Do American taxpayers really have to line the pockets of billionaires — and Wall Street banking giants — to help states and localities improve their infrastructures? Of course not. But they do. And this generosity toward America’s richest is costing Americans billions every year.
America’s top corporate executives love lecturing the rest of us about ‘fiscal responsibility.’ They want us to expect less from government. But they expect more, and a new report on the chief executives campaigning to “fix the debt” shows exactly how they’re getting it.
Do you know how much the cuts in Social Security benefits now getting debated in Congress will end up ‘saving’ America? Not nearly as much as a massive — and longstanding — tax loophole that benefits the wealthy and the insurance industry is currently costing America.
How much did America’s top corporate executives make last year? The scorekeepers don’t all agree. But that won’t matter if we keep our eyes on the most important figure of all: the compensation gap between CEOs and their workers.
The uproar over the future Social Security benefit cutbacks in the new White House budget proposal has overshadowed a little-known retirement tax break that, unlike Social Security, really does need trimming. The stakes with the Roth IRA? They run over $1 trillion.
Today’s conventional wisdom in Congress on taxing America’s wealthy — that tax rates on income at our economic summit have gone as high as they can sensibly go — has no real evidence to support it, details a new Economic Policy Institute and Century Foundation study.
Britain’s top unions will soon be flexing their shareholder muscles — and insisting that the corporations where their pension funds have investments start taking significant steps to narrow the pay divide between executives and workers. And the unions have a specific pay ratio in mind.
All across Corporate America, top executives have been feathering their own nests at the expense of their employees. The French have a better idea. And so did the famed business analyst Peter Drucker, the Austrian-born American who founded modern management science.
“In the long run men inevitably become the victims of their wealth. They adapt their lives and habits to their money, not their money to their lives. It preoccupies their thoughts, creates artificial needs, and draws a curtain between them and the world.”
Twenty cities now have more than 100,000 millionaires. New York hosts the most billionaires, with 70, says a new WealthInsight study. (source)
The new Pope sees the “joy of life” diminishing in many developed countries. He noted today that “while the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling.” (source)
Income inequality rose by more in the first three years after the global economic crisis hit in 2010 than it had in the previous 12 years, according to new OECD data. (source)
In India, as elsewhere, an ever-present air-conditioned bubble of luxury keep the filthy, broken- down public infrastructure at bay for the super rich. In fact, the filth outside bolsters a sense of privilege. Insulation becomes the ultimate marker of status. (source)
Mitt Romney and I both grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a wealthy suburb of Detroit. For much of our childhoods, we were represented in Congress by a tireless defender of the rich and powerful, William Broomfield.
Looking for a quick fix to inequality? Stop your searching. We need to strategize instead for the long-term. A riveting new work helps us see how.
How can sales of super-luxury cars grow at super-fast rates during a recession? The answer is simple: it’s not a recession for everyone.