A weekly newsletter from the Institute for Policy Studies |
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This March marks four years since the World Health Organization declared Covid a global pandemic. Things have certainly changed since then. We rarely see masks anymore in crowded spaces, and those massive Covid-era investments in the American social safety net have all but expired. But one other pandemic-era dynamic — the concentration of America’s wealth — has just kept accelerating.
Our own Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo have been tracking that concentration closely over the last four years. The United States, they point out, now hosts 737 billionaires worth a combined $5.529 trillion. For those of you keeping score at home, that tidy sum falls just a few billion shy of the $6.1 trillion the entire United States government spent in 2023.
It’s not all doom and gloom though! One positive Covid-era change — the surge in labor organizing — has yet to fade. Union density remains far below its peak in the middle of the last century, but successful organizing campaigns at Starbucks, energetic strikes in Hollywood, and landmark new contracts for U.S. autoworkers show that today’s labor movement still has plenty of juice.
Major moments like pandemics remind us that social structures and trends that seem set in stone can be more pliable than we assume. Our challenge: to make sure that the changes that stick end up being the ones that lead us to a more equitable society, not the ones that deepen existing harms. Chris Mills Rodrigo for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Inequality.org team |
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INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS |
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Rideshare Drivers Take the Fight Straight to Uber and Lyft
Early on in Uber and later Lyft’s ascent to verb-status, drivers for these rideshare giants began to see the realities behind their employers’ promises of flexibility and quick income. With cities and states the nation over giving these services what amounted to a free pass to expand their operations, drivers began calling out how little of the ever-growing fares were coming their way.
Those drivers have become substantially more organized over the past few years, and they’re fighting hard against worker misclassification and for basic job protections. In Minneapolis, a driver-powered effort to establish a base pay level has won approval over opposition from the city’s mayor and the rideshare companies themselves.
Uber and Lyft are now threatening — as they have in the past — to exit Minneapolis when the pay guarantee comes into effect. The companies claim that ensuring drivers decent pay will take prices out of the reach of consumers. New research from PowerSwitch Action disputes that claim. The main driver of higher costs for riders, their research shows, remains corporate greed.
We have lots more on the rideshare giants, their empty threats, and the nationwide surge in rideshare driver organizing. |
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Labor Fighting Back Against Argentina’s New Hard-Right President
Javier Milei has just completed his first 100 days as Argentina’s president. His assault on worker rights has been, as expected, unrelenting. But that attack has not gone uncontested. From the streets to the courts, Argentina’s labor movement has been battling against Milei’s far-right agenda — and given the world a crucial display of working-class political power in an epoch-defining global election year.
A self-proclaimed “anarcho-capitalist,” Milei centered his campaign last year around a right-wing populist promise: to make a vaguely defined “political caste” pay for the country’s long-standing economic instability. Wielding a chainsaw at rallies, Milei vowed to abolish state ministries and Argentina’s central bank, roll back abortion rights, and dollarize the economy.
In just his first 100 days, Milei moved swiftly to deregulate markets and undermine collective bargaining rights. In his haste to slash public services, he also abused executive powers and violated the constitution.
Argentina’s working families — not an elite “political caste” — are now footing the bill for Milei’s disastrous project. His shock measures have pushed the national poverty rate up to an incredible 57 percent.
But Argentina’s labor movement is mobilizing a widespread and effective opposition. Via court injunctions and general strikes, they’ve impeded the roll-out of Milei’s most extreme measures — and helped the rest of us draw lessons on how best to resist the far-right’s rise worldwide. More from Inequality.org's Liam Crisan below. |
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Coming Soon to a Manse Near You: A Tax on Over-the-Top Greed
In the heart of California’s Silicon Valley, prices for luxury dwellings in 2023’s last quarter rose 9.5 percent over 2022. And fabulous mansions, given current trendlines, figure to be fetching top dollar far into the foreseeable future. Just over four decades ago, the United States hosted a mere 13 billionaires. Now we boast some 735. Could the mega-million-dollar mansion sales ahead possibly have any redeeming social value for the rest of us? A growing corps of progressive local lawmakers believe they most certainly could. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more on the rising luxury home tax movement.
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PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK |
This CEO’s Anti-Union Petulance May End Up Costing Him Big-Time
This week’s dour deep pocket: David Burritt, the CEO of U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation.
