April 23, 2025                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

With the passing of Pope Francis the world has lost one of our most influential fighters against global economic inequality.

That inequality, as Francis noted in an apostolic exhortation early on in his papacy, rests at “the root of social ills.” We need, he preached, a “radical” resolution of the ills that poverty imposes. That would require more than just better welfare programs. That would require an outright rejection of the “absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation.”

Francis urged his fellow Catholics to join the fight against the “sickness” of economic injustice. Adherents to the faith, he argued, could not stand by while “the obsession with possessing and dominating excludes millions of people from primary goods.”

Our primary task? To deepen the struggle against that obsession.

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

Working Ever So Effectively To Get People onto the Streets

This week’s frontline face: Jocelyn Smith, an activist in Roswell, New Mexico, who knows what it’s like to be hungry and homeless. That experience is motivating her to volunteer time and energy to help those who need help most.

What she’s doing to help create a more equal world: Smith works at a local talk radio station, runs a Food not Bombs chapter, and volunteers at Rehab to Rental, an effort helping to increase affordable housing options. 

But Smith also understands that her local community work will never be enough to provide all the support that people need. To address that reality, she’s fighting for a higher minimum wage and an expanded social safety net, with a particular focus on the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and Social Security Disability Insurance.

What makes this fight so important to her: “Is Congress working on any of this?” Smith asked recently. “Unfortunately, no. Instead, they’re doing the opposite right now. They’re stealing from us to give to the rich, perpetuating a vicious cycle of poverty that keeps people homeless and hungry.”

Some Republicans Are Talking About Raising the Top Tax Rate. Let’s Do It. 

The tax debate is heating up on Capitol Hill. And believe it or not, some Republicans are actually showing a bit of an openness to raising the top federal marginal tax income tax rate.

What could even a small increase in that top rate mean? New research from American University’s Institute for Macroeconomic and Policy Analysis has looked at the potential impact if Congress raised the nation’s top tax rate from 37 to 44 percent. The researchers found that, with this modest rate hike in effect, our top 1 percent’s income share would decline by 1.34 percent. The bottom 50 percent’s income share, meanwhile, would rise by 2.07 percent.

Increasing the top marginal rate to 44 percent would also raise annual federal revenue by approximately 3.1 percent. That would be about enough to pay for a year of three key federal anti-poverty programs: SNAP, Children’s Health Insurance Program, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

The Trump administration’s assault on federal employees is striking a heavy blow against Black workers. The federal government has long served as a key source of stable, middle class jobs for this segment of the labor force. Economic Policy Institute research shows that Black workers make up a particularly large share of employees at agencies targeted for mass layoffs.

At the Department for Veterans Affairs, for example, Black workers represent more than a quarter of employees. That agency is now expecting to face 80,000 job cuts. For an interactive version of this chart and more on racial inequality, click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below.

Gen-Z Gripes Have This Boomer Chief Exec Riled and Exasperated

This week’s dour deep pocket: Jamie Dimon, the billionaire CEO of the financial colossus JPMorgan Chase since 2006. His JPMorgan pay last year jumped over 8 percent to $39 million.

What has Dimon sour: Gen-Zers — young people born between 1997 and 2012 — who don’t appreciate how good their future is looking.   

“People say the next generation’s in bad shape,” Dimon kvetched to Fox News earlier this month. “Really? They’re going to inherit a country that’s worth $200, $300 trillion. They’re probably going to live to 120.”

“These kids,” Dimon added, “shouldn’t be bemoaning their situation.”

But large numbers of Gen-Zers aren’t bemoaning. They’re organizing to change a society on track to see America’s richest 1.5 percent inherit 42 percent of all wealth transfers over the next 20 years. 

The last word: “I think what people like Dimon really can’t understand — what his unconscionable layers of wealth insulate him from — is how precarious the modern world feels to so many of us,” notes The Guardian’s Arwa Mahdawi. “You think I care about living to 120? Like many people, I’m just trying to get through the next 24 hours.”

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