March 4, 2026                                                         Home   Subscribe  Open in Browser

American families are struggling to pay their bills. Iranian families are living in terror for their lives. What connects these two groups ever so directly? 

Last year’s Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill” gutted America’s social safety net to pay for tax cuts for the rich and create a $156 billion slush fund for the Pentagon. That extra military money boosted the annual budget of the Trump “War Department” to more than $1 trillion, easing the way for Team Trump to launch a war on Iran without any congressional approval. 

Working people in the United States are bearing the domestic costs of this latest global conflict while our wealthiest are profiting lavishly — through military contracts and “the spoils of war,” everything from expanded access to natural resources to new real estate investment opportunities. 

Our military budget expert colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies have just released a fact sheet on the costs of the Iran invasion. They estimate the outlay for the war’s daily operations alone at about $60 million, the equivalent of what the federal government lays out daily in SNAP food aid for 9.5 million Americans. 

IPS is also releasing today a report looking at America’s 20 largest low-wage corporations. These “Low-Wage 20” companies are handing out massive CEO paychecks at the same time their workers are struggling with the double whammy of high prices and deep cuts in federal aid programs. 

Those 20 corporations and the Pentagon are both exploiting people who lack decent job opportunities. In fact, many of our lowest-paid troops also have to rely on SNAP. With the United States barreling into what could well become another “forever war,” working class Americans will no doubt wind up on the frontlines.

Sarah Anderson
for the Institute for Policy Studies Inequality.org team

A ‘Bad Business Fee’ on Corporations Paying Poverty Wages

Jobs with Justice has developed a novel idea for cracking down on companies that pay wages so low their workers are forced to depend on public assistance. 

Through a “Bad Business Fee,” Jobs with Justice notes, companies forcing taxpayers to subsidize their low-wage business models would have to contribute to a state revenue fund. Elected boards of community stakeholders would then decide how to spend the money in those funds to most effectively support low-wage workers and their communities.

“A proposal like this,” Adam Shah of Jobs with Justice explains, “strengthens democracy on multiple fronts.”

The Jobs with Justice proposal would promote democracy by giving communities direct control over how public money is spent. And it would incentivize companies to directly respond to employee requests for fair wages and adequate benefits.

In short, corporations paying poverty wages would have a choice: either create good jobs and pay living wages or contribute directly to the public systems their workers rely on. More details from Adam Shah below.

The 20 largest U.S. employers of low-wage workers pay wages so low that many employees have little choice but to turn to public assistance programs to make ends meet. Fifteen of these 20 firms reported median pay in 2024 below the $35,631 income limit that typically makes families of three eligible for Medicaid.

Not a single company in the Low-Wage 20 had 2024 median pay that met the $59,600 income needed to afford the U.S. average two-bedroom apartment rent. For more, including an interactive version of this chart, click the link below.

Lazy Young People, Irrelevant Uyghurs, and Ungrateful Democrats   

This week’s dour deep pocket: Chamath Palihapitiya, a 49-year-old venture capitalist and former senior Facebook exec.

What has Palihapitiya sour: those Americans gainfully employed who see more to life than going to work. On his new video, 30 Years of Business Advice in 13 Minutes (from a Billionaire), Palihapitiya blasts the “number of young people I encounter” who “talk about all these idiotic things like work-life balance.”

Palihapitiya would rather, as he puts it on YouTube, “make bets on disruptive ideas, technology, and people.” But he’s not betting on the Uyghurs, an ethnic group Beijing officials consider disruptive.

“Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs, okay?” Palihapitiya has told one podcast host. “You bring it up because you really care, and I think it’s nice that you care, the rest of us don’t care.”

The last word: Earlier this year, on a podcast, Palihapitiya explained why he’s gone full-bore MAGA: “l was a megadonor to the Democrats — you know, like, dinner-with-Obama level donor. Okay? I couldn’t get a phone call returned from the White House to save my life. The Trump administration is totally different. There’s not a single person there you can’t get on the phone and talk to.”

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