May 7, 2025                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

One of the most pernicious myths used to discredit efforts to raise taxes on our wealthiest is that “they'll just go somewhere else” if we ever dare to make them pay more.

Proponents of this myth have never been able to furnish much evidence of mass tax-driven wealth flight. But that theory has had staying power anyway, maybe because many folks just see it as plain common sense. The reality? It takes a lot more than higher taxes to get millionaires to leave home.

The rich pick the places where they live for a variety of reasons — family, comfort, knowledge of local markets — that far outweigh a few thousand dollars more in tax burdens. And now we have some fresh evidence for that reality.

The Institute for Policy Studies researcher Omar Ocampo has teamed up with the State Revenue Alliance to analyze millionaire figures in two states — Massachusetts and Washington — that recently adopted higher taxes on high earners. Their prime finding? The number of millionaires in those two states actually increased after tax hikes on their highest-income taxpayers. More below.

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

Revitalizing the Labor Movement, One Worker at a Time

This week’s frontline face: The Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, a joint project of the Democratic Socialists of America and United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America.

What they're doing to help create a more equal world: The Organizing Committee, EWOC for short, came together near the beginning of the Covid pandemic as a hotline for workers interested in organizing for safety and more in their workplaces. In the years since, EWOC has helped over 200 unions.

The volunteer-led group’s focus on developing worker organizers provides, as the Center for Work and Democracy at Arizona State University details in a recent report, an exciting new way to reverse our long decline in union density.

EWOC will be holding its first national conference this summer in Detroit. 

What makes this fight so important: “The workers, organizers, and volunteers at EWOC are working to build a stronger, worker-led labor movement,” Wes Holing, the organization's communications director, has told Inequality.org.

“EWOC volunteer organizers have helped thousands of workers build power at work, and they've in turn helped other workers do the same,” Holing adds. “This model can help increase union density in the U.S. and empower the working class to turn the tide in the class war.”

A ‘Metastrategic’ Approach to Overcoming the Climate Crisis

How we’ll respond to the climate crisis remains, quiet possibly, the defining political question of our time. In his new book, writer Malcolm Harris wastes no time convincing readers that the situation has become incredibly dire — anyone who says otherwise is operating in bad faith — and focuses instead on what progressives need to be doing. He offers a “strategy of strategies.”

The options for reforming our economy and politics that Harris advances range from liberal market interventions to socialist worker power transitions. The broad constellation of the left will be unlikely, he notes, to unify behind any one of these approaches. But maybe pursuing them all at the same time, Harris suggests, can end up to be mutually reinforcing and save us from impending doom.

Donald Trump campaigned in 2024 on promises of tax cuts for the middle class. But a new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis finds that the president’s plan, as of April 2025, would raise taxes for all income groups, with the biggest hike on America’s poorest. The Institute’s analysis covers the impact of Trump’s proposed tariffs, his taxes on imported goods that will likely be passed on to consumers. For an interactive version of this chart and more on taxes and inequality, click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below.

Will This Egyptian Billionaire Soon Be Seeking a U.S. Home?

This week’s dour deep pocket: The Egyptian deep-pocket Nassef Sawiris, a UK resident for the past 15 years. Sawiris has just shifted his legal residence to Italy.

What has Sawiris sour: The British Conservative Party, for proposing last year an end to the UK tax loophole that had been letting foreign billionaires residing in Britain only pay tax on the income they earned in the UK. The current British government, under Labour Party control, killed this longstanding lucrative billionaire tax loophole last month.  

Sawiris is blaming the loophole’s end on the “incompetence” of UK conservatives. But he also has words of warning for Labour’s Rachel Reeves, the government’s current highest-ranking financial official. Reeves had better treat the wealthy, says Sawiris, “like they are her best clients.” Those wealthy, he added, “have options.”

Italy’s current right-wing government currently has in place a loophole the now-expired British giveaway inspired.

The last word: Donald Trump appears eager to get into the international billionaire loophole racket. He’s proposing a “gold card” — available for $5 million — that will speed the path to U.S. citizenship for the global rich who take up U.S. residence. As residents, notes Coda’s Oliver Bullough, these rich would “reportedly only have to pay tax on their U.S. earnings, not their international income.”

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