https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/22/business/public-pools-extreme-heat/index.html
#Swimmingpools #Publicaccess #Economicdisparity #Racialdisparity #Blackmastodon @blackmastodon

"The richer a fraction of society becomes, the greater its political power, and the more extreme the demands it makes. ...

What the ultra-rich want is to sustain and extend the economic system that put them where they are. The more they have to lose, the more creative their strategies become."

#ClimateChange #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites
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George Monbiot on what makes the global ecological crisis, which is reaching a pont of no return now, seemingly impossible to address effectively:

"[G]overnments have failed to break what the economist Thomas Piketty calls the patrimonial spiral of wealth accumulation. As a result, the rich have become ever richer, a process that seems to be accelerating."

#ClimateChange #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/15/food-systems-collapse-plutocrats-life-on-earth-climate-breakdown

Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan note how differently the world reacts to news of the deaths of five men, two of them billionaires, aboard the Titan submersible, and to the death of 700 people, mostly women and children, when the Adriana sank recently.

#media #EconomicDisparity #solidarity #justice

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/6/22/a_titanic_disparity_in_how_the

"Forty percent of the strongest adherents of Christian nationalism think 'true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,' while 22% of sympathizers agree with that position. …

That new worldview overlaps with the extremist wing that is trying to take over the Republican Party."

#Republicans #EconomicDisparity #CultureWars #WhiteChristianNationalism #HeatherCoxRichardson

/5

"More than half of Republicans now reject the idea of a democracy based in the rule of law and instead support Christian nationalism, insisting that the United States is a Christian nation and that our society and our laws should be based in evangelical Christian values."

#Republicans #EconomicDisparity #CultureWars #WhiteChristianNationalism #HeatherCoxRichardson

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"'It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we shall be as was the Cold War itself, for this war is for the soul of America.'

A generation later, that culture war has joined with the economic vision of the older party to create a new ideology."

#Republicans #EconomicDisparity #CultureWars #WhiteChristianNationalism #HeatherCoxRichardson

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"So to keep voters behind them, Republicans hammered on social and cultural issues, portraying those who liked the active government as godless socialists who were catering to minorities and women. 'There is a religious war going on in this country' Republican Pat Buchanan told the Republican National Convention in 1992."

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#Republicans #EconomicDisparity #CultureWars #WhiteChristianNationalism #HeatherCoxRichardson

Heather Cox Richardson writes,

"Since the 1990s, Republicans have had an ideological problem: voters don’t actually like their economic vision, which has cut services and neglected infrastructure even as it has dramatically moved wealth upward."

#Republicans #EconomicDisparity #CultureWars #WhiteChristianNationalism #HeatherCoxRichardson

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https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-18-2023

As Arwa Mahdawi notes, Wall Street Journal offers a brilliant solution to rising food prices: Let the poor eat less!:

"Our current stage of capitalism demands that poor people make do with less while the rich make no sacrifices whatsoever. We can’t possibly tax the rich to help combat inflation, that would slow economic growth. Nope, far better for everyone at the top if the people at the bottom just eat a bit less."

#capitalism #inflation #EconomicDisparity

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/commentisfree/2023/feb/17/skip-breakfast-save-money-inflation-capitalism-wsj

Poppy Noor reports,

"Low-income women in some cities are more likely than their wealthier counterparts to be targeted by Google ads promoting anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers when they search for abortion care, researchers at the Tech Transparency Project have found."

#abortion #Google #EconomicDisparity

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/07/google-targets-low-income-women-anti-abortion-pregnancy-center-study

The biggest story the national media don't tell us as Republicans create their usual faux crisis over the debt ceiling? Robert Reich writes,

"One of the biggest reasons the federal debt has exploded is that tax cuts on wealthier Americans have reduced government revenue."

#DebtCeiling #Republicans #taxes #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/the-biggest-story-youve-never-heard

Gregg Gonsalves writes,

“'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others' would be a fitting motto for the current Covid response in the US."

If you're affluent and connected, you have a much better chance of being protected from infection and getting good treatment if you're infected. If you're not affluent and connected, good luck to you.

#COVID #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/orwellian-white-house-covid-policy/

George Monbiot writes that while the rich and powerful are assuring that they have clean COVID-free air to breathe when they gather (he points to the recent Davos conference, with filtration systems in every room), the rest of us are left to play COVID roulette.

And good luck to us, given what we now know about the damage done by re-infections and long COVID.

#COVID #EconomicDisparity

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/26/covid-roulette-clean-air-ventilation-long-covid

Jared Yates Sexton succinctly sums up the problem facing us these days in so many parts of the world as we struggle for justice, rights, democracy:

"Corruption, betrayal, and authoritarianism are natural side-effects of a world where the only thing that matters is power and wealth."

#authoritarianism #corruption #EconomicDisparity #EconomicElites

https://jaredyatessexton.substack.com/p/a-world-to-buy-and-sell

Nesrine Malik writes,

"On a global basis, extreme wealth is accumulated not by innovating or increasing production, but by taking advantage of rising prices and exploiting labour. In this effort, wealthy people are enabled by lack of regulation and taxation. The result is a bonanza of plunder with no sheriff in town.

This has been happening for a while, but the pandemic accelerated the trend."

#EconomicDisparity #pandemic

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/23/system-rigged-inequality-pandemic-despair-super-rich

David Broder writes,

"The new Italian government’s culture war looks less like populism of the right and more like the same old blaming of capitalism’s victims. … Meloni’s culture war is waged squarely on the terrain of entitlement, blaming poorer Italians for their fate."

#GeorgiaMeloni #Italy #EconomicDisparity

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/giorgia-meloni-italy-culture-war/

"If Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have done anything of use these past few years it is proving that the wealthiest are not by default our most competent and talented people. ...

The wealthy, regardless of political affiliation, considering their only affiliation is where their money originates, enjoy a tremendous and inarguable advantage. Our world has been constructed in their favor in a demonstrable way."

#ElonMusk #Twitter #EconomicDisparity #EconomicExploitation

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