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Medieval depictions of the bubonic plague often illustrated a “dance of death,” portraying peasants, noblemen, and clergy all equally afflicted by the plague. The current pandemic affects people of all classes too. It made front page news when actor Tom Hanks (net worth approximately $400 million) announced he and his wife had contracted COVID-19. Public opinion about Hanks, a beloved entertainer, is almost universally sympathetic, but attitudes toward the rich as a whole haven’t changed during the pandemic. Wealthy people remain easy targets for social prejudice and mistrust. The headlines say it all. In GQ last month: “How Are Rich...

The farcical New York Times dealt with the question of re-opening our coronavirus-devastated economy by stoking progressive alarmism about racial and economic “inequality.” The Times published a preposterous story headlined with a false equivalency, “Job or Health? Restarting the Economy Threatens to Worsen Economic Inequality.” Author Jim Tankersley grumbled in the sub-headline that “The coronavirus recession has exacerbated the racial and income divides in America.” Tankersley continued: “Lifting restrictions too soon will make them worse and leave workers with a bleak choice.” That logic taken out of the dustbin of progressive economics was plastered on the front page of The...

Celebrities, politicians and professional athletes faced a backlash this week as many revealed that they had been tested for the coronavirus, even when they didn’t have a fever or other tell-tale symptoms. That’s fueling a perception that the wealthy and famous have been able to jump to the head of the line to get tested while others have been turned away or met with long delays. The concerns over preferential treatment underscore a fundamental truth about inequalities baked into the American health care system — those with the financial means can often receive a different level of service. Asked about...

The world’s 2,153 billionaires have more wealth than the 4.6 billion people who make up 60% of the planet’s population, a new report from the charity group Oxfam says.Oxfam’s report, ‘Time to Care’, was released Sunday just ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where about 1,500 of the world leaders in politics, business and finance come together each year.“The gap between rich and poor can’t be resolved without deliberate inequality-busting policies, and too few governments are committed to these,” Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar, who is in Davos to represent the Oxfam confederation this year said.

To achieve the American Dream, it helps to be filthy rich. That's the upshot of a new survey that found nearly three-quarters of the top 1% of income earners in the U.S. think they've reached that classic, if somewhat hazy, benchmark of economic success and independence. By contrast, only 37% of those in the middle class believe they're living the dream. The top 1% - who earn at least $500,000 annually - are living "dramatically different life experiences" than middle- and low-income Americans, according to a poll from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation...

I am rich. No, I do not have multiple residences, a yacht, a wine cave, or any of the storied trappings of wealth. And I certainly don't feel "rich." I am simply retired, and over a lifetime of working have accumulated assets that are meant to support me and my spouse in our retirement years. In my view, this is the responsible thing to do. We want to avoid being a burden on family, or relying on benevolent institutions or government assistance to sustain us. But some Democrat politicians, most notably Sen. Elizabeth Warren, might call me "rich" and take...

Leak from inside campaign about wealth confiscation by force. James O’Keefe teased a new Project Veritas bombshell which he suggested shows people working inside a political campaign discussing massive wealth confiscation by force. O’Keefe was responding to actor Mark Ruffalo, who tweeted, “It’s time for an economic revolution. Capitalism today is failing us, killing us, and robbing from our children’s future.” “Why not just exterminate people with money and take their stuff? That’s what we’re really talking about right?” responded O’Keefe. Why not just exterminate people with money and take their stuff? That’s what we’re really talking about right? I...

It is time for polite, respectable, rational people to start saying what has become painfully obvious: It is time to stop respecting the rich, and start stealing from them. In earnest. Inequality is eating America alive. It has been growing for decades. To say that “the American dream is dead” is no longer a poetic exaggeration—it is an accurate description of 40 years of wage stagnation and declining economic mobility that has produced a generation that cannot expect to live better than their parents did. Not because of devastating war or plague, but because of a very specific set of...

Because the race-baiting sycophants in the Left-wing “mainstream” media don’t believe they have divided America enough, the ‘woke’ editorial staff at The New York Times is embarking on a project to push our country closer to the abyss. Under the auspices of something called “The 1619 Project,” the Times seeks to rebrand history and make the issue of slavery central to America’s founding. The title of the initiative makes reference to the 400th anniversary of the arrival of black slaves to lands later to be collectively known as the United States. And the Times is clear about its objective: “It...

