Yi San is a freelance writer based in New York.
There’s one pandemic program that’s been strikingly immune to attacks over not being targeted or means-tested. Surprise, surprise: it’s the Paycheck Protection Program, which delivered three-quarters of its funds to the upper-quintile income bracket.
When Joe Biden was inaugurated a year ago, many expected his presidency to emulate the reforming ambition of FDR’s New Deal. But that ignores what made the New Deal possible: a climate of militant agitation and a populist president willing to align himself with it.
Unions raise wages and benefits and increase job security. So, the fact that unionization rates are still in decline, despite some recent bright spots in worker militancy, is very bad news.
Former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi’s government has been widely hailed for using EU funds to invest Italy’s way out of crisis. Yet while the plan promises big spending, it’s mainly a transfer of public resources to private business.
The true villains in the “West Elm Caleb” fiasco aren’t Caleb himself nor the women who exposed him — they’re the social media brands that exploit human needs for connection and ruin our lives for profit.
Love it or hate it, twee is back. It’s the subject of innumerable think pieces, but the subculture’s radical roots in feminism, punk, and the fight against Margaret Thatcher often go unnoticed.
Yemen’s rich and complex history was upended by its catastrophic civil war beginning in 2014. A peace agreement could help Yemenis recover the frustrated hopes of the 2011 uprising — if Saudi Arabia stops demanding victory for its allies.
We work too much. Now is the time to change that: we need a four-day workweek and a three-day weekend.
Today, Italian lawmakers begin electing a new president. The president is often seen as a neutral referee standing above politics — but calls for ex–central banker Mario Draghi to take the job show how pro-market dogmas have been hardwired into public life.
By privileging immediacy and affect, virtual and augmented reality require us to submit to our senses. But culture is not just a matter of feeling — it is also a way of knowing and understanding the world.
The Biden administration’s lofty rhetoric about “vaccine diplomacy” is a blatant lie. The reality is that the US government has actively upheld a system of vaccine apartheid that guarantees vaccine scarcity in the Global South and reinforces US empire.
From workers’ cooperatives and community banks to living wage employment and regeneration that benefits the community, municipal socialism in Preston, England, shows what a real alternative to neoliberalism can look like.
While Canadian workers took to picket lines to agitate in the face of the hardships brought on by the pandemic, Canadian businesses collected COVID benefits intended for the very employees they laid off.
The Tragedy of Macbeth is Joel Coen’s first film without his brother Ethan. And the movie isn’t just a triumph — it’s a reminder that, even with the dismal state of cinema today, movies can still surprise us.
From immigration and foreign policy to the pandemic and climate, Joe Biden promised a break with the policies of the Donald Trump era. What we’ve mostly gotten, however, is a change in rhetoric and the status quo in substance.
“It’s like Uber, but for nurses.” Does that scare you? It should. Private hospitals are increasingly teaming up with Silicon Valley to make American health care even more exploitative.
German engineering giant Bosch is mounting massive layoffs in the name of adapting to the electric car market. But workers insist the move is really about increasing profits — and climate protesters have joined the fight to save their jobs.
When dealing with Eric Adams, New York’s eccentric but unabashedly pro-landlord mayor, progressives will need to throw out the old anti-Trump playbook and focus on those issues — like rent laws — that are most important to the working-class New Yorkers who elected him.
Amia Srinivasan’s new essay collection, The Right to Sex, is less a manifesto than an attempt to think through the concerns of contemporary feminism. Where the book succeeds, it offers the intellectual heft to power a reinvigorated movement to transform the world.
Succession captures the insanity of elite culture in contemporary capitalism. Like their real-world counterparts, the show’s characters desperately fight for an ever-higher place at the top as the millions below them suffer.