March 12, 2025                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

Back in February, my Institute for Policy Studies colleague Sarah Anderson and I met with Senator Bernie Sanders to strategize about his upcoming “stop oligarchy” tour. Bernie had been hesitant about hitting the road. Now 83, he had been hoping another opposition leader would step forward. None did, and, two weeks ago, the tour began.

The first stop: Iowa City. Since then, 4,000 have gathered with Bernie in Kenosha, Wisconsin and 2,600 more in Altoona, Wisconsin, both swing districts that Republicans represent in Congress. On Saturday, my niece Jenny attended the senator’s rally along with 9,000 of her neighbors in Warren, Michigan.

“It rocked my world,” Jenny told me. “Who else is standing up to Trump so effectively and speaking to the fear and anger of the people who voted for him?” 

UAW president Shawn Fain introduced Sanders in Warren. More Democrats, Fain noted, needed to follow Bernie’s lead, and Bernie promptly did plenty of leading.

“The people of this country will not allow us to move toward an oligarchy,” Sanders told the overflow crowd. “They will not allow Trump to take us into authoritarianism. We’re prepared to fight. And we’re going to win.” 

Here at Inequality.org, we‘ll continue to keep a close eye on the Stop Oligarchy movement – and the disruptive impact of billionaires on our everyday lives. This week is looming particularly large, with the House opening its tax-writing work. For more, check out this terrific More Perfect Union video featuring Inequality.org contributor Bob Lord and me talking about “The Biggest Tax Dodge in History.”

Next Tuesday, March 18, I'll be speaking at The New School in New York on “Inequality by Design” with filmmaker Justin Schein, director of Death and Taxes, and former Ohio senator Nina Turner. For registration info, check here. Thanks!

Chuck Collins 
for the Institute for Policy Studies’ Inequality.org team

Mobilizing Faith Leaders Against Immoral Federal Budget Proposals 

This week’s frontline face: Bishop William J. Barber II, founder of the faith-based advocacy group Repairers of the Breach and national co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign. 

What he’s doing to help create a more equal world: Barber recently mobilized several hundred faith leaders at the U.S. Capitol to denounce the Trump-Republican agenda of slashing programs for the poor and spreading the green instead on huge giveaways for the rich and the war machine.

What makes this fight so important: In Barber’s view, the GOP federal budget proposals have become “the most dangerous thing going on in this country right now.” To spotlight that danger, Repairers of the Breach, the Institute for Policy Studies, and the Economic Policy Institute have released a new report on the impact of these budget proposals on everything from Medicaid to food stamps. 

“If political leaders,” Barber warned his fellow clergy, “are willing to forsake their constitutional oath to establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare in order to appease billionaires — and we don’t say anything — we will reject our ancient faith and the moral foundations of our common lives.”

President Trump is now promoting $5-million “gold card” tickets to U.S. citizenship for wealthy foreigners. Many immigrants, meanwhile, continue to face a deadly daily reality. In 2023, nearly six out of every 100,000 foreign-born Latino workers in the United States suffered a fatal workplace injury.

Among all U.S. workers, that death rate stood significantly lower, at just over three out of 100,000 workers. Why the contrast? Immigrants — particularly those undocumented — often take on the most dangerous jobs. The undocumented, for instance, make up 23 percent of construction laborers. For an interactive version of this chart and more on health and inequality, click the link below.

Paris and Washington, D.C.: An Inequality Tale of Two Capital Cities

Nine of the world’s ten wealthiest billionaires now call the United States home. The remaining one? He lives in France. And that one — the driving force behind our largest global maker of luxury goods — is now feeling some heat.

What has French deep pockets beginning to sweat? Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have just given a green light to the world’s first significant tax on billionaire wealth. What makes this legislation even more significant? That tax-the-rich move has come at a time when the world’s most powerful nation — the United States — is moving in the exact opposite direction.

Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more.

A New Message from Wall Street: A Pinch for Thee, Not for Me

This week’s dour deep pocket: The billionaire hedge fund manager Scott Bessent, Donald Trump’s current secretary of the treasury.

What has Bessent sour: any hint from the press that America’s sinking economy represents anything more than — in Trump’s words — “a little bit of disturbance.” The nation, Bessent emphasized in a CNBC interview Friday, is just going through “a much-needed course adjustment,” a “detox period.”

That “detox” includes plenty of feel-good stimulants for America’s rich — including “mass” cutbacks in IRS audits on high-income taxpayers — and a painful “pinch” on average consumers. These average Americans are starting to realize, relates KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk, that “wage growth has slowed, people are working fewer hours, and prices are still elevated.”

Average families shouldn’t be expecting much in the way of relief from Bessent.

“Access to cheap goods,” Trump’s treasury chief told the Economic Club of New York earlier this month, “is not the essence of the American Dream.”

The last word: Scott Bessent “is using all the budget high jinks at his disposal,” observes Washington Post economic commentator Catherine Rampell, “to produce a pseudoscientific plan that’s rosier, more magical, and more paper-thin than the past several decades of GOP budget fantasies.”

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