I wrote five years ago about the growing threat of a wealth tax. Some friends at the time told me I was being paranoid. The crowd in Washington, they assured me, would never be foolish enough to impose such a levy, especially when other nations such as Sweden have repealed wealth taxes because of their harmful impact. But, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the foolishness of politicians. I already wrote this year about how folks on the left are demonizing wealth in hopes of creating a receptive environment for this extra layer of tax. And some...

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris said Thursday that there should be a federal moratorium on executions. The senator from California discussed the matter on National Public Radio, a day after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California granted reprieves to 737 death row inmates and signed an executive order placing a moratorium on executions. Harris was asked if there should be “a federal equivalent” to Newsom’s order. She said, “Yes, I think that there should be.” […] She noted that black and Latino defendants were more likely to be executed than white defendants, as were poor defendants with poor legal representation...

Some Americans have much higher income and wealth than others. Former President Barack Obama explained, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." An adviser to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has a Twitter account called "Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure" tweeted, "My goal for this year is to get a moderator to ask 'Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?'" Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for a wealth tax, complained, "The rich and powerful are taking so much for themselves and leaving so little for everyone else." These people would...

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) launched his presidential campaign in Brooklyn, New York Saturday, declaring his bid is the best shot at beating President Donald Trump in 2020.

From the outset, several top-tier Democratic presidential candidates are pushing for new taxes on the wealthiest Americans and attempting to portray themselves as best positioned to fight the country’s yawning inequality gap. It is an indication of how much the Democratic Party is shifting and how far the candidates are willing to go to appeal to the party’s energetic liberal faction. The debate over wealth — particularly with billionaires in the field and Democrats challenging a president whose riches helped get him to the White House — is a dominant theme of the early primary season. Among the first advisers...

Moreover, as we also know, the gentrification of the cities has actually made these places more liberal and more Democratic. Yes, in a complete inversion from the past pattern, the Democrats are now the party of the rich. That’s why, in 2016, nine of the ten richest states voted for Hillary Clinton, while nine of the ten poorest states voted for Donald Trump. The enrichment of the Democrats was even more pronounced in the voting this year: In First Things, Williams College political scientist Darel E. Paul points out that of the 66 richest Congressional districts in the country, the...

The end of Robert Mueller’s investigation. The loss of health insurance for several million people. New laws that make it harder to vote. More tax cuts for the rich. More damage to the environment. A Republican Party molded even more in the image of President Trump. These are among the plausible consequences if the Republicans sweep the midterm elections and keep control of both the House and Senate. And don’t fool yourself. That outcome, although not the most likely one, remains possible. The last couple of weeks of polling have shown how it could happen. Voters who lean Republican —...

Race, class, love, death, white privilege, black disadvantage. Those heavy subjects are present, alongside the seemingly foregone conclusions that the system is rigged against those at the bottom by those at the top, you can’t fight city hall (but you absolutely must not give in to despair). Alongside the kaleidoscopic chaos of just plain being a teenager in 21st-century America, these global themes carom off each other in this wise and bittersweet adaptation of Angie Thomas’ best-selling young-adult novel.

(snip) The protests liberals whipped up against Kavanaugh this weekend, on the other hand, revealed too much about their own weakness. Washington, D.C. is a majority Democratic city with a black majority. But the Democratic voters out there yelling about Kavanaugh were as white as any country club gathering of Republicans. They looked like a line of Starbucks patrons — Caucasian, professional, largely millennial, with earth tones and earnest expressions aplenty. Men and women wore the same fashionable glasses and more or less the same clothes. It was a Pumpkin Spice Riot. Where were the black Democrats? Where were the...

The central premise of my new book – that the plantation defines not merely the origin but the entire history of the Democratic Party – will seem at the first glance, and for those unfamiliar with my previous work, far-fetched or even crazy. The old Democratic plantation system, after all, was involuntary; it was based on forcibly confining slaves. Today, however, the Democrats don’t have anyone penned up in this way, and they certainly aren’t forcing anyone to work. This objection, however, can be answered by recalling how the antebellum Democrats regarded the old plantation. Democratic Sen. James Chesnut regarded...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez falsely says “that upper-middle class does not exist anymore in America” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently said:“They [national Democrats] were campaigning most when we had more of an American middle class. This upper-middle class is probably more moderate but that upper-middle class does not exist anymore in America.”The Washington Post responded with the following:“… the upper-middle class has actually grown. In a 2016 paper published by the Urban Institute, Stephen J. Rose documented that the upper-middle class has grown substantially, from 12.9 percent of the population in 1979 to 29.4 percent in 2014.”The same Washington Post article also included this chart:...