Vibes-wise, the event was classic Trump 2.0-chic. Guests were handed monogrammed buckets of popcorn, framed screening tickets for their trophy shelves, and a limited-edition copy of Trump's 2024 book of the same title as her documentary, "Melania. " Prior to the screening, the black-tie guests were greeted by a taxpayer-funded military band that playing famous movie themes, as well as "Melania's Waltz," featured in the documentary and composed by Hollywood's Tony Neiman.
"At the end of the day, it's the investors and billionaires at Davos who have his attention, not the families struggling to afford their bills," said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank.
Since taking office, Trump has imposed a range of tariffs on countries, including key trading partners, leading to predictions of inflation skyrocketing, manufacturing screeching to a halt and unemployment soaring. None of those scenarios came true. Inflation, while above the Federal Reserve's target, was a modest 2.7 percent in December. The unemployment rate was relatively low, at 4.4 percent, last month.
Co-founder Arthur Clifton, a former leading figure in Just Stop Oil, explained the first strategy would involve a series of "take backs". Speaking to roughly 200 activists, he said: "We have seen that food is locked behind skyrocketing prices. Less and less people can afford less and less food. "So what we do is actually pretty obvious - we go in there, we take it out and we redistribute it to the local community. This is what we are going to be doing in March."
Credit scores are lower than they've ever been, particularly with Gen Z," Goodarzi told Editorial Director Andrew Nusca at Fortune Brainstorm AI last week. Credit balances across the board are also the highest they've been, Goodarzi added, but Gen Z are disproportionately hurting in this category, too. "[Gen Z] credit card balances are up 36-37%," Goodarzi added. But there's one silver lining: "They still have jobs," Goodarzi said. "And that's what's really keeping things together."
As a New York court weighed whether evidence was gathered illegally during Mangione's arrest on charges of fatally shooting a top healthcare executive on the streets of New York, America got a taste of the trial's potent mix of politics, social comment, conspiracy theory and Hollywood-style murder drama. Last week's lengthy proceedings yielded little new information in the way of rewriting Americans' collective understanding of Mangione's alleged role in killing United HealthCare executive Brian Thompson with a purported ghost gun.
In late October, Hurricane Melissa (that should have been called "Godzilla") battered western Jamaica with 185-mile-an-hour winds. It tossed the roofs of buildings about like splintering javelins, demolished municipal buildings and hospitals, snapped telephone poles like matchsticks, flattened crops, and dumped torrential floodwaters everywhere, leaving $8 billion in damage. That Category 5 storm's unprecedented ferocity was driven by an overheated Caribbean Sea, produced by 275 years of industrial civilization that has spewed obscene amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.
"Why are we not giving incentives to companies to require them to give shares in their companies to all employees, at the same percentage of cash earnings as the CEO?" Cuban said. It is the right question to be asking. Because while the debate over wealth inequality continues, the solution has been hiding in plain sight for decades. The top 10% of U.S. households now control 67% of all wealth, while the bottom half holds just 2.5%.
Social class permeates all aspects of life, and love is no exception. In Spain, for instance, couples don't form randomly; rather, they're typically determined by socioeconomic factors. This means that people tend to partner with those most similar to themselves in terms of income and wealth. And, at the top of the social ladder, this tendency intensifies. Those who earn and have the most assets find each other with a frequency three times greater than would occur in a society where relationships were completely random.
Jenner's birthday bash Saturday was billed as one of the A-list social events of the year, attended by the likes of Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King, Tyler Perry and Adele, outlets such as People and even the Daily Mail, which tends to be hyper-critical of the self-exiled royal couple, glossed over the fact that the party's hosts were Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.
The changes approved by lawmakers in July lock in a friendlier tax climate for affluent Americans with lower rates and generous exemptions. While middle-income households may see some modest relief, the lion's share of the benefits will flow to those with substantial earnings, investment income, or large estates. "By definition," says Joseph Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, "these are very wealthy people who benefit."
From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream. On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m.
Chicago's mayor, Brandon Johnson, told the crowd the Trump administration had "decided that they want a rematch of the civil war", which the white supremacist Confederacy lost to the Union in the 19th century. "We are here to stand firm and stand committed that we will not bend, we will not bow, we will not cower, we will not submit," Johnson said. "We do not want troops in our city."
