With inequality now a global front-page matter, the stats that measure inequality have taken on a new importance. And no inequality stat has a longer pedigree — or more confusion surrounding it — than the “Gini coefficient.” We explain the Gini stat and clear the confusion.
Psychologists have been tracking the phenomenon of “biased self-perception” for years now. But new research suggests that they’ve been blaming the wrong social culprit. Levels of economic inequality, not core culture, seems to be driving how we project ourselves to others.
Changes in state tax laws now encourage America’s awesomely affluent to create “perpetual” trusts for their heirs. The combination of these new laws and new technology, legal scholars warn, allows the “dead hand” of the past to rule over the living. In effect, immortality for the rich.
In 2030, the latest United for a Fair Economy State of the Dream report points out, the majority of U.S. residents under 18 will be people of color. If current household wealth trends continue, the majority of America’s young people will be growing up in economically insecure households.
Inflation has been steadily eroding the value of the U.S. minimum wage over recent decades. But inflation only explains part of the story why the minimum wage has become such an inadequate guarantor of low-wage decency and justice in the United States today.
Retail sales are up this holiday season in the top 1 percent plutonomy, but down in the realonomy where the other 99 percent live. And it’s not just the poor who are struggling. Even high-income, college-educated professionals have seen no income growth in over a dozen years.
One puts on football pageants. Another makes millions on a virtual farm. From Too Much, the Institute for Policy Studies inequality weekly, we present the year’s ten most avaricious. All ten remind us just how much needs to change, economically and politically, in 2012 and beyond.
In the past, analysts at the OECD global think tank have consistently recommended tax cuts around the world. The incomes of the richest have now grown so large that even the OECD, in a major new report on developed world inequality, is urging tax increases.
“So distribution should undo excess, and each man have enough.”
[King Lear, Act 4, Scene 1]
“With the super rich flaunting their treasures to those starving,” daily life in Brazil’s largest city has become a dangerous obstacle course for those with and without wealth. (source)
In highly unequal societies, two sets of laws develop: one set for the rich and powerful and one set for everyone else. (source)
How different eras have taken inspiration from the most famous of share-the-wealth tales. (source)
Ever wonder what it’s like to earn $145 million in any given year? A look back at last year’s top chief executive earners. (source)
A powerful coalition of U.S.-based global companies is lobbying hard for a “tax holiday” on offshore profits. Congress should say “no!”
The new Obama budget for 2013 advances a vision for a significantly more progressive tax code. But that vision, if realized, would still not restore all the tax progressivity lost since the early 1980s.
Federal workers have it hard enough without Congress playing politics with their paychecks and pensions.