| THIS WEEK |
The year now ending has certainly had its horrors. But we’ve made progress, too, in the struggle against inequality. CEOs, for instance, are still stuffing their pockets at worker and public expense. But we now have before Congress landmark “pay ratio” legislation that levies tax penalties at companies that wildly overcompensate their top execs.
Also before Congress: a new millionaires surtax bill, an idea showcased at the Taxing the (Very) Rich conference we helped host this past June. Meanwhile, we have reason for good cheer at the local level as well. In Boston just last week, the City Council moved toward enacting a luxury real estate transfer tax.
Next year, we’re sure, will offer significant new opportunities to challenge concentrations of wealth and power, and we’re looking forward to bringing you more of the latest news and scholarship on inequality and the organizing against it. But first we’ll be taking our annual year-end break for a couple of weeks. Wishing a happy holidays to all of our readers!
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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| Finnish General Strike Shows the Power of Solidarity |
| The Finnish government officials who proposed postal service pay cuts at the end of August likely had no idea the cutback push would lead to the downfall of former Prime Minister Antti Rinne. Earlier this month, Rinne was forced to resign after postal union protests escalated into a nationwide general strike. For the United States, Brian Wakamo writes this week, the strikes in Finland offer both an inspiration for working people and a warning to privatizers: You threaten our public postal service at your peril. |
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| WORDS OF WISDOM |
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PETULANT PLUTOCRAT
OF THE WEEK |
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| Amid Voting Win for the UK Right, a ‘Hero’ Broods |
| Right-wingers across the UK had plenty to celebrate last Thursday night as their Conservative Party swept to its biggest electoral victory since the Margaret Thatcher era. But the original architect of that Thatcher era — ad executive Maurice Saatchi — was doing more stewing last week than smiling. The day before the UK vote, Saatchi quit the M&C Saatchi ad agency he and his brother had founded. The brothers had found themselves on the losing end of a boardroom struggle that followed revelations last August that the agency had been cooking its books. In 1979, Saatchi’s ad campaign — “Labour Isn’t Working” — carried Margaret Thatcher to her initial victory and put the UK on course to becoming the world’s second-most unequal major developed nation. With the Conservative Party victory in last week’s election, the UK won’t be surrendering that grim inequality status anytime soon. |
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| GREED AT A GLANCE |
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| TOO MUCH |
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| Are America’s Rich Getting Tired of Winning Yet? |
| The obituaries for Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chair who died last week at age 92, have been consistently echoing a faux noble narrative. Between 1979 and 1987, as one prominent obit pronounced, Volcker’s bold and sweeping interest rate hikes shocked “the U.S. economy out of a cycle of inflation and malaise and so set the stage for a generation of prosperity.” But prosperity for who? Economist Gabriel Zucman has just delivered the most telling answer yet. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more. |
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| MUST READS |
This week on Inequality.org
Stephanie Danielle Roth, People Power Stopped a Romanian Mining Project. Now the Corporation is Suing for Billions of Dollars. Romanian and U.S. environmental justice activists demonstrated outside the Washington, DC tribunal hearing on a case brought by Canadian-based Gabriel Resources.
Chuck Collins, Boston One Step Closer to a Luxury Real Estate Transfer Tax. “When we see multi-million dollar transactions happen every day, while people cannot afford their rent every day, we have to do more.”
Mark Kreidler, Industry Seeks to Flatline Universal Health Care. A deeply funded lobbying group led by a former Hillary Clinton aide is out to kill Medicare for All. Its ideological roots run back to the Truman era.
Sarah Anderson and Sanho Tree, Danny Glover Supports Landmark Reparations Fund in Chicago Suburb. The Hollywood actor spoke at an Evanston townhall in support of a new policy to use revenue from marijuana legalization to narrow racial economic gaps.
Elsewhere on the Web
Josh Hoxie, Economic Inequality Has Gone Bananas, Progressive. A duct-taped art-show banana goes for over $100,000, three times over. A few miles away, a hedge-fund billionaire buys a fourth manse for $111 million.
Katharina Pistor, If Wealth Is Justified, so Is a Wealth Tax, Project Syndicate. The ultra rich would have no grand fortunes without subsidies from government and reliable support from the courts.
Julia Carrie Wong, Musk, Bloomberg, Bezos: America's aristocracy of tech robber barons lives by its own rules, Guardian. A reporter reflects on the defamation trial that just acquitted billionaire Elon Musk.
Wes Enzinna, Gimme Shelter, Harper's. In California's Bay Area, the brutality inflicted upon the poor is now trickling up to everyone but the super rich.
Robert Manduca, Selling Keynesianism, Boston Review. A fascinating new look at the egalitarian consensus that dominated American economic thinking after World War II — and today's renewed effort to restore the notion that "what makes good morals makes good economics."
Tom Metcalf, Masters of the Universe Are Taking Over Your Local Sports Teams, Bloomberg. Steve Cohen is just the latest finance billionaire to seek a pro franchise.
Rex Nutting, Why raising taxes on the rich isn’t so crazy, MarketWatch. Wealth taxes wouldn’t destroy the economy. They’d make it better. |
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| A FINAL FIGURE |
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