What's new on Inequality.org?
Sean Mason, Democrats Can Win Back the Working-Class with Economic Populism. New research from the Center for Working-Class Politics shows that progressive economic policies can bring working-class Trump supporters back into the Democratic Party.
Juan Montecino, Mary Hansen, and Ignacio González, Republican Tax and Spending Law Is Economically Misguided and Deeply Unfair. Cutting taxes for the wealthy and businesses and paying for it with Medicaid cuts will not have a positive impact on growth but will deepen the deficit and widen inequality.
Elsewhere on the web
Chuck Collins, Ralph de la Torre: The Making of a Healthcare Oligarch, The Nation. The first of Chuck's new column series, this time focused on the disgraced former CEO of Steward Health Care.
Fred Glass, What California history has to say about the New York mayor’s race, Stansbury Forum. Back in 1911, the richest of Los Angeles faced a mayoral candidate who threatened the dominance of wealth much like Zohran Mamdani does today in New York. Those L.A. rich triumphed. Can Mamdani win in a city where top 1 percenters have tripled their share of local income since 1980, from 12 to 36 percent?
Robert Frank, Mamdani’s millionaire tax sparks fear of New York wealth flight, Inside Wealth. CNBC’s wealth editor explains why Zohran Mamdani’s proposed wealth tax, even if enacted, will spur no grand exodus of New York’s wealthy to lower-tax jurisdictions.
Caroline O'Donovan and Naomi Nix, The Chan-Zuckerbergs stopped funding social causes. 400 kids lost their school, The Washington Post. What happens when we depend on deep pockets to “solve” social problems? Far too many eventually lose interest in their once “pet projects.”
Anand Giridharadas, Billionaire do-gooding is out. Naked oligarchy is in, The Ink. Notes on the Bezos wedding and Trump's cruel budget.
Daniel Mandell, The Founders Knew Great Wealth Inequality Could Destroy Us, Time. Among the influencers who shaped America’s founders: the historians who traced Rome’s decline to a widening gap between rich and poor, the radical Protestants who wanted to redistribute wealth in Great Jubilees, and a novel describing an island nation that placed explicit limits on income and wealth.
Paul Buchheit, 5 Facts That Show the Enormity of US Inequality, Common Dreams. The entire poorer half of the U.S. people hold only 2.5 percent of America’s wealth. And that stat only begins to tell our nation’s inequality story.
Dara-Abasi Ita, Not Just Yachts — Billionaires Love to Buy Elections Too, Investopedia. The $2.6 billion that 100 billionaire families invested in the 2024 elections doubled the amount billionaire big donors spent on elections in 2020.
Avi Bryant, I’m a Millionaire. Tax Me More, Please, Maclean’s. Entrepreneurs, says this Canadian veteran of Silicon Valley, start businesses in places people want to live. But the basic building blocks of places where people want to live — good schools and solid infrastructure — take the sorts of significant tax revenue that only taxing our richest can provide.
Spencer Althouse, Billionaires Shouldn't Exist, And To Prove It, Here's What $1,000,000,000 Can Actually Buy You, Yahoo. The average American tenant spends $1,635 per month on rent. If you had $1 billion dollars, that would cover your rent for the next 50,968 years.
Michael Hiltzik, Does America need billionaires? Billionaires say ‘Yes!’ Los Angeles Times. Many of today’s media outlets have been feeding on spoon-fed pap from the rich and powerful for so long that they — as the great press critic A.J. Liebling once put it — need to relearn how to chew.
