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No other nation has endured as much death from COVID-19 nor nearly as a high a death rate as has the United States.

With 4.25 percent of the world population, America has the tragic distinction of accounting for nearly 30 percent of pandemic deaths so far.

And it is the only advanced nation where the death rate is still climbing. Three ...Read more

Donald Trump is getting nervous. Internal polls show him losing in November unless the economy comes roaring back.

But much of the American economy remains closed because of the pandemic. The numbers of infections and deaths continue to climb.

So what is Trump's re-election strategy? Reopen the economy anyway.

Step 1: Remove income support, ...Read more

The pandemic is putting America's deepening class divide into stark relief. Four classes are emerging.

The Remotes: These are professional, managerial and technical workers -- an estimated 35 percent of the workforce -- who are putting in long hours at their laptops, Zooming into conferences, scanning electronic documents and collecting about ...Read more

In last week's Democratic debate, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg charged that Sen. Bernie Sanders' policy proposals would cost $50 trillion. Holy Indiana.

Larry Summers, formerly the chief White House economic adviser for Barack Obama, puts the price tag at $60 trillion. "We are in a kind of new era of radical proposal," he told ...Read more

In last week's Democratic debate, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg charged that Sen. Bernie Sanders' policy proposals would cost $50 trillion. Holy Indiana.

Larry Summers, formerly the chief White House economic adviser for Barack Obama, puts the price tag at $60 trillion. "We are in a kind of new era of radical proposal," he told ...Read more

The coronavirus relief enacted by Congress more than three weeks ago is barely reaching Americans in need.

Checks of up to $1,200 are being delivered through direct-deposit filings with the Internal Revenue Service. But low-income people who have not directly deposited their taxes won't get these...Read more

As millions of jobless Americans line up for food or risk their lives delivering essential services, the nation's billionaires are making conspicuous donations -- $100 million from Amazon's Jeff Bezos for food banks, billions from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for a coronavirus vaccine, thousands of ventilators and N95 masks from politics/fromtheleft/robertbreich/s-2350348">Read more

The utter chaos in America's response to the coronavirus pandemic -- shortages of equipment to protect hospital workers, dwindling supplies of ventilators and critical medications, and jaw-dropping confusion over how the $2.2 trillion of aid in the economic relief package will be distributed -- was perhaps predictable in a nation that prides ...Read more

Dick Kovacevich, former CEO of Wells Fargo bank, thinks most Americans should return to work in April, urging that we "gradually bring those people back and see what happens."

Lloyd Blankfein, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, whose net worth has been estimated at $1.1 billion, recommends that "within a very ...Read more

Societies gripped by cataclysmic wars, depressions or pandemics can become acutely sensitive to power and privilege.

Weeks before the coronavirus virus crushed the U.S. stock market, Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina apparently used information he gleaned from his role as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee about the ...Read more

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and just about the only official in the Trump administration trusted to tell the truth about the coronavirus, said last Thursday: "The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now. ... It is...Read more

When middle-aged and older people feel unsafe, they run to the familiar and reliable, even if it's deadly dull. Younger people who feel threatened are more likely to take risks in hopes of finding something better.

This generational difference explains a great deal about what has happened during the most tumultuous two weeks in recent American ...Read more

Last week the U.S. stock market suffered its largest weekly loss since 2008. A health crisis is rapidly morphing into an economic crisis.

So far, America's response has left much to be desired.

Epidemiologists in other countries have used "surveillance testing" under World Health Organization ...Read more