Living in oligarchic times can be plenty scary. But pushing back through humor can be one wonderful way to resist the powerful who’ve hijacked our economy and democracy. And what better time to do that resisting than Halloween!

One example: The satirical campaign, Trillionaires for Trump, is now out there pushing its “Stop the Vote” campaign. These “trillionaires” are dressing up as wannabe oligarchs and carrying downloadable signs. “Don’t Vote: Everything is Fine Just the Way It Is,” reads one. “One dollar, One vote,” reads another.

Speaking of dressing up as oligarchs, for Halloween two years ago, I went as Jeff Bezos, complete with a Blue Orbit space suit, cowboy hat, and champagne bottle. Last year, I went as a Tesla Truck running over a Starlink satellite. A lot of cardboard! Have a Halloween idea for this year? Send in your inequality-themed Halloween costume ideas and photos, and we’ll post them on our social media.

My Bernie “Boo Billionaires” scarecrow, meanwhile, is protecting my chickens.

Billionaires deserve booing now more than ever. Out in California, 22 billionaire snowflakes are running scared, spending over $300 million to oppose a one-time 5 percent wealth tax ballot measure. The combined personal wealth of these 22, our latest study shows, has jumped by 64 percent over the last 20 months.

Speaking of ballots, it’s not too late to join one of the many nonpartisan election protection activities now underway all around the country. I’ll be speaking Sunday at one in a church in western Massachusetts. Join in wherever you can. Thanks!

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

These Campaign Staffers Have Unionized To Build Stronger Campaigns

This week’s frontline faces: The campaign staff of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who have unionized with the Campaign Workers Guild.

What they’re doing to help create a more equal world: Campaign work can be demanding: Long hours, low pay, and limited benefits remain standard in an industry where workers are asked to sacrifice for a larger cause.

Corey Torpie, a photographer who took the great snap above, knows about these challenges firsthand. She first formally joined AOC’s staff in 2020, right before the staff chose to unionize. The new union’s first contract set a salary floor of at least $4,000 monthly and overtime pay after 40 hours a week. Since that initial contract, dozens of other campaign staffs have unionized.

What makes this fight so important: “Campaign workers organize their communities, connect with their neighbors, and help turn shared ideas into political change,” Torpie writes in a new piece on Inequality.org. “I believe that building a better future for our communities should also mean building better working conditions for the people who make that work possible.”

You Can Pause Data Center Construction Right in Your Hometown

The standard media discourse around AI and data centers treat this new tech as an inevitability: Either adapt to what the AI kingpins are insisting that you need or get left behind. The far different reality: You don’t have to accept the billionaire take on what AI must be, and you certainly don’t have to put up with a giant, noisy, polluting concrete box ten minutes from your home.

This week, on Inequality.org, we're spotlighting reflections by Jamie Jeffery, the mayor of Lochbuie, Colorado, about how her city passed a five-year moratorium on the construction of new data centers. Why did Lochbuie decide to slow the data center express? The city already faces water stresses that a data center would only exacerbate. On top of that: the overall climate impact of data centers. 

“Artificial Intelligence,” Jeffery writes, “has not yet surpassed good old-fashioned human common sense.”

The staggering racial wealth gap has narrowed only slightly since 1989. The median Black family now has a net worth of $36,420, just 11 percent of the $332,120 median wealth of white families. At the current narrowing rate, closing the racial wealth gap will take another 640 years.

Newly released data from the Federal Reserve’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finances reveals another troubling trend: Black household wealth fell 24.5 percent between 2022 and 2025, partly because home values have seen a sharp decline. Homes make up much of Black family wealth.

Another reason why the racial wealth gap is now moving in the wrong direction: Trump rollbacks of anti-discrimination protections and social safety net programs.

For an interactive version of this chart and more on racial economic inequality, click the link to our Inequality.org Facts section below.

This week’s overpaid CEO: Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. 

How Zuckerberg is driving inequality: On October 22, Senator Bernie Sanders, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and 11 other U.S. lawmakers requested an urgent meeting with the tech oligarch to discuss evidence that his platforms — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads — were suppressing content associated with the Brazilian presidential campaign of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and amplifying content favoring his rightwing opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro. 

Zuckerberg had a possible personal interest in interfering with Brazil’s election. Lula is championing a proposed annual wealth tax that would hit hard at global billionaires. The former labor union leader has also angered tech titans by decreeing that social media platforms be held liable for illegal content. 

Zuckerberg couldn’t be bothered to meet with the concerned U.S. lawmakers. But his platforms’ alleged political meddling in Brazil and elsewhere could lead to serious blowback, starting under what will soon be Lula’s fourth presidential term. 

Recent protests like the one above in Rio de Janeiro have already begun that blowback. Notes the banner: “Meta, stay out of it. Boycott Meta after the 25th.”

The last word: “This was an election in which we had to overcome outside interference coming in through digital platforms, which we are going to have to regulate,” Lula declared minutes after his re-election victory. “We cannot have monstrous companies earning billions, paying no taxes, and trying to steer this country’s electoral outcome.”

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