The late and luminous Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of the famed anti-poverty bestseller Nickel and Dimed and a trustee here at the Institute for Policy Studies, suggested 20 years ago that our inequality program do more to document how extreme wealth inequality touches our daily lives.

“Take private jets,” she said. “Don’t the rest of us subsidize these huge polluters?”

We took her advice. In 2007, we published our first High Flyers report, a close-up look at how average taxpayers and air travelers subsidize this most polluting form of transportation. You can read now our most recent version of that report, and a new one will be coming out later this year.

We’ve also been working to stop private jet expansion at Hanscom Field, New England’s largest luxury jet hub. On top of that, we’re launching a new Private Jet Accountability Project to help communities resist private jet expansions.

Earlier this month, we worked with Rep. Eugene Vindman and other members of Congress to introduce the Stop Subsidizing Private Jets Act, a bill to roll back tax loopholes for private jet owners. With costs spiraling up for energy and everything else, after all, should we really be picking up the tab for luxury jet owners?

Thanks to all of you who’ve already joined this private jet struggle. Inequality.org readers have so far sent over 14,000 letters urging members of Congress to cosponsor Vindman’s new legislation. Help us get to 25,000 by signing here. 

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

Yes, We Can Eliminate Enormous Subsidies for Billionaire Private Jets

As we noted in this week’s intro, our Inequality.org team has long been battling the spread of private jets, a method of transport open only to our ultra-rich. Our drive against this excess took a serious hit in 2017 when lawmakers slipped a 100 percent bonus depreciation for private jet assets into that year’s Trump tax cut. Last year’s Trump One Big Beautiful Bill Act renewed that depreciation bonus.

But tireless organizing is changing the political climate on Capitol Hill. Members of Congress have introduced legislation, the Stop Subsidizing Private Jets Act, to stop billionaires from claiming enormous write-offs when they purchase luxury vehicles like private jets. Read more about this legislation — and just how much the wealthy are sabotaging our climate — right below.

Private jet trips make up just one part of the ultra-wealthy’s enormous environmental footprint. On average, a person in the global top 0.1 percent is now emitting 298 tons of carbon dioxide per year, compared with just 0.8 tons for someone in the bottom half of the global income distribution.

If everyone contributed to climate change at the same rate as our world’s richest 1 percent, the planet would hit the catastrophic 1.5°C warming threshold within three months. For an interactive version of this chart and more on global inequality, click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below. 

If Your CEO Grabbed Over $25 Million, You’d Be Feeling Proud, Too 

This week’s dour deep pocket: Gene Woods, the CEO of Advocate Health, the nonprofit hospital giant that rewarded him with $25.8 million in 2024 compensation. The top exec at the nation’s largest for-profit hospital system, HCA Healthcare, that same year only collected $23.8 million.

What has Woods sour: the growing support in North Carolina — the state where the Advocate Health headquarters sits — for capping nonprofit hospital CEO pay. At a certain point, says state senator Jim Burgin, “people need to say, ‘Wait a minute, you’re not-for-profit.’”

Last week, six of the nine commissioners on the influential Mecklenburg county board indicated they would support state legislative action that limits how giant nonprofits can operate.

Woods has left the defense of his paycheck to his media team. His “performance-based” pay, that team maintains, “reflects the scale and complexity of guiding one of the nation’s largest health systems.” In a Harvard Business Review article, meanwhile, Woods is celebrating “internal surveys” showing that 85 percent of his firm’s 170,000 employees “feel proud to be part of Advocate Health.”

The last word: Do the ranks of prideful Advocate Health employees include those workers who labor at the company’s lowest hourly wage? In 2024, the latest year with figures available, these workers took home over 650 times less than what their proud CEO pocketed.

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