Poverty

FORTY-FIVE MILLION AMERICANS collectively owe upward of $1.4 trillion in student loan debt. Yet there is no need to worry. The magic of the free market has a solution for all of your problems. On July 10, 2018, “Paid Off” premiered on TruTV, a new game show that offers contestants a chance to escape a lifetime of debt peonage. “We’re capitalists. That’s just the way it is.” Less than 17 months after Nancy Pelosi’s Margaret Thatcher impersonation, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shaken the foundation of the United States’ political class. [Read More]

The perception of gentrification in Chicago mirrors would-be progressive groups’ social imaginations and the heterogeneity of their goals. Gentrification is the reconstitution of a neighborhood which occurs when lower-income areas with lower land value are re-developed with higher-value housing into a decidedly wealthier neighborhood. During this process the class-composition and character of the neighborhood is changed; those already living in the neighborhood cannot sustain the rise in property taxes and must move elsewhere. [Read More]