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Inequality

The Untold Story of Trump’s ‘Booming’ Economy

Americans are not happy, and for good reason: They continue to suffer financial stress caused by decades of flat income. And every time they make the slightest peep of complaint about a system rigged against them, the rich and powerful tell them to shut up because it is all their fault. One percenters instruct them to work harder, pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop bellyaching. Just get a second college degree, a second skill, a second job. Just send the spouse to work, downsize, take a staycation instead of a real vacation. Or don’t take one at all, just work harder and longer and better. The barrage of blaming has resulted in workers believing they deserve censure. And that’s a big part of the reason they’re unhappy.

Millions Of Workers Are Paid Less Than The ‘Average’ Minimum Wage

After 10 years of inaction at the federal level, so much of the policy work being done to boost wages for low-wage workers is happening at the state and local level. Yet, it is important to recognize that even with state and local governments taking action in many places, there are still millions of workers being paid significantly lower wages than the “average” minimum wage as calculated in the Upshot piece. In fact, raising the federal minimum wage to $11.80 would directly lift wages for 18.6 million workers, or 12.8 percent of the wage-earning workforce. Moreover, calculating the average effective minimum wage is very sensitive to how one defines the workforce affected by the policy. One would arrive at a much lower average minimum wage if considering the broader low-wage workforce for whom minimum wage policy is relevant.

How The 1 Percent Is Pulling America’s Cities And Regions Apart

The two gravest challenges facing America today, economic inequality and geographic divides, are increasingly intertwined. Economic inequality has surged with nearly all the growth being captured by the 1 percent, and the economic fortunes of coastal superstar cities and the rest of the nation have dramatically diverged. These two trends are fundamental to a new study by Robert Manduca, a PhD candidate in Sociology and Social Policy at Harvard University. The study uses census microdata culled from 1980 to 2013, and finds that America’s growing regional divide is largely a product of national economic inequality, in particular the outsized economic gains that have been captured by the 1 percent.

End Taxes That Favor The Rich; Confront Inequality And Implement An Ecosocialist Green New Deal

One area where the two parties of the millionaires and billionaires put in place policies that favor the rich are tax laws. Tax policy has favored the wealthy under both parties, but the Trump-administration has brought this tax corruption to new levels. We need to transform tax policy to build the working class base of the economy, shrink the wealth divide, and confront the climate crisis. An honest analysis of the tax code calls out in stark detail the extreme injustice of the economy in the United States. The tax system favors the wealthy as low- and middle-income people are hit the hardest while big business and high-income people are subsidized.

Why Can’t We Close The Racial Wealth Gap?

If the college cheating scandal has reinforced anything, it’s that one of the primary advantages of being wealthy is that the wealthy can buy more advantages. This helps explain why African Americans, who’ve historically been denied wealth, lag in almost every category of society behind whites, who have long benefited from capital extracted from black labor and culture. It also helps explain why—despite a “booming” U.S. economy that is nearing full employment—a giganticracial wealth gap remains. On average, white households have nearly 6.5 times the wealth of black households.

A Cure For Excessive Wealth Disorder

The U.S. is suffering from excessive wealth disorder. This isn’t your parents’ inequality influenza, but a more virulent strain of extreme disparities of income, wealth, and opportunity. Just 400 billionaires have as much wealth as nearly two-thirds of American households combined. And just three individuals — Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates — have as much wealth as half of all U.S. households put together. Since the economic meltdown of 2008, the lion’s share of income and wealth growth hasn’t gone just to the top 1 percent — it’s gone to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent.

There’s Plenty Of Wealth To Go Around — It Just Doesn’t

Get ready to hear a lot about baking this campaign season. When it comes to how wealth is distributed in this country, “pie” is a favorite pundit metaphor. Some politicians want to “re-divide the pie,” so everyone’s slice is more equal in size. But that’s “socialism,” some pundits scold. Better to trust our billionaires and millionaires to “grow the pie” so big that every American has a generous slice. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman indulged a bit of this recently. Michael Bloomberg, Friedman explained, is a grow-the-pie guy. Bernie Sanders, he warned, is a re-divide-the-pie guy.

