No more business as usual! Students around the world, from Nairobi to New York, delivered that message Friday with a global strike that has kicked off a week of climate action.
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THIS WEEK
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No more business as usual! Students around the world, from Nairobi to New York, delivered that message Friday with a global strike that has kicked off a week of climate action. The mobilizations are demanding an end to the systems that put profits over people and planet.
More this week below on the climate strike. And for those of you who’d like to join us in celebrating the courage and commitment of our climate organizers, come join us — and Rep. Ilhan Omar — at our annual Institute for Policy Studies Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Awards!
Chuck Collins, for the Institute for Policy Studies Inequality.org team |
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INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS
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FACES ON THE FRONTLINES
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Planet Over Profit at the Youth Climate Strikes
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| “I don’t want to die.” That’s the frightful desperation that has galvanized Audrey, a 14-year-old from Hampton, Virginia, to join the climate movement. Audrey rallied last week as part of a global climate strike movement that has brought millions of young people across the world into the streets to demand a planet free from fossil fuels. We’ve got a dispatch this week from the protest in Washington, D.C. |
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WORDS OF WISDOM
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PETULANT PLUTOCRAT
OF THE WEEK
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A Tech Exec Endeavors to Keep His Home Enticing
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| Scott McNealy, the former Sun Microsystems CEO, doesn’t particularly value the quality of America’s top elected leaders. As the California deep pocket told CNBC in one interview: “I’ve always said the worst CEO is a thousand times better than the best politician.” Maybe that explains why McNealy has taken so kindly to businessman-turned-pol Donald Trump. Last week McNealy hosted an up-to-$100,000-per-couple Trump fundraiser at his Palo Alto mansion, the same abode the high-tech exec put on the market last year for $96.8 million. The 32,000-square-foot palace still hasn’t sold, and that may be why McNealy and the Trump campaign worked so hard to shield the property from any negative publicity. The Trump campaign never told guests beforehand who was hosting the event and had them gather instead at a parking spot, then transported to McNealy’s 13-acre hilltop estate. But protestors found out about the location anyway — and showed up with a giant Trump balloon baby. |
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GREED AT A GLANCE
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TOO MUCH
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| GM Workers Walk Out: A Century of Context |
| Wars end with treaties. In the middle of the 20th century, the “class war” that finished off America’s original plutocracy ended with the “Treaty of Detroit.” Fortune, the business magazine, came up with that catchy turn of phrase back in 1950 to describe the landmark collective bargaining agreement that the United Auto Workers union had just reached with General Motors. What made the pact so historic? America’s most powerful corporation was essentially agreeing to “share the wealth.” Now UAW workers are once again making headlines, demanding just as they did decades ago that General Motors share the wealth with the workers who toil to create it. But GM workers today find themselves struggling in a far different — and more difficult — political and economic environment. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati, author of The Case for a Maximum Wage, has more. |
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MUST READS
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This week on Inequality.org
Josue De Luna Navarro, Scientists Shouldn’t Listen to the Fossil Fuel Industry. Geoengineering is a Scam. Oil and gas companies aren’t only polluting our air, water, and soil. They’ve injected themselves into our education system as well.
Anneke Van Woudenberg, Mining Financiers Bribed Their Way to Riches. Now Their Jilted Workers Have a Chance at Compensation. New UK policies allow overseas victims to be included in anti-corruption cases, with a view to compensating them. This could be good news for mine workers who lost their jobs in a DR Congo bribery scandal a decade ago.
Jessicah Pierre, What The Felicity Huffman Scandal Says About America. Low-income parents risk jail for putting their kids in better public schools, while the rich bribe colleges to shut the poor out.
Elsewhere on the Web
George Monbiot, For the sake of life on Earth, we must put a limit on wealth, Guardian. Just as we recognize a poverty line, below which no one should fall, we should recognize a “riches line,” above which no one should rise.
Alan MacLeod, Russia Has ‘Oligarchs,’ the US Has ‘Businessmen,’ FAIR. The United States as an oligarchy without oligarchs.
Kelsey Piper, The charitable deduction is mostly for the rich. A new study argues that’s by design, Vox.
Do we mean to be a society that subsidizes giving by the rich while taxing giving by everybody else?
Keith Girard, Taxing the Rich: Two Academics Lay Out Options In New Paper, Money & Power. An insightful new analysis from law profs Lily Batchelder and David Kamin.
Justin Lahart, Inequality Is Holding Back the U.S. Economy, Wall Street Journal. Rising inequality not a problem just for those at the economic bottom. |
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A FINAL FIGURE
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