Inequality is the crisis of our time. The growing gap between a few at the top and the rest of society damages us all. No longer able to deny the crisis, every government in the world is now pledged to fix it – and yet it keeps on getting worse. In this book, international anti-inequality campaigner Ben Phillips shows why winning the debate is not enough: we have to win the fight. Drawing on his insider experience, and his personal exchanges with the real-life heroes of successful movements, he shows how the battle against inequality has been won before, and he shares a practical plan for defeating inequality again. He sets a route map for us to overcome deference, build our collective power, and create a new story. Most books on inequality are about what other people ought to do about it – this book is about why winning the fight needs you. Tired of feeling helpless in the face of spiralling inequality? Want to know what you can do about it? This is the book for you.

"A DIY-guide to tackling inequality for activists everywhere"--

Audisee® eBooks with Audio combine professional narration and sentence highlighting for an engaging read aloud experience! In America, the amount of money people earn for doing the same job isn't always equal. The United States only recently made it illegal to pay men more than women for the same job, and the country's history of racism has created big wealth gaps between white and Black people that persist in the twenty-first century. Learn how income inequality originated, why it is a problem, and the ways people are fighting for an equal playing field. Read WokeTM Books are created in partnership with Cicely Lewis, the Read Woke librarian. Inspired by a belief that knowledge is power, Read Woke Books seek to amplify the voices of people of the global majority (people who are of African, Arab, Asian, and Latin American descent and identify as not white), provide information about groups that have been disenfranchised, share perspectives of people who have been underrepresented or oppressed, challenge social norms and disrupt the status quo, and encourage readers to take action in their community.

Leading economists and policymakers consider what economic tools are most effective in reversing the rise in inequality. Economic inequality is the defining issue of our time. In the United States, the wealth share of the top 1% has risen from 25% in the late 1970s to around 40% today. The percentage of children earning more than their parents has fallen from 90% in the 1940s to around 50% today. In Combating Inequality, leading economists, many of them current or former policymakers, bring good news: we have the tools to reverse the rise in inequality. In their discussions, they consider which of these tools are the most effective at doing so.

“A comprehensive, entertaining, and compelling argument for how rebuilding social infrastructure can help heal divisions in our society and move us forward.”—Jon Stewart NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • “Engaging.”—Mayor Pete Buttigieg, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) We are living in a time of deep divisions. Americans are sorting themselves along racial, religious, and cultural lines, leading to a level of polarization that the country hasn’t seen since the Civil War. Pundits and politicians are calling for us to come together and find common purpose. But how, exactly, can this be done? In Palaces for the People, Eric Klinenberg suggests a way forward. He believes that the future of democratic societies rests not simply on shared values but on shared spaces: the libraries, childcare centers, churches, and parks where crucial connections are formed. Interweaving his own research with examples from around the globe, Klinenberg shows how “social infrastructure” is helping to solve some of our most pressing societal challenges. Richly reported and ultimately uplifting, Palaces for the People offers a blueprint for bridging our seemingly unbridgeable divides. LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN NONFICTION “Just brilliant!”—Roman Mars, 99% Invisible “The aim of this sweeping work is to popularize the notion of ‘social infrastructure'—the ‘physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact'. . . . Here, drawing on research in urban planning, behavioral economics, and environmental psychology, as well as on his own fieldwork from around the world, [Eric Klinenberg] posits that a community’s resilience correlates strongly with the robustness of its social infrastructure. The numerous case studies add up to a plea for more investment in the spaces and institutions (parks, libraries, childcare centers) that foster mutual support in civic life.”—The New Yorker “Palaces for the People—the title is taken from the Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie’s description of the hundreds of libraries he funded—is essentially a calm, lucid exposition of a centuries-old idea, which is really a furious call to action.”—New Statesman “Clear-eyed . . . fascinating.”—Psychology Today

