A weekly newsletter from the Institute for Policy Studies |
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Who else saw Barbenheimer? When the theater lights rose after my double feature — Oppenheimer first, obviously — I was bleary-eyed, but I’d had so much fun. For many, Barbenheimer was a welcome break from the blitz of tired Marvel IP, proof that audiences crave riskier creative ideas and richly built worlds onscreen.
Sure, we all have our gripes with the films. The commercialized winkingness of Barbie director Greta Gerwig’s strategy to make Mattel, as a Nation review notes, “more appealing to a new generation suspicious of corporate influence.” The thinly written women and Santa Claus-like Einstein of Oppenheimer. But it felt so great to go to the movies and participate.
Making that feeling even better: Oppenheimer’s stars dipped early from their own premiere to join 160,000 of their fellow actors and over 11,000 writers on strike against the untenable greed of streaming services, studios, and CEOs. While refusing to reduce precarity and boost wages, just eight top Hollywood execs pocketed $773 million in 2021. The bosses are now planning to hold their ground until workers lose their homes.
To quote striking writer Cheech Manohar’s picket sign: “The CEO character is coming across as unlikeable.”
We have plenty in this issue we think you‘ll find distinctly more likeable. And if you’d like to share your thoughts on Barbenheimer and the Hollywood strikes — or recommend any movies you’d like to see on our 10 best inequality movies list — just hit reply to this email. Bella DeVaan,
for the Institute for Policy Studies' Inequality.org team |
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| INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS |
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This Indiana Social Worker Sees Poverty as a Policy Choice
“My decades of work as a social worker have taught me one great lesson,” writes Deb Sitarski. “Poverty is an entrenched system of political choices by self-serving lawmakers, not a personal failing of ordinary people. Poverty is not, and never has been, a crime.”
As a caseworker who has determined eligibility for those receiving public assistance, Sitarski has observed the extreme hardship applicants have to endure to get help. Currently, at Indiana’s $7.25 minimum wage — as our fact sheet prepared with the Poor People’s Campaign notes — a worker must labor 94 hours a week to afford “even a modest two-bedroom apartment.” Far too many of our politicians, meanwhile, remain eager to keep cushioning life for our ultra-wealthy. These pols, Sitarski points out, are mobilizing to enshrine Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and slash Social Security. But pandemic-era relief programs, she adds, have proved that reducing poverty is within our reach. |
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New Bills Put “OLIGARCHs” and “FATCATs” on Notice
The last few weeks have been huge for jauntily acronymed legislation: Two transformative bills have reached the halls of Congress. Our Inequality.org team’s research informs them both.
In May, we released an explosive report on the high environmental and economic costs of ultra-rich private jet travel. Senator Edward Markey and Representative Nydia Velazquez have now introduced the Fueling Alternative Transportation with a Carbon Aviation Tax (FATCAT) Act, legislation that would increase the excise tax on private jet fuel to boost public investment in green transit.
Representatives Barbara Lee, Summer Lee, Rashida Tlaib, and Jamaal Bowman are targeting the wealth concentration that enables private jet ownership in the first place. Their Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth and Reverse Community Harms (OLIGARCH) Act, formulated with our friends at the Patriotic Millionaires, would directly tax wealth as its concentration ebbs and flows.
This legislation would also increase IRS audit rates on the super rich, helping capture some of the estimated $175 billion in revenue that tax dodgers cost us each year. Common Dreams reporter Jake Johnson has more. |
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Can We Measure Inequality Without Tallying Our Wealthy’s Wealth?
Been eating a bit too much ice cream this sweltering summer? Thinking about going on a bit of a diet? Well, imagine yourself counting calories but exempting anything with sugar from all your counting. Would that approach help you make an appreciable dent on your excess bodily baggage? Of course not. We can’t eliminate what we ignore. And that goes for inequality as well, over 300 distinguished economists worldwide are noting in a fascinating new open letter to the UN and World Bank. Inequality.org’s Sam Pizzigati has more.
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PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK |
Sometimes a Mere $200 Million Simply Does Not Cut It This week’s dour deep pocket: Hong Kong life insurance executive Calvin Lo.
