Wouter van de Klippe is a freelance journalist and writer based in Europe. He is particularly interested in organized labor, social and environmental justice, and social welfare states.
In the early years of the AIDS crisis, the US government left people with HIV to fend for themselves. Desperate, they turned to a new and little-understood financial instrument: selling their life insurance policies to investors for quick cash.
A growing number of states are willing to sell citizenship and the privileges it brings — if you can afford to pay. The lucrative trade in “golden passports” exposes the dark side of capitalist globalization and its unequal valuation of human life.
Peter Thiel recently generated headlines with his rambling diatribes about the Antichrist. Thiel’s lurid, apocalyptic view of world politics may be ludicrous or even deranged, but his wealth and power mean that we can’t afford to ignore it.
While the Trump administration’s draconian immigration policies may hurt businesses reliant on undocumented labor, the fractured capitalist class won’t stand up to the president.
The breakup of Yugoslavia ended one of basketball’s greatest dynasties. A cross-border team could revive that legacy — and model internationalism in a divided world.
To prevent economic collapse amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the government unleashed the power it always had. New programs caused hunger, evictions, and child poverty to plummet. Why not just continue them? Because employers thrive on desperation.
The Trump administration is taking steps to further deregulate dangerous “forever chemicals,” or PFAS, increasingly ubiquitous chemicals that don’t easily break down and are linked to a wide range of health risks, including cancer and birth defects.
Giant corporations like ExxonMobil are calling on the Supreme Court to block a California law that would require them to release their emissions and climate records. The argument? It would violate businesses’ free speech.
France, like many other European countries, has seen a historic decline of the old workers’ parties. Yet the rise of France Insoumise has ensured the renewal of a dynamic left rooted in popular mobilization.
Right-wing nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland only made a selective break with neoliberal economics after the 2008 crash. Their goal was to strengthen domestic capital against foreign competitors without doing anything to empower workers.
Once mocked as unsophisticated, Donald Trump in his second term has put forward an ambitious vision to reshape America. Surrounding the president is a loose network of intellectuals who provide his policies with a philosophy.
The rise of Nick Fuentes and the GOP’s radicalization reflects decades of intellectual groundwork and the material decline that pushed a generation toward conspiracy-laden populism.
By some measures, the food influencer and wellness economy is worth over $7 trillion. In All Consuming, Ruby Tandoh traces the rise of this industry and asks how food became both a status symbol and a source of fantasy.
Far too many US public schools suffer from a lack of adequate funding. Solving the problem will require ending public education’s dependence on local property taxes, a funding mechanism that heavily reproduces inequality.
Caught off guard by new proposals to halt the war in Ukraine, European leaders have rejected the idea of Kyiv giving up territory. What’s less clear is how they imagine making their red lines into a reality.
The demand for Medicare for All went from the center of the discourse to political exile in record time. But the policy’s popularity never faded. A new poll finds strong majority support for the neglected idea among Americans across the political spectrum.
The US didn’t send a delegation to the COP30 conference in Brazil, reflecting the Trump administration’s nihilistic attitude to the climate crisis. In its absence, the other big industrial powers once again postponed making hard but essential choices.
In recent decades, the American economy has been characterized by rising inequality, shrinking free time, and the growing concentration of economic and political power, increasingly undermining the democratic ideals to which the US is ostensibly committed.
Errol Schweizer, a former national vice president of grocery at Whole Foods, argues in Jacobin that the private sector is responsible for ever-rising grocery prices and can’t be relied on to fix the problem. Our food system needs a public option.
Leading French automaker Renault is reportedly converting some production sites to make military drones. It’s stirred discontent among car workers in France, who say they didn’t sign up for Europe’s rearmament push.