Inequality | featured news

China unveiled sweeping tax reforms on Tuesday to make wealthy state-owned firms, property speculators and the rich pay more to narrow a yawning gap between an urban elite and hundreds of millions of rural poor.

The richest 1% of Americans now hold 25% of the country's wealth and more needs to be done to boost equality, says Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz in Davos.

While some income inequality is generally considered necessary in a free market economy, extreme inequality is not. In the United States, there are far more poor people than wealthy ones -- and the gap between the rich and poor is growing.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are moving into the neighborhood. Finding it increasingly difficult to camp in public spaces, Occupy protesters across the country are reclaiming foreclosed homes and boarded-up properties, signaling a tactical shift for the movement against wealth inequality.

Blacks have historically suffered the income inequality and job scarcity that the Wall Street protesters are now railing against. Perhaps black America’s absence is sending a message to the Occupiers: “We told you so! Nothing will change. We’ve been here already. It’s hopeless.”

A judge upheld New York City's legal justification for evicting Occupy Wall Street protesters from a park on Tuesday after police in riot gear broke up a two-month-old demonstration against economic inequality.