December 18, 2024                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

In many ways, this has been a dispiriting year in the struggle for a more equal society. Donald Trump’s election to a second term has all of us thinking defense. We now face a massive charge to lock in tax cuts for the wealthy and privatize our most essential public services. We’ll need to mobilize, on an equally massive scale, taking care, as we go, to soberly analyze our political landscape.

At the same time, an overly dour look at the year ahead can obscure the big wins that working people made against our billionaire class. For this, our last issue of the year, we’d like to remind everyone about the victories we’ve all achieved over this past year. The battles we’ve fought haven’t been easy, but we’ve been able — by uniting across communities — to move forward.

Before presenting this year’s final issue, I’d like to thank you for all your support and helpful feedback over my first year as Inequality.org’s managing editor. Please feel free to share your comments and suggestions by replying to these emails!

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

Every week here in Inequality.org we feature champions in the fight against inequality. For this year-end issue, our managing editor Chris Mills Rodrigo and co-editor Sarah Anderson have pulled together 10 of 2024’s most inspiring wins. 

Among the highlights: The labor movement has over the past year achieved major breakthroughs, with a landmark southern triumph at Volkswagen in Tennessee, and at Amazon, where over 5,000 drivers now carry Teamster cards. Worker advocates have also won new federal-level protections on everything from safeguards on extreme heat to broader overtime pay coverage.

Activists have also teamed up with crusading federal regulators to block a Kroger-Albertson’s merger that would’ve driven up food prices. They’ve also won billions of dollars for victims of financial rip-offs. At the state level, voters in 2024 passed inequality-fighting tax, wage, and paid-leave measures by huge margins.

Without a doubt, we face formidable challenges. But in dark times like these, moves that shine a light on successful efforts to reverse our country’s extreme inequality become even more important. Check our full list at the link below.

Pressuring President Biden To Free a Principled Advocate for Tax Justice

This week’s frontline face: Kenny Stancil, a senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project, a public interest watchdog group that seeks to expose and mitigate corporate influence over key players in federal and state government and the economic media.

What he’s doing to help create a more equal world: Stancil has been working with Bob Lord — a senior Patriotic Millionaires tax policy advisor and an Institute for Policy Studies associate fellow — on a campaign to pressure President Biden to commute the prison sentence of Charles Littlejohn, the IRS contractor whose 2019 and 2020 leaks to the New York Times and ProPublica helped expose the massive tax avoidance America’s ultra-wealthy regularly practice. 

By shedding light on the extent of tax injustice, Littlejohn performed an invaluable public service. But federal district court judge Ana Reyes, after receiving a scathing letter from 25 congressional Republicans, sentenced Littlejohn to a five-year prison term, fully six times the federal sentencing guideline maximum.

A Free Charles Littlejohn website is now helping Americans urge Biden, via letters and electronic messages, to commute Littlejohn’s sentence to time served. 

What makes equality so important to him: “Lethal inequality persists because private-jet-setting billionaires are hoarding an increasing share of the world’s wealth,” Stancil notes. “Creating an equitable tax system capable of redistributing ill-gotten gains derived from exploiting workers and enclosing the commons would be one essential step toward solving humanity’s most pressing problem.”

In a recent Inequality.org commentary, Chris Bohner and Eric Blanc identify eight reasons why the labor movement’s resurgence can continue through the incoming — and hostile — Trump administration. This chart reflects just one of those reasons: the significant financial power unions now hold. With nearly $36 billion in assets, unions can pursue aggressive organizing drives while simultaneously defending themselves from regulatory and legislative attacks.

Ghastly Glimpses of America’s Most Rich-People-Friendly Year

After last week’s murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, America’s health care powers-that-be are feeling and fearing the American public’s anger now more than ever. Health care’s corporate giants, Reuters reports, have already begun enhancing the security they provide their top execs.

The challenge for the rest of us? We need to help channel the anger about health care that so many Americans feel today toward ending the system that has so failed America’s health. We need to remake health care into a vital and vibrant public service.

Our health care system, in the end, shouldn’t be making our rich richer. Our richest instead should be paying enough in taxes to help all Americans stay healthy. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more. 

Our research, editorial, and publishing team depends on hundreds of paid subscribers who make monthly gifts. Some give $3 each month; others give $200! All told, this support enables our team to stay focused on identifying causes and solutions to our deep economic inequality. Paid subscribers have contributed more than $20,000 in the past year. Ready to become a paid subscriber? Sign up today.