March 26, 2025                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

Imagine a young person from a future generation asking you this simple question: “Hey, what did you do during the oligarchic coup attempt back in 2025?”

Ready to do something you can tell the future all about? How about grabbing two neighbors and meeting up with us at one of the 400 Hands Off demonstrations set for Saturday, April 5. Need some inspiration? Watch one of the “Fight Oligarchy” rallies that have been uniting thousands of local activists with Bernie and AOC.

Some of you may recall the satirical Billionaires for Bush effort in 2001 and 2004 that lifted our spirits with comic relief in “celebration” of a billionaire-subservient president. Over 100 local groups engaged back then in creative street theater.

Good news: That effort is getting back together. At the April 5 demo, Trillionaires for Trump groups will be humorously protesting the protesters. If you’re theatrically inclined — or want to make others laugh — you can start your own local Trillionaires for Trump group. Check the website for DIY tools and come up with your own billionaire name. Philip DaValt, anyone?

A reminder: The deadline to apply for the Institute for Policy Studies Henry Wallace Fellowship is coming up! If you are or know a young person interested in learning about working in progressive movements, submit an application here.

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

Job One for 2025: Going on the Offense for Our Democracy

This week’s frontline face: Sulma Arias, the executive director of People’s Action, the nation’s largest network of grassroots power-building groups, with more than a million members in 30 states.

What she's doing to help create a more equal world: After the initial shock of the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, public anger over the assault on essential services is compelling lawmakers and progressive institutions into action. Organizing, Arias argues, has become more critical than ever.

What makes this fight so important to her: “The stakes couldn’t be higher," Arias wrote recently to help spur the new organizing we so need today. "The longer we wait, the more harm that will be done — and the more lives that will be lost. It’s time for every one of us to go on the offense to save our democracy."

‘No Kings Then, No Kings Now’: Hitting Oligarchs Where It Hurts

In a few weeks, the Massachusetts residents of Lexington and Concord will be marking the 250th anniversary of the “shot heard round the world” and the beginning of the American Revolution. We didn’t need kings then, many of those local residents will be emphasizing, we don’t need kings now.

That same spirit is driving an inspiring campaign to “Stop Private Jet Expansion” at the New England region’s largest private aviation airport. This campaign, many observers believe, might triumph. 

Private jet travel has become the place where plutocratic wealth meets ecological destruction. Only our richest 0.003 percent own private jets, but each passenger on a private jet produces 500 times the annual carbon emissions of an average person. Billionaire-fueled private jet travel worldwide surged 46 percent between 2019 and 2023, with 68.7 percent of private jets registered in the United States.

Our Inequality.org team is coordinating a growing campaign to hike taxes on private jet fuel and help localities fight private jet expansion. Click below to read a new piece on this effort by our own Chuck Collins in The Nation.

Events this March, Women’s History Month, are honoring women’s contributions throughout our society. Unfortunately, women’s work remains undervalued. Women’s average wages are continuing to run lower than male wages, and their poverty rates are running significantly higher. In 2023, 11 percent of women aged 18-64 were living in poverty. The male rate: just 8.8 percent.

For an interactive version of this chart and more on gender inequality, click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below.

Could Elon Musk Destroy Social Security as We Know It?

Why is Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, hyperventilating about Social Security? Why is he inventing unhinged tales about “fraudulent” hordes of Social Security grifters? Why is his “DOGE” chopping away staffers at the already understaffed Social Security Administration?

Let’s start with the political reality that most Americans see Social Security as absolutely essential to their future financial security. These average Americans, Musk and his like-minded super wealthy fear, are eventually going to start demanding that America’s rich pay a far bigger share of the revenue Social Security so desperately needs. Inequality.org co-editor Sam Pizzigati has more.

Intel’s New Chief Exec Has a Bit of a Chip on His Shoulder

This week’s dour deep pocket: Lip-Bu Tan, the 65-year-old Silicon Valley venture capitalist who has just become the new CEO of Intel, the chip-making giant’s fourth chief exec in just the last seven years.

What has Tan sour: Intel execs “too nice” to make enough staff cutbacks. Tan’s CEO predecessor did slash the company’s workforce down 15,000 positions to 109,000. But Tan, reportedly feeling those cuts didn’t go deep enough, exited the Intel board last summer. Earlier this month, in his first “town hall” with employees as Intel’s new chief, Tan warned staffers that “hard decisions” lie ahead.

Those “hard decisions” could bring a huge payoff for Tan. He has agreed to invest $25 million — from his own private fortune — in Intel shares. Intel’s directors, for their part, have agreed to a new CEO pay package that could return Tan, Fortune reports, over $400 million, more than enough to jump Tan up into the ranks of America’s burgeoning CEO billionaire class.

The last word: If Tan’s tenure as CEO brings “more rounds of layoffs and cost-cutting without a compelling growth strategy,” notes a CTech analysis, “Intel’s decline could accelerate.”

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