New York Is Rebounding for the Rich. Nearly Everyone Else Is Struggling.

THE NEW YORK TIMES: The huge income gap between rich and poor in Manhattan is the latest sign that the economic recovery from the pandemic has been lopsided in New York City.

As New York City inches closer to recovering all the jobs it lost during the pandemic, Manhattan — the city’s economic engine — marked a far less encouraging milestone. It now has the biggest income gap of any large county in the country.

Even in a city notorious for tableaus of luxury living beside crushing poverty, the widening gap is striking. The wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites earned an average household income of $545,549, or more than 53 times as much as the bottom 20 percent, who earned an average of $10,259, according to 2022 census data, released earlier this month. Social Explorer, a demographic data firm, analyzed the data for The Times.

“It’s amazingly unequal,” said Andrew Beveridge, the president of Social Explorer. “It’s a larger gap than in many developing countries,” and the widest gulf in the United States since 2006, when the data was first reported. The Bronx and Brooklyn were also among the top 10 counties in the country in terms of income inequality.

It is the latest data to underscore the city’s lopsided rebound from the pandemic. Across the city, wages are up, but mostly for the affluent. Jobs are returning, but many are in low-paying positions. Unemployment is down, but remains sharply higher for Black and Hispanic New Yorkers. The mixed signals highlight a widening chasm: The city is recovering, but many of its residents are not. » | Stefanos Chen | Thursday, September 28, 2023

Super-rich Warned of ‘Pitchforks and Torches’ unless They Tackle Inequality

THE GUARDIAN: Global elite told at London’s Savoy hotel of real risk of ‘civil disruption’ if more is not done to help struggling millions

The conference took place in the ballroom of the Savoy hotel and was attended by about 500 members of the global super-rich and advisers. Photograph: Steve Gorton/Getty/Dorling Kindersley RF
In the ballroom of the five star Savoy hotel on the Strand in central London, the super-rich and their advisers were this week advised that they may soon need to watch out for people with “pitchforks and torches” unless they do more to use their fortunes to help the millions struggling with the cost of living crisis.

At an investment conference organised by Spear’s wealth management magazine, members of the global elite and their financial teams were told by progressive advisers that there was a “real risk of actual insurrection” and “civil disruption” if the yawning inequality gap between rich and poor was allowed to widen as a result of energy and food price hikes hitting squeezed households.

Julia Davies, a founding member of Patriotic Millionaires UK, a group of super-rich people calling for the introduction of a wealth tax, warned that global poverty and the climate emergency were going to get “so much worse” unless the wealthy did more to help poorer citizens. » | Rupert Neate, Wealth correspondent | Friday, June 30, 2023

This Holiday Season, the Poor Buckle Under Inflation as the Rich Spend

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Even if policymakers achieve a gentle economic slowdown, it won’t be smooth for everyone.

November has been busier than expected at the Langham Hotel in Boston as luxury travelers book rooms in plush suites and hold meetings in gilded conference rooms. The $135-per-adult Thanksgiving brunch at its in-house restaurant sold out weeks ago.

Across town, in Dorchester, demand has been booming for a different kind of food service. Catholic Charities is seeing so many families at its free pantry that Beth Chambers, vice president of basic needs at Catholic Charities Boston, has had to close early some days and tell patrons to come back first thing in the morning. On the frigid Saturday morning before Thanksgiving, patrons waiting for free turkeys began to line the street at 4:30 a.m. — more than four hours before the pantry opened.

The contrast illustrates a divide that is rippling through America’s topsy-turvy economy nearly three years into the pandemic. Many well-off consumers are still flush with savings and faring well financially, bolstering luxury brands and keeping some high-end retailers and travel companies optimistic about the holiday season. At the same time, America’s poor are running low on cash buffers, struggling to keep up with rising prices and facing climbing borrowing costs if they use credit cards or loans to make ends meet.

The situation underlines a grim reality of the pandemic era. The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to make borrowing more expensive and temper demand, hoping to cool the economy and bring the fastest inflation in decades back under control. Central bankers are trying to manage that without a recession that leaves families out of work. But the adjustment period is already a painful one for many Americans — evidence that even if the central bank can pull off a so-called “soft landing,” it won’t feel benign to everyone. » | Jeanna Smialek, Photographs by Tony Luong | Reporting from Boston | Friday, November 25, 2022

‘People Are Tired of Being Ignored While the Rich Get Richer’: Bernie Sanders on Anger and Hope in the US and UK

‘Why, with all this new tech, are we not seeing an improved standard of living?’ … Bernie Sanders at a unionisation rally in Richmond, Virginia. Photograph: Julia Rendleman/Reuters
THE GUARDIAN: The Vermont senator rose from the political margins to become hugely influential within the American left. As he prepares to speak at a London rally, he explains why unions on both sides of the Atlantic must reassert their power

Both are unlikely political sensations who were long consigned to the fringes: Bernie Sanders, an octogenarian US senator who inspired an army of voters far younger than himself; and Mick Lynch, a former blacklisted construction worker and child of Irish immigrants who, as the leader of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers union (RMT), shot to national prominence when he humbled hostile but underinformed broadcast journalists. “I think Lynch is touching a nerve,” Sanders says.

The de facto leader of the US left has swung his considerable political heft behind a new campaign – Enough Is Enough – launched to fight Britain’s mounting cost of living crisis, which was founded in part by Lynch and the RMT. It has certainly touched a nerve: at a recent rally in Clapham, south London, many of those who had queued around the block were turned away for lack of space. “‘Enough is enough’, funnily enough, is an expression we use a lot here,” Sanders says. “People are sick and tired of often working longer hours for low wages; sick and tired of their kids having a lower standard of living than them; and they’re sick and tired of billionaires getting richer and richer while they fall behind.

“Why, with all this new tech out there, are they not seeing an improved standard of living? Why not more equality, rather than less equality? Why are living standards deteriorating, not improving? Lynch is asking that, Enough Is Enough is asking that – and it’s hitting a nerve, because people are tired of being ignored while the rich get richer.” » | Owen Jones | Tuesday, August 30, 2022

More than 40% of Americans think civil war likely within a decade: More than half of ‘strong Republicans’ think such a conflict is at least somewhat likely, poll finds »

Bernie Sanders Slams Trump for Ignoring Climate Change, Income Inequality & Voter Suppression

Inequality for All

Bill Moyers talks with Economic analyst Robert Reich about the new film Inequality for All. Opening in theaters across the country next week, the film aims to be a game-changer in our national discussion of income inequality.