A weekly newsletter from the Institute for Policy Studies |
|
|
Oral arguments in Moore v. United States — a Supreme Court case that deserves our careful attention — kicked off yesterday in our nation’s capital. The reason Moore matters: The court’s final ruling could make our already profoundly unequal tax system even more favorable to our wealthiest and the corporations they run.
The matter of judicial concern? A specific part of the 2017 Trump tax cuts that targeted foreign earnings of domestic companies. Certain fanatical court activists have leveraged the narrow provision to challenge the broader legality of taxing unrealized gains. If they get their way, the high court could quash any future moves to tax grand concentrations of private wealth.
Even former Tea Party-animal Paul Ryan has warned that, depending on the scope of the ruling, vast swaths of the American tax code could be stricken from the record.
We find this case outrageous on several registers. As the Washington Post has exposed, Moore is fictitiously framed, a grotesque emblem of court corruption by wealthy influence. Get this: The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimates that two sitting justices hold stock in 19 firms that stand to realize a total tax windfall of over $30 billion if the case goes their corporate way. Sounds like immediate grounds for recusal to us!
America's wealth defenders hope to strike down wealth taxes and their unrealized possibilities because of their broader agenda to preserve our sickening inequality. It's ironic: Over a century ago, notes historian Heather Cox Richardson, the old Republican Party helped establish our first systematic progressive taxes. Then as now, our Institute for Policy Studies colleague Bob Lord reminds us: Our tax system remains our best “firewall against wealth concentration.” Chuck Collins and Bella DeVaan for the Institute for Policy Studies' Inequality.org team
|
|
|
INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS |
|
|
The Transit Equity Movement Scores ‘Zero Fares’ in Albuquerque
It’s happening: The city of Albuquerque is permanently eliminating public bus fares, becoming the largest U.S. city to embrace this critical step toward racial and economic equity.
A coalition headed by Together for Brothers — a community power-building group led by and for young men of color — made the victory possible. The group’s co-founder and executive director, Christopher Ramirez, explained how in an interview with Inequality.org.
Six years ago, Ramirez and his group identified access to transportation as “without a doubt” a key root cause of their community’s “biggest problems.” The group then organized to secure what became a highly successful two-year “Zero Fare” pilot test. In a landslide 6-3 vote last month, Albuquerque's City Council opted to make free fares permanent.
Similar “Zero Fare” policies are also gaining traction in other cities, from Kansas City and Alexandria to even New York. Ensuring mobility, advocacy groups are increasingly understanding, can significantly build equity. Read more from our Next Leader intern Liam Crisan at the link below.
|
|
|
Scraping Away the Anti-Worker, Anti-Racial Equity Vestiges of the Reagan Era
Ronald Reagan, the president who believed trees cause pollution, now has his name carved into an edifice housing EPA offices. The infamous buster of the air traffic controllers union also has an eponymous airport. Even more disturbing? Nearly invisible vestiges of the Reagan era continue to undermine progress towards a more equitable and sustainable economy.
Case in point: an obscure OMB policy that sets rules for state and local governments when they use federal funds to pay private contractors. The Reagan administration wielded these rules as weapons against sub-federal actions they didn’t like, from anti-apartheid divestment to local hiring programs.
Inequality.org co-editor Sarah Anderson analyzes how President Biden is planning to undo these 1980s holdovers — and how the administration could go further to advance pro-worker contracting standards. |
|
|
Sick of CEO Pay Excess? A Look at Why We Certainly Should Be
At their most basic, rationales for sky-high CEO pay all boil down to one word: incentives. Hefty rewards for top execs, the argument goes, incentivize top-tier performance. Execs who stand to take home mega millions will move heaven and earth to deliver quality products and services that gain their corporations beaucoup customers and higher share prices.
Where ought the debunking of that notion begin? How about focusing on CEO pay in an industry that can actually make the difference between life and death, an industry where the pay top execs pocket far, far outpaces the compensation of their counterparts elsewhere in the world? Let’s, in other words, talk health care. Inequality.org’s Sam Pizzigati has more. |
PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK |
A Victim of ‘Prejudice’ Blasts the Injustice Done to His Cushy Kind This week’s dour deep pocket: Jim Irsay, the billionaire owner of the NFL’s Indianapolis pro football franchise. What has him sour: In an interview broadcast just before Thanksgiving, Irsay blew up when HBO journalist Andrea Kremer asked if his 2014 arrest on suspicion of driving while intoxicated amounted to the “low point” of his career.
