America's Money Monsters
Top Story: How the other 1 percent lives
Extreme Wealth has a few fans: the extremely wealthy.
It also has detractors: a growing group of academics, policymakers, legislators and journalists who are clocking how the rapacious rise of extreme wealth has handed over (to a small set of actors) too much power and sway over just about everything in your state: culture, politics, science, education, housing, health, etc.
Understanding how tax policies exacerbate this and what this means for the people on your beat can help you better inform them about how the accumulation of excessive wealth is impacting their lives.
It’s not just the rise in inequality that deserves coverage; it's the victims of the money-making itself. The growth of waste-making data centers, the normalizing of aggressive efforts to suppress worker wages, and the rise of hedge-funders scooping up homes, then jacking up the rent — these all negatively impact the livelihood of ordinary Americans and can destroy the livelihood of poor ones.
So, whatever story you are doing, here are a few key questions to ask in an age where economic inequality seems to touch just about everything you report on.
Who's making money here? How much?
Is anyone suffering here?
How do I explain that to the public?
Does anyone else care?
If so, who are they and how do I get their voices in my piece?
Is anyone talking about ways to mitigate harm done here? In my state? In another state?
How does extreme wealth work/not work in America?
Some Suggested Reading
The American Dream is fading. How come?
What’s Massachusetts' Fair Share tax? And is anyone in your state talking about this?
What’s SNAP? - The Journalist’s Resource
Eviction is a solution for a landlord and a crisis for a family.
Groups looking to create more equality:
Also In The News
We’re Reading
Capital in the Twenty-First Century - by Thomas Piketty
Comic Relief
If You Like What You Are Reading:
Please share Reporting Right on your social media feeds.
Reach out for help at ReportingRight@googlegroups.com.
Tell your fellow reporters to subscribe.
See You Next Week!
Our Staff
Executive Editor Kyle Spencer
Our Board of Advisors
Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability
David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy
Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations
Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.
Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Copyright (C) 2024. All rights reserved.