It was a Rand Corporation study showing that, between 1975 and 2018, the equivalent of $2.5 trillion (no, not “billion”!) was transferred annually from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. (In those years, even the 2% to 9%-ers essentially twiddled their financial thumbs.) Such a transfer of wealth, close to $50 trillion, …
The danger posed by America’s militia groups was brought home when the FBI revealed it had thwarted a plot by one to kidnap the Democratic governor of Michigan. These bands of armed vigilantes have become increasingly visible, staging protests and organising street patrols with the purported aim of protecting property. Alarmingly, they claim to have …
America locks away far more people – about 2.1 million – than any other nation. But the pandemic could be what finally caused it to unwind its “signature practice of mass incarceration”. In the spring, the rapid spread of Covid-19 forced officials to take radical steps to reduce prison overcrowding. Inmates were released early; and …
“The paradigm shift of the 1980s really was equivalent in scale and scope to those of the 1960s and the 1930s. Key intellectual foundations of our legal system were changed. Our long-standing consensus about acceptable and unacceptable conduct by big business was changed. Ideas about selfishness and fairness were changed. The financial industry simultaneously became …
The following is a slightly edited version of a review by Tom Krattenmaker of a book by Kurt Anderson: “Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History”: (Random House, 2020). I quote: “The paradigm shift of the 1980s really was equivalent in scale and scope to those of the 1960s and the 1930s. Key …
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