Fixing Inequality: More Opportunity Is Not The Answer

Public discussions of reducing inequality have largely focused on equalizing the opportunities for people to move up, on ideas such as universal pre-K, school reform, reducing college debt, fighting discrimination, affirmative action, training programs, opportunity zones, and career mentoring. The hope is that someday the daughter of a Kentucky miner will have as much of a chance to live well as the son of a Wall Street broker, their fates determined not by circumstances, but only by ability and character.

Wealth Inequality Across Class and Race

Discussions of wealth inequality are oftentimes muddled by insufficient statistics. You get some stray comparisons of medians or comparisons of the wealthiest 400 families to the least wealthy half of the country. These incomplete pictures lead to mind-numbing debates about class and race that go nowhere. Below I try to clear up these debates with a more complete picture of race, class, and wealth in America.

What States Can Do to Reduce Poverty And Inequality Through Tax Policy

States have an opportunity to act to close the loopholes that hide and protect the wealth of the top 1%, remedy the impact of the new federal tax law that lowers taxes on the wealthy, and make critical investments in infrastructure, energy systems, and programs that create broader opportunity and shared prosperity. Concentrations of wealth are distorting our economy and undermining our democracy and civic health. State administrations and state legislatures can act to close the loopholes, put a brake on economic inequality and concentrations of wealth, and generate significant revenue.

What States Can Do To Reduce Poverty And Inequality Through Tax Policy

States have an opportunity to act to close the loopholes that hide and protect the wealth of the top 1%, remedy the impact of the new federal tax law that lowers taxes on the wealthy, and make critical investments in infrastructure, energy systems, and programs that create broader opportunity and shared prosperity.  Concentrations of wealth are distorting our economy and undermining our democracy and civic health. State administrations and state legislatures can act to close the loopholes, put a brake on economic inequality and concentrations of wealth, and generate significant revenue.

How The Age Of Billionaires Ends

Serious proposals are on the table to address the deepening divide between the uber-rich and the rest of us. Every month or so there’s a stunning new headline statistic about just how stark our economic divide has become. Understanding that this divide exists is a good start. Appreciating that a deeply unfair and unequal economy is problematic is even better. Actually doing something about it — that’s the best. As 2020 presidential hopefuls start trying to prove their progressive bona fides, serious policies to take on economic inequality are at the forefront.

Tackling The Twin Challenges Of Climate Change And Inequality

We need the Davos elite to change the rules of the global economy to benefit people and the planet alike. As the elite descends on Davos for this year's World Economic Forum, the world faces a twin crisis of rising inequality and climate disruption. Already this year Thailand has seen its worst storm in 30 years rip through coastal areas. In the Alps, just east of Davos, extreme weather is causing snow chaos. Meanwhile, the world's richest one percent took home 82 percent of all new wealth last year and, according to the World Bank, almost half of all people worldwide are one medical bill or crop failure away from destitution. Inequality continues to rise as the world warms.

Davos: Oxfam Reports The Gap Between Rich And Poor Grows, Fuels Global Anger

NAIROBI, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Tax systems that put a high burden on the poor mean public services are underfunded, stretching the gap between rich and poor and fuelling global public anger, Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, said on Monday. The Nairobi-headquarted charity said in a report that a new billionaire was created every two days last year, just as the poorest half of the world's population saw their wealth decline by 11 percent. The report, released on Monday as political and business leaders gather for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, said governments are increasingly underfunding public services and failing to clamp down on tax dodging.

Dreams Deferred: How Enriching The 1% Widens The Racial Wealth Divide

January 15, 2019, the release date of this report, would have been the 90th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King envisioned a future in which deep racial inequalities were eradicated and he worked tirelessly towards that mission. His tragic assassination occurred while he was organizing the Poor Peoples Campaign, his last great effort to ensure economic justice as a cornerstone of civil rights. In light of Dr. King’s pursuit of economic justice, this report highlights how historic racial wealth disparities have been perpetuated and increased by the trend towards extreme inequality in the United States. It also puts the racial wealth divide in the context of overall wealth inequality trends.
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