Doug Beal, a former mechanic specializing in air-conditioning and fire detection, says he lost about $60,000
after rolling over money from the company's plan into an individual retirement account.

Kathleen Tarr says AT&T Inc. (T) employees looked to her as “their de facto 401(k) expert.” Visiting their homes and offices, she advised them on their retirement plans as they called up balances on compu ... Read more »

The story so far on financial reform is not a pleasant one. Fortunately and perhaps surprisingly, in part through the efforts of a growing number of people – including Anat Admati and Sheila Bair, recently interviewed on Moyers & Company &ndash ... Read more »

Examples of extreme inequality are becoming easier to find. Progressive leaders have us thinking about revolution. If a revolution is to take place, Americans — especially young Americans— need to know the facts, and they need to know how they're getting cheated, and ... Read more »

Wal-Mart in Danvers, Massachusetts. A new report shows that the retailer exploits
a "performance pay" loophole saving it $104 million in corporate taxes. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole)

Back in 1979, notes a new Economic Policy Institute report released last week, households in America’s statistical middle — the 20 percent of households making more than the nation’s poorest 40 percent and less than the nation& ... Read more »

An idea that only a year ago appeared both radical and impractical has become a reality. On Monday, Seattle struck a blow against rising inequality when its City Council unanimously adopted a citywide minimum wage of $15 an hour, the highest in the nation.

This dramatic change in public policy is partly the result of changes brought about by last November’s Seattle municipal elections. But it is also the consequence of years of& ... Read more »

One percent’s twisted new heist: What’s really behind privatization

Outsourcing government not only leads to poor services -- it's killing the middle class, an expert tells Salon

As most experts and layman enthusiasts will tell you, there’s no one, single explanation for the past 30-plus years of growing economic inequality. Its drivers are multiple and separating one from the other is often quite complicated. Low taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, the gutting of labor unions, the increased mobility of capital, technological gains, overly protective intellectual property law; the list goes on.

In fact, here’s another one to add to the list: privatization. According to “ ... Read more »

America’s middle-class defeat: How Canada shamed the wealthiest nation on earth

Want to understand what's causing the decay of the American dream? Take some lessons from our friends to the north

A few summers ago, I spent six weeks in Canada, as part of a 10,000-mile Great Lakes Circle tour. From Pigeon River on Lake Superior to Kingston on Lake Ontario, I drove and camped my way across Ontario. On Manitoulin Island, I went on a fishing charter captained by a retired nickel miner named Tom Power. The Nickel Belt is a stronghold of Canada’s most socialistic party, the New Democrats. When the conversation turned to politics (as it often did with Canadians during the George W. Bush years), Tom made a statement that would have tabbed him as a Marxist crank ... Read more »

In his State of the Union address in January, President Barack Obama promised to devote 2014 to tackling inequality. When French economist Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century was released in March, it pushed the problem of growing income disparity further into the global spotlight. In April, Pope Francis tweeted, “Inequality is the root of social evil.” Now Christine LaGarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund — best known for lending money to developing countries on the condition that those states make policy changes — is taking on inequality too, warning in a speech Tuesday th ... Read more »

This week, Bill speaks to Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, who argues that we must reform the tax code and stop subsidizing tax dodgers. A recent report by Americans for Tax Fairness suggests that corporate taxes are near a 60-year low — and that’s partially because corporations have become adept at not paying their share.

Here’s a list of 10 tax-dodging corporations excerpted from the Americans for Tax Fairness report.

The Great American Class War: Plutocracy Versus Democracy

I met Supreme Court Justice William Brennan in 1987 when I was creating a series for public television called In Search of the Constitution, celebrating the bicentennial of our founding document. By then, he had served on the court longer than any of his colleagues and had written close to 500 majority opinions, many of them addressing fundamental questions of equality, voting rights, school segregation and — in New York Times v. Sullivan in particu ... Read more »