Irsay immediately called that arrest “wrong” and said he only pled guilty to an “operating a vehicle while intoxicated” misdemeanor “to get it over with.”
“I am prejudiced against because I’m a rich, white billionaire,” the 64-year-old Irsay went on. “If I’m just the average guy down the block, they’re not pulling me in, of course not.”
The last word: Irsay, after the HBO interview aired, went on X, the former Twitter, to blast critics of what he had to say. He dubbed Kimberly Martin, the co-host of ESPN’s only all-female podcast, “mean and ugly,” adding, “Your a Nothing Burger.” Her one-word response: “You’re.”
|
|
|
This week on Inequality.org Bob Lord, Patriotic Millionaires to High Court: Don’t Preempt Taxing Grand Fortune. A wrong decision in the Moore case could set back tax justice for years. Elsewhere on the Web
Emily Shugerman, The Problem With the Billionaire Promise to Give It All Away, Daily Beast. A new report finds the Giving Pledge isn’t living up to expectations.
Jake Johnson, Gilded Age for Billionaire Offspring as $5.2 Trillion Wealth Transfer Accelerates, Common Dreams. Without robust wealth and inheritance taxes, the children and grandchildren of today's billionaires will dominate the lives we live for decades ahead.
Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Fed Data on Cash Assets at the Biggest Banks Depicts an Out-of-Control Fed and Banking System, Wall Street on Parade. A powerful short history of how the deregulation of U.S. banking has destabilized our financial system and left top financial execs fantastically wealthy.
Adam Lowenstein, The King Of Wall Street B.S., The Lever. A new biography of Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, offers a damning indictment of the elite compulsion to conflate wealth with genius. Tim Schwab, Is There Such a Thing as a Good Billionaire? Next Big Idea. Billionaires like Bill Gates are using charitable donations to put their hands on the levers of public policy. Philanthropy has become one more billionaire tool for buying influence.
Oliver Milman, Don’t Call Elon Musk a ‘Green’ Billionaire, Mother Jones. Musk’s private jet emits more greenhouse gases in a month than a US family does in a year, and his purchase of Twitter has turned that social media platform into a wellspring of climate denialism.
George Monbiot, Here’s a question Cop28 won’t address: why are billionaires blocking action to save the planet? Guardian. Our super rich are criminalizing protest while they burn the world’s resources and remain untouched by the law. Luke Savage, CEO Performance Pay Is One of Capitalism’s Great Myths, Jacobin. How can anyone expect us to believe that top execs work 300 times harder or create 300 times more value than the rest of us?
Mark Bou Mansour, UN adopts plans for historic tax reform, Tax Justice Network. Nations at the UN have adopted — by a landslide majority — a resolution to begin establishing a global tax framework that will undercut the influence of tax havens and corporate lobbyists. Elfren Cruz, Wealth tax and a more equitable society, Philippine Star. The wealth of the rich, instead of trickling down, has only led to extravagant consumption by the rich.
|
Patrick Soon-Shiong: Cures for Cash, Good Bad Billionaire. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng explore why was a surgeon and biotech billionaire has been sued by his brother... and Cher.
The True Cost of Billionaire Philanthropy, The Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Nader welcomes back Chuck Collins to discuss if society might be better off if billionaires just kept their money and paid their fair share of taxes. |
|
|
Most Americans work hard every day for a regular old cash salary. Why must CEOs have wildly complex, heavily stock-based compensation packages? That’s so the rest of us will buy the line that Corporate America has a CEO “pay for performance” system. In a new joint report with the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, we explain why this is totally bogus. For an interactive version of this chart and other income inequality charts, check out the link below. |
|
|
We're looking for an exceptional new managing editor for Inequality.org. Find out more about what we're looking for and how to apply here! Feel free to share widely. |
|
|
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 and Kufre McIver |
|
|
|