How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality • November 29, 2022
Wealth inequality in the U.S. has widened to historic levels, exacerbating a range of social problems. A new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity points to one of the main culprits: Our nation’s tax code. Over the last 40 years, Congress has cut the income tax rate five times for the wealthiest people. Corporations got massive tax breaks, too.
Who got rich off the student debt crisis? • June 28, 2016
Student debt is a profit center for Wall Street and the federal government. 42 million people owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Here’s how we got into this mess.
A Wing and a Prayer • December 2015
In the last decade, most of the big U. S. airlines have outsourced major airplane maintenance work to Rl Salcador, Mexico, China and other places, where few mechanics are F.A.A.-certified, and inspections have no teeth. The result is every traveler's nightmare.
Deadly Medicine • January 2011
Prescription drugs kill some 200,000 Americans every year. Will that number go up, now that most clinical trials are conducted overseas—on sick Russians, homeless Poles, and slum-dwelling Chinese—in places where regulation is virtually nonexistent, the F.D.A. doesn’t reach, and "mistakes" can end up in pauper’s graves? The authors investigate the globalization of the pharmaceutical industry, and the U.S. Government’s failure to rein in a lethal profit machine.
Good Billions After Bad • October 2009
As the Bush administration waned, the Treasury shoveled more than a quarter of a trillion dollars in tarp funds into the financial system—without restrictions, accountability, or even common sense. The authors reveal how much of it ended up in the wrong hands, doing the opposite of what was needed.
THE GREAT RETIREMENT RIPOFF:
The Broken Promise • October 31, 2005
It was part of the American Dream, a pledge made by corporations to their workers: for your decades of toil, you will be assured of retirement benefits like a pension and health care. Now more and more companies are walking away from that promise, leaving millions of Americans at risk of an impoverished retirement. How can this be legal? A Barlett and Steele investigation looks at how Congress let it happen and the widespread social insecurity it's causing.
THE HEALTH OF NATIONS • October 24, 2004
For years the people in Washington have offered one plan after another that they said would provide health care for all Americans and rein in costs. Each plan has failed. Today more people than ever have inadequate coverage or no insurance at all. And still costs continue to spin out of control. Notably absent from the rhetoric has been any mention of the existing system's inherent flaw — the inability of market–based, for–profit medicine to deliver on the political promises.
AMERICA: WHO STOLE THE DREAM? The Have–Mores and Have–Lesses • September 22, 1996
Let's suppose, for a moment, there was a country where the people in charge charted a course that eliminated millions of good–paying jobs. Suppose they gave away several million more jobs to other nations. Finally, imagine that the people running this country implemented economic policies that enabled those at the very top to grow ever richer while most others grew poorer. You wouldn't want to live in such a place, would you? Too bad. You already do.