What has him sour: Forbes magazine, after a year-long investigation that grilled some 40 people in six different nations, has just accused Lo of falsifying his wealth to earn a spot on the annual Forbes world rich list. At one point, Forbes charges, Lo claimed a fortune worth over $10 billion, with holdings ranging from a five-star hotel in Taipei to a major share of a legendary Formula 1 auto racing team. His actual net worth, according to Forbes: no more than a mere $200 million.
Lo, Forbes adds, had seven different public relations consultants contacting at least “11 different Forbes reporters” to press the case for his billionaire star status. This PR team is now telling the magazine that Lo “would like to make it clear that he does not wish to be written about in Forbes.”
The last word: At one point, Lo claimed to own a batch of champagne that cost him $230 million. That “seems absurdly high,” the Christie’s auction house director of wine and spirits has observed. A batch selling for over $100 million, the Christie’s agent opines, would simply not be “feasible.” |
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This week on Inequality.org
Omar Ocampo and Jiaqin Wu, Boston’s Wealthy Real Estate Players Avoid Paying their Fair Share. The state legislature has blocked the city’s luxury real estate transfer tax for nearly four years. Helen Flannery, The 5 Percent Foundation Payout Requirement May Be a Floor, but the Ceiling Is Awfully Low. Most private foundations stick quite closely to their 5 percent payout requirement. And America's largest are unlikely to give much more than the minimum. Elsewhere on the Web
Rep. Barbara Lee and Abigail Disney, The one way to stop billionaires from ruining our democracy, CNN. Extreme wealth inequality threatens our economy and democracy, and we need a tax specifically aimed at constraining it. Stephanie Krikorian, Everyone in the Hamptons Is Reading The Guest, Curbed. A new novel perfectly captures the vibes at the ultimate summer getaway for our super rich. Harold Meyerson, The Self-Serving Derangement of the Rich, American Prospect. Any number of America’s wealthiest businessmen have worldviews that combine greed with deranged paranoia.
Jayati Ghosh, Taking inequality seriously — and tackling it seriously, Social Europe. The metrics the World Bank uses to track progress against inequality actually leave the rich out of the equation!
Jeff Ernsthausen, How the Ultrawealthy Use Private Foundations to Bank Millions in Tax Deductions While Giving the Public Little in Return, ProPublica. The rich get huge tax breaks donating art and property. The public too often gets little or no access to the donated treasures.
Richard Heinberg, Are These the End Times? Common Dreams. A conversation with evolutionary biologist Peter Turchin on the perverse “wealth pump” that, ever since the late 1970s, has been taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Rich Tenorio, Filthy Rich Politicians: journalist Matt K Lewis on Trump, ethics and money in Washington, Guardian. Rich people get elected, and people, when elected, tend to get richer. Over time, an important new book relates, this trend has only gotten worse.
Daniel Wortel-London, Limits to Wealth = Limits to Growth, Resilience. The annual income needed to enter the U.S. top 1 percent: $600,000, about 40 times the current annualized minimum wage. If income over 40 times the income of a minimum-wage worker faced a 100 percent tax, our richest would have a vested personal interest in hiking our income minimum.
The making of America’s elite, Economist. A new research paper quantifies the substantial boost that students with top 1 percent parents get when applying to the nation’s most prestigious universities. |
Michael Barbaro and David Leonhardt, Affirmative Action for the 1 Percent, The Daily. In elite college admissions, a new study has found, being very rich is its own qualification.
A. Martínez, 14 years ago the federal minimum wage was raised to $7.25 an hour. It hasn't changed, Morning Edition. A low-wage worker in California and Rev. William Barber of the Poor People's Campaign weigh in on why wages have stagnated.
Daniel Denvir, Daniela Gabor, Ted Fertik, and Tim Sahay, Bidenomics, The Dig. Defining and debating the new American industrial policy, the energy transition, the New Cold War with China — and more. |
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Since the 1980s, the accumulated wealth of dynastic families in the United States has boomed due to weak taxation policy. For example, a 2021 report from Institute for Policy Studies found that the Walton family has seen their wealth grow from $6 billion in 1983 to $247 billion in 2020. The recently introduced OLIGARCH Act seeks to rein in rampant wealth inequality by taxing high wealth in comparison to median household wealth, aiming to curtail the consolidation of power.
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Inequality.org | www.inequality.org | inequality@ips-dc.org Managing Editor: Isabella DeVaan
Co-Editors: Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, and Sam Pizzigati Production: Isabella DeVaan |
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