September 11, 2024                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

Presidential hopefuls Kamala Harris and Donald Trump participated in what could be the first and last debate of this election cycle last night. From our Inequality.org perspective, we found some aspects of the debate encouraging. Tax cuts for the wealthy came under fire three times and the poverty-reducing child tax credit got a welcome prime-time mention.

But much of the debate focused on immigration, with both candidates pledging hard-line approaches to border security unlikely to do anything about the root causes driving millions to leave their homes in search of a better life.

And both Harris and Trump left an important undercurrent to the immigration debate unsaid: Millions of Americans are worrying about immigrants because they’ve been convinced that our economy is a zero-sum game where they lose if immigrants get jobs.

The reality? We have more than enough resources to go around in this country. Our main problem: The ultra-wealthy are hoarding those resources. As AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler put it last night: “An immigrant doesn’t stand between you and a good job. A billionaire does.”

Chris Mills Rodrigo
for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Inequality.org team

The Ongoing Battle To Narrow America’s Daunting Racial Wealth Divide

This week’s frontline face: Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, the new president of the Washington, D.C.-based Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

What he’s doing to help create a more equal world: Asante-Muhammad has since earlier this year been leading the think tank dedicated to providing solutions to barriers to full freedom for America’s Black people. A longtime contributor to the Institute for Policy Studies and Inequality.org, his research on the racial wealth divide has laid bare just how much needs to be done to reach economic equality.

Investments in everything from quality education and affordable housing to new publicly financed asset building opportunities like “Baby Bonds” remain “essential,” Asante-Muhammad noted recently in a piece co-written with the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Algernon Austin.

What makes this fight so important: “In this 21st century, the problem of the color line is still at the center of inequality and division in the United States,” Asante-Muhammad points out, “and it is my goal to position the Joint Center to lead the nation beyond its historical divisions and injustice.”

The Ever More Important Case for a National ‘Robin Hood Tax’

No matter how difficult making ends meet has become for average Americans, those atop one sector of our economy always seem to be able live luxuriously. That sector: Wall Street. By gambling on our markets, traders manage to end up holding prodigious amounts of wealth despite producing nothing of tangible value.

So why not tax the stock, bond, and other financial trades that are making Wall Streeters so phenomenally wealthy?

A group of over 100 organizations earlier this summer made just that case. These groups called on Congress to adopt a 0.1 percent financial transaction tax, or FTT. That minuscule tax rate would generate an estimated $752 billion over 10 years, as Public Citizen's Susan Harley has just noted on Inequality.org.

Those billions would be enough to cover free universal preschool, free community college, and national paid family and medical leave — all combined. That sure sounds better for society than a Wall Street exec getting a second yacht.

Similar “Robin Hood” taxes enacted abroad have both generated significant revenues and disincentivized the high-frequency trades that firms use to make tiny profits over millions of moves. Read more below from Harley on how taxing trades could rein in Wall Street and leave our society significantly more equal.

Our back-to-school season is now running in full swing, and so is the inequality that comes along with student loan debt. According to a Center for Economic and Policy Research analysis of Americans who have attended college, 43.3 percent of Black women are shouldering these financial burdens, compared to just 15.7 percent of white men. For an interactive version of this chart and more on racial inequality, just click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below.

Are You Ready for Some (Private Equity Kingpin) Football!

The billionaires who run the world’s most profitable sport have just decided to “share the wealth” — with the greediest of their fellow rich. By a 31-1 margin, the owners of the 32 pro football franchises that make up the NFL have just voted to crack open their money-making machine to the investment fund kingpins of private equity.

The downside of letting private equity in? NFL owners don’t see one. After all, every other major pro sport — from baseball and basketball to hockey and soccer — is already sporting a private equity presence. But fans and their communities have little cause to share that welcoming spirit of pro sports franchise owners. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more.

Flimflamming Fans: A New Ally for Not Taxing the Rich

This week’s dour deep pocket: Bill Belichick, the long-time mega-millionaire coach of the New England Patriots football team and current extravagantly compensated ESPN network sports analyst.

What has Belichick sour: the 4 percent surtax on household income over $1 million that Massachusetts voters approved in 2022. Late last month, on the nation’s top sports talk show, Belichick claimed that the new “Taxachusetts” levy on millionaires would leave the state’s pro teams unable to re-sign their biggest stars. Player agents, Belichick charged, will “sledgehammer” Boston teams on the new state taxes their clients would have to be paying.

Massachusetts expects to raise some $1.3 billion from the millionaire surtax in the current budget year. Those dollars will enable the state, among other outlays, to make school meals free for all K-12 students. 

The last word: “Multimillionaire athletes and CEOs can easily afford” the new Massachusetts millionaire’s tax, says Andrew Farnitano of Raise Up Massachusetts — and the state’s sports fans don’t have to worry about any massive player exodus. The tax, he notes, certainly didn’t prevent the Boston Celtics “from putting together the best team in the NBA last year and re-signing nearly the entire roster.”

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