Inequality.org has been reporting on the soaring wealth of America’s billionaires — during our pandemic — is starting to make a real impact on the 2020 election campaign discourse. Just yesterday the New York Daily News gave front-page coverage to our work showing that U.S. billionaires have seen their wealth jump over $930 billion since mid-March alone.
And our reporting also seems to be inspiring journalists to dig into just how billionaires have been collecting all those billions. This past week, for instance, we learned that White House officialdom last February shared with Wall Streeters insider info about the actual severity of the pandemic, info that enabled hedge funds to “short everything” and make some spectacular speculative killings.
Also this past week, I had the honor of helping to launch the Patriotic Millionaires Tax the Rich, Save America Roadshow, a series of zoom calls that features some of our top congressional advocates for a much more equal America. You can see one of the first roadshow stops wirh Rep. Pramila Jayapal on C-Span and register for any of the upcoming calls online. Take a look and let’s all get ready for the struggles to create a strikingly egalitarian 2021!
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Fifty years, a long time to hold a grudge. Billionaire Charles Koch has been stewing that long about taxes on the rich and regulations on their businesses. Americans who accept those taxes and regs, he intoned in 1974, are “preaching pure and unadulterated socialism.” Back then, Koch set himself a goal: to develop a “well-financed cadre of sound proponents of the free enterprise philosophy.” And he’s kept at that goal for decades, first by bankrolling litigation that gave America’s wealthy carte blanche to spend as much as they wanted on political campaigns, then by seeding the courts with pliable jurists. In the 1990s, Koch dollars financed seminar junkets for judges at ski resorts and beachfront palaces. More recently, Koch millions have fueled the Federalist Society, a recruiting network that fills state and federal benches with free-market zealots. Since 2017, Koch has focused on packing the Supreme Court. Now, with high-court nominee Amy Coney Barrett nearing confirmation, his life’s work — turning America into “a free market free-fire zone” — seems almost complete.
COVID has had a disastrous impact on workers for transnational corporations. Millions have abruptly lost their jobs while others have had no choice but to continue working in dangerous conditions. This crisis offers just one more reminder that we need a legally binding global treaty to end the impunity of transnational corporations that profit off violating the rights of vulnerable workers, particularly in developing countries. From October 26 to 30, a working group of the UN Human Rights Council will hold the next in a series of negotiations since 2014 to develop such an instrument. Makbule Sahan of the International Trade Union Confederation and Ruwan Subasinghe of the International Transport Workers’ Federation have identified key priorities to ensure a treaty that goes beyond ineffective voluntary corporate responsibility standards and provides enforceable protections for workers the world over.
has had a disastrous impact on workers for transnational corporations. Millions have abruptly lost their jobs while others have had no choice but to continue working in dangerous conditions. This crisis offers just one more reminder that we need a legally binding global treaty to end the impunity of transnational corporations that profit off violating the rights of vulnerable workers, particularly in developing countries. From October 26 to 30, a working group of the UN Human Rights Council will hold the next in a series of negotiations since 2014 to develop such an instrument. Makbule Sahan of the International Trade Union Confederation and Ruwan Subasinghe of the International Transport Workers’ Federation have identified key priorities to ensure a treaty that goes beyond ineffective voluntary corporate responsibility standards and provides enforceable protections for workers the world over.
Bob Lord, Inequality in America: Far Beyond Extreme. The maldistribution of America’s income and wealth has reached levels that our conventional economic stats have trouble revealing.
Jason Hickel, Billionaires are incompatible with planetary boundaries, The Correspondent. To survive the impending environmental catastrophes that loom before us, we need to distribute income and wealth more fairly. That will require a maximum wage and a wealth tax.
Guido Alfani, Pandemics and inequality: A historical overview, Vox EU. The 14th century’s Black Death had a major leveling impact. But the rich then figured out how to keep their fortunes largely intact.
Josefa Velasquez, Calls to Tax the Rich Abound. But What Exactly Does that Mean? The City. Lawmakers in New York are considering a new annual levy on the unrealized capital gains of billionaires.
Thalif Deen, Global Poverty Soars As Incomes of World’s Billionaires Hit New Highs, Inter Press Service. A look at a new World Bank report.
Emma Penrod, Is your CEO worth $6 million? Utah Business. Why corporate chiefs make too much and what we can learn from Utah’s lower executive pay levels.
Dean Baker, Waiting for a Vaccine: Killing for Inequality, Center for Economic and Policy Research. Americans are dying avoidable deaths while patent laws concentrate our wealth into ever fewer pockets.
Matt Stoller, Congress Gets Ready to Smash Big Tech Monopolies, BIG. Our tech giants have each built up giant monopolies in key sectors, in the process concentrating enormous stashes of wealth. The pushback has just taken a giant step forward.
Peter Goodman, Stakeholder Capitalism Gets a Report Card. It’s Not Good, New York Times. The corporate CEOs of the Business Roundtable last year pledged to go beyond self-interest. They haven’t.
Jacqui Germain, Congress is full of millionaires. Their wealth should be taxed to fund social programs, Mic. The wealth tax that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders boosted earlier this year needs to return to our political center stage
