Report exposes vast wealth gap, but fails to challenge the concentrated power of capital
The latest World Inequality Report 2026 reveals the stark cleavage between rich and poor in the world – a division that is getting wider to the extreme. Based on data compiled by 200 researchers organised by the World Inequality Lab, the report finds that fewer than 60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity.
The global climate emergency is no longer a distant warning – it is an unfolding catastrophe. Longer heatwaves, recurring cyclones, changing rainfall patterns, and rising sea levels are already reshaping lives across South Asia. A UN report notes that over the past 50 years, 130,000 lives in India have been lost due to extreme weather events. Between 2001 and 2019 alone, it is estimated that more than 20,000 people died from heatwaves – though the real figure is likely much higher.
Twenty years ago in November of 2005, Duke University Press published my first book: The Red Riviera: Gender, Tourism, and Postsocialism on the Black Sea. Produced in the wake of socialism’s global collapse and the riot of Western triumphalism that ensued, I deployed both qualitative and quantitative methods to advance a simple, but unpopular, argument: for most people in the former Soviet bloc, capitalism sucked.
Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York’s Democratic Party primary for mayor in June 2025 and victory in the general election on November 4th has provided a dose of hope to a Left seeking a path forward amid a dire political landscape. His campaign succeeded by offering real solutions to working-class concerns – including on climate policy and its connection to New Yorkers’ material conditions.
The most recent “Radical Hope in Feverish Times” webinar is now available to be viewed. It featured Brian Tokar of the Institute for Social Ecology and Arthur Pye of the Emergency Committee on Rojava.
