Taxes

Return Of The Robber Barons: Trump’s Distorted View Of US Tariff History

April 15, 2025 Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Educate! China, Donald Trump, History, Neoliberalism, Tariffs, Taxes

Donald Trump’s tariff policy has thrown markets into turmoil among his allies and enemies alike. This anarchy reflects the fact that his major aim was not really tariff policy, but simply to cut income taxes on the wealthy, by replacing them with tariffs as the main source of government revenue. Extracting economic concessions from other countries is part of his justification for this tax shift as offering a nationalistic benefit for the United States. His cover story, and perhaps even his belief, is that tariffs by themselves can revive American industry. But he has no plans to deal with the problems that caused America’s deindustrialization in the first place.

Fake ‘Populism’: Trump’s Billionaire Administration Serves The Rich

March 30, 2025 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report BlackRock, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Larry Fink, Silicon Valley, Tariffs, Taxes

When Donald Trump campaigned to be US president in 2024, he promised he would help working-class Americans. He even did a photo op at a McDonald’s, pretending to be a fast food worker. When he returned to the White House, however, Trump made it clear that his policies would be serving a small handful of billionaire oligarchs, not the majority of the country. Trump appointed 13 billionaires as top officials in his administration. As Public Citizen reported, this means that the Trump administration represents not just the 1% richest Americans, but the 0.0001%.

An Inequality Tale Of Two Capital Cities

March 11, 2025 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Educate! Billionaires, Class Struggle, Taxes, wealth inequality

Nine of the world’s ten wealthiest billionaires now call the United States home. The remaining one? He lives in France. And that one — Bernard Arnault, the 76-year-old who owns just about half the world’s largest maker of luxury goods — is now feeling some heat. What has Arnault and his fellow French deep pockets beginning to sweat? Lawmakers in France’s National Assembly have just given a green light to the world’s first significant tax on billionaire wealth. “The tax impunity of billionaires,” the measure’s prime sponsor, the Ecologist Party’s Eva Sas, exulted last month, “is over.”

Activists Win Excessive Compensation Tax To Fund Social Housing

February 23, 2025 John Burbank, Inequality.org. Create! Amazon, Housing, Microsoft, Seattle, Social Housing, Taxes, Victory

Seattle voters have just beaten the oligarchs, Amazon, Microsoft, the local Chamber of Commerce, the real estate industry, the coup makers and backers, the Muskites, and the Trumpiphiles. How? Through a ballot measure, the people in Seattle have just approved a tax on excessive executive compensation to fund affordable housing. The vote wasn’t even close. The proposal, Proposition 1A, won by a 26-point margin. The advocacy group House Our Neighbors led the ballot campaign. Their leaders and leafletters and canvassers prevailed over a conservative and obstructing city council, a mayor focused on toadying to Seattle-based Amazon, a half-million-dollar opposition campaign, and the overlords of the Trump/Musk dictatorship.

A New Plan To Create A World Without Elon Musks

February 17, 2025 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! Billionaires, Class Struggle, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Taxes

Americans these days don’t much like billionaires. Our ultra-rich, Americans overwhelmingly believe, aren’t paying enough in taxes. Polling earlier this month found that nearly three-quarters of the nation’s likeliest voters — 74 percent — feel billionaires are paying “too little’ at tax time. Just how concerned about billion-dollar fortunes have Americans become? Nearly half of us overall, Harris polling found last summer, would like to see a limit on “wealth accumulation.” Among Gen Z’ers, that support for limits on billionaire fortunes runs all the way up to 65 percent.

World’s Richest Billionaires At Center Of Trump’s Inauguration

January 21, 2025 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Amazon, Apple, Billionaires, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Facebook, Google, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta, Sundar Pichai, Taxes, Tim Cook

Donald Trump has returned for his second term as US president. He invited some of the world’s most powerful billionaire oligarchs to his inauguration in Washington. Sitting next to Trump’s cabinet nominees, at the center of his inauguration, were the three richest people on Earth: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla; Jeff Bezos, the founder and executive chairman of Amazon; and Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Together, these three men have nearly $900 billion in wealth. They could be seen on video chatting alongside Sundar Pichai, who is the billionaire CEO of Google and its parent company Alphabet.

Ten Inequality Victories In 2024

December 19, 2024 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Educate! Albertsons, Amazon, Finance and the Economy, Health Care, Krogers, Labor Movement, Paid Sick Leave, Taxes, Turbotax, Unions, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted overwhelmingly in April to join the United Auto Workers, a landