will be the middle class — as opposed to the poor... living up to it appears to have produced policy designs that wouldn’t otherwise make much sense.”

Tech Workers Should Unionize

Hamilton Nolan · 03/07/16 11:56AM

Last week, the drivers who shuttle San Francisco Google employees to work voted to unionize with the Teamsters. How long until their passengers do the same thing?

Hamilton Nolan · 03/04/16 05:31PM

The majority of black and Hispanic families have no retirement savings at all; among those who do, their median savings are just $22,000, versus $73,000 for the median white family with savings. The racial wealth gap lasts until you’re dead.

How Rent-Seeking Is Driving Inequality

Hamilton Nolan · 02/29/16 04:30PM

When someone like Bernie Sanders rails against a “rigged” economy that is fueling inequality, some believe that he is espousing a radical view. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even the White House knows the economy is rigged.

The Pulling-Apart of America

Hamilton Nolan · 02/25/16 03:20PM

If you look very closely at America, you can see the poor physically growing apart from the rich, like a polar bear drifting out to sea on a broken chunk of ice.

Give Everyone Money

Hamilton Nolan · 02/24/16 02:53PM

The economy, both at home and abroad, needs stimulating. Governments have been trying to do this since the 2008 recession, without full success. Is it time to just... give everyone some money?

Let's Hear the Better Proposals 

Hamilton Nolan · 02/17/16 02:55PM

One of the most persistent and least useful arguments of this presidential campaign season is taking place among Democrats who (mostly) talk past one another about how economic inequality and racial inequality are or are not linked. Does someone have a good proposal? Let’s hear it.