What has him sour: The opposition from the United Steelworkers union — and the Biden administration — to the move by Japan’s Nippon Steel to take over U.S. Steel via its Houston-based holding company. The deal with Nippon that Burritt has been pushing would reward him with a $70 million personal payday.
The leading rival bidder for U.S. Steel, the Cleveland-Cliffs company, has union support. Its bid for the company, if successful, will cost Burritt an estimated $40 million.
The last word: Burritt’s management team, Cleveland-Cliffs chief exec Lourenco Goncalves noted earlier this year, has “had one goal in mind and that was to break the back of the United Steelworkers.” Added Goncalves: “I am a big supporter of unionized labor because it goes against bosses like Dave Burritt.” |
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What's new on Inequality.org
Max Lawson, Is ‘Neoliberal Feminist’ an Oxymoron?. More women are holding positions of power than 50 years ago, but under a fairer system we would have made much more progress on gender equality.
Elsewhere on the web
Branko Milanovic, The Problematic Past, Present, and Future of Inequality Studies, The Nation. Learning more about our unequal past will help us forge a much better and more equal future. Jared Abbott and Bhaskar Sunkara, Democrats who attack inequality do better in elections. The party should take notice, Guardian. Progressives must crib from FDR’s playbook and really start calling out economic inequality and plutocracy.
Karen Gilchrist, Biden’s ‘billionaire tax’ takes aim at the super-rich — but can a wealth tax work in reality? CNBC. A 2 percent tax on the world’s 2,756 known billionaires could raise $250 billion per year. Jake Johnson, Testimony to UN Panel: ‘Tax the Rich. Save the World,’ Common Dreams. Too much wealth in too few pockets threatens us all, charges Patriotic Millionaires president Erica Payne.
Teresa Ghilarducci, Work, Retire, Repeat, Economic Integration Group. An interview with the director of the New School’s Retirement Equity Lab on the strikingly large inequality of retirement wealth.
Robert Reich, The biggest contrast in the upcoming election, Substack. The problem America’s growing top-heavy distribution of income creates for Social Security: Only average Americans pay Social Security tax on all their earned income. Earnings this year above $168,600 face no Social Security tax levy.
Andrew Perez, Supreme Court Puppetmaster Explains How Billionaires Can Push America Right, Rolling Stone. Leonard Leo’s pitch to prospective donors highlights how their dollars can shape a much more rich people-friendly educational future, at both the K-12 and higher-ed levels.
Philippe Roos, The Battle to Beat Inequality in the Transition, Energy Intelligence. Mounting right-wing protests against environmental policies in Europe have demonstrated how wide income gaps are making gaining buy-in for climate-friendly action so difficult.
India's richest 1% holds 40% of wealth, Deccan Herald. By 2023’s close, a new study co-authored by economist Thomas Piketty has revealed, India’s richest held 40.1 percent of their country's wealth and 22.6 percent of India’s income, their greatest income share since 1922. |
Gerald Epstein, Lisa Donner, and John Cavanagh, Book Talk: Busting the Bankers’ Club. A discussion of Epstein's new book, an eye-opening account of the failures of our financial system, the sources of its staying power, and the path to meaningful economic reform. |
Nick Hanauer and Samantha Jacoby, The True Cost of Trump's Tax Plan, Pitchfork Economics. A look at the legacy of Trump's 2017 tax law ahead of its expiration next year. |
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In 2020, only one U.S. billionaire — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — had a net worth of $100 billion or more. Today, the entire top 10 rate as centi-billionaires, with a collective wealth now at a staggering $1.4 trillion. Overall, the combined wealth of America’s billionaires has grown by 88 percent over the past four years to $5.529 trillion, according to an Institute for Policy Studies analysis of Forbes data. For an interactive version of this chart and more on the growth of billionaire wealth, check out the link below.
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Inequality.org | www.inequality.org | inequality@ips-dc.org Institute for Policy Studies 1301 Connecticut Avenue Ste 600 Washington, DC 20036 United States Managing Editor: Chris Mills Rodrigo
Co-Editors: Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, Bella DeVaan, and Sam Pizzigati Production: Chris Mills Rodrigo and Liam Crisan |
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