inequality

I posted recently about how the rhetorical category “the middle class” seems to keep growing (even as the actual middle class is shrinking). Then I read Jon Ronson’s article in this month’s GQ. Ronson profiles six people—actually, five individuals and one family—who represent different spots on the U.S. income scale, giving a glimpse of “how to live on $____ a week.”

It’s a solid premise, and Ronson approaches his subjects with empathy and a dose of righteous indignation. But I was startled by his methodology.

I'm prone to the occasional rant about how much I dislike the movement folk music of the 1960s—its lack of subtlety, its odd mix of the earnestly humorless and the cornball, its endless verses of repetition. But I love Woody Guthrie, who was born 100 years ago today.

Guthrie was a generation older than the 60s troubadours and a singular influence on many of them, none of whom shared his gifts and sensibilities.

Tuesday's speech was the most fired up and the readiest to go that we've seen Obama in a good long while.

I'm afraid I want the good news of Christmas without the challenge.

Over 20 years, the CEO pay multiple went up 1,000 percent. Former bank CEO William J. McDonough calls this "grotesquely immoral."

The protesters sleeping in the cold do not claim that 99 percent of Americans agree with them. Their point is that the top 1 percent plays by different rules.

Whatever its explicit message, Occupy Wall Street has made a powerful statement with its very mode of existence.

Drew Westen is right: Obama would do well to name the villains in the economic story he tells the American people. But the villains aren't individuals; they're powers and principalities.

The common good is taking a beating. Economic inequality has accelerated dramatically since the early 1980s, and many think nothing can be done about it. But that verdict is a nonstarter for Christian morality.

With its widening gap between the rich and the poor, the decline of its middle class and crises in its health care and educational systems, the U.S. is no longer the golden land of opportunity.

I remember seeing Helena, a widow, unfolding a $20 bill to put in the offering plate. I knew that her family was selling its possessions to pay the ransom for her only son, imprisoned by guerrillas.