Dream Hoarders sparked a national conversation on the dangerous separation between the upper middle class and everyone else. Now in paperback and newly updated for the age of Trump, Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard Reeves is continuing to challenge the class system in America. In America, everyone knows that the top 1 percent are the villains. The rest of us, the 99 percent—we are the good guys. Not so, argues Reeves. The real class divide is not between the upper class and the upper middle class: it is between the upper middle class and everyone else. The separation of the upper middle class from everyone else is both economic and social, and the practice of “opportunity hoarding”—gaining exclusive access to scarce resources—is especially prevalent among parents who want to perpetuate privilege to the benefit of their children. While many families believe this is just good parenting, it is actually hurting others by reducing their chances of securing these opportunities. There is a glass floor created for each affluent child helped by his or her wealthy, stable family. That glass floor is a glass ceiling for another child. Throughout Dream Hoarders, Reeves explores the creation and perpetuation of opportunity hoarding, and what should be done to stop it, including controversial solutions such as ending legacy admissions to school. He offers specific steps toward reducing inequality and asks the upper middle class to pay for it. Convinced of their merit, members of the upper middle class believes they are entitled to those tax breaks and hoarded opportunities. After all, they aren't the 1 percent. The national obsession with the super rich allows the upper middle class to convince themselves that they are just like the rest of America. In Dream Hoarders, Reeves argues that in many ways, they are worse, and that changes in policy and social conscience are the only way to fix the broken system.

Spiralling inequality since the 1970s and the global financial crisis of 2008 have been the two most important challenges to democratic capitalism since the Great Depression. To understand the political economy of contemporary Europe and America we must, therefore, put inequality and crisis at the heart of the picture. In this innovative new textbook Mattias Vermeiren does just this, demonstrating that both the global financial crisis and the European sovereign debt crisis resulted from a mutually reinforcing but ultimately unsustainable relationship between countries with debt-led and export-led growth models, models fundamentally shaped by soaring income and wealth inequality. He traces the emergence of these two growth models by giving a comprehensive overview, deeply informed by the comparative and international political economy literature, of recent developments in the four key domains that have shaped the dynamics of crisis and inequality: macroeconomic policy, social policy, corporate governance and financial policy. He goes on to assess the prospects for the emergence of a more egalitarian and sustainable form of democratic capitalism. This fresh and insightful overview of contemporary Western capitalism will be essential reading for all students and scholars of international and comparative political economy.

We are living in a time of extreme inequality: America’s three richest people now own as much wealth as the bottom half of the population. Although most accept that this is grotesque, many politicians accept it as irreversible. In this book, leading US researcher and activist Chuck Collins succinctly diagnoses the drivers of rampant inequality, arguing that such disparities have their roots in 40 years of the powerful rigging the system in their favor. He proposes a far-reaching policy agenda, analyzes the barriers to progress, and shows how transformative local campaigns can become a national movement for change. This book is a powerful analysis of how the plutocracy sold us a toxic lie, and what we can do to reverse inequality.

The gap between the rich and the poor has grown dramatically in the United States and is now at its widest since at least the early 1900s. While by most measures the economy has been improving, soaring cost of living and stagnant wages have done little to assuage economic anxieties. Conditions like these seem designed to produce a generation-defining intervention to balance the economic scales and enhance opportunities for those at the middle and bottom of the country’s economic ladder—but we have seen nothing of the sort. Nathan J. Kelly argues that a key reason for this is that rising concentrations of wealth create a politics that makes reducing economic inequality more difficult. Kelly convincingly shows that, when a small fraction of the people control most of the economic resources, they also hold a disproportionate amount of political power, hurtling us toward a self-perpetuating plutocracy, or an “inequality trap.” Among other things, the rich support a broad political campaign that convinces voters that policies to reduce inequality are unwise and not in the average voter’s interest, regardless of the real economic impact. They also take advantage of interest groups they generously support to influence Congress and the president, as well as state governments, in ways that stop or slow down reform. One of the key implications of this book is that social policies designed to combat inequality should work hand-in-hand with political reforms that enhance democratic governance and efforts to fight racism, and a coordinated effort on all of these fronts will be needed to reverse the decades-long trend.

“An exacting look at gentrification.... How to Kill a City elucidates the complex interplay between the forces we control and those that control us.”―New York Times Book Review The term gentrification has become a buzzword to describe the changes in urban neighborhoods across the country, but we don’t realize just how threatening it is. It means more than the arrival of trendy shops, much-maligned hipsters, and expensive lattes. The very future of American cities as vibrant, equitable spaces hangs in the balance. P. E. Moskowitz’s How to Kill a City takes readers from the kitchen tables of hurting families who can no longer afford their homes to the corporate boardrooms and political backrooms where destructive housing policies are devised. Along the way, Moskowitz uncovers the massive, systemic forces behind gentrification in New Orleans, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York. In the new preface, Moskowitz stresses just how little has changed in those same cities and how the problems of gentrification are proliferating throughout America. The deceptively simple question of who can and cannot afford to pay the rent goes to the heart of America’s crises of race and inequality. A vigorous, hard-hitting exposé, How to Kill a City reveals who holds power in our cities and how we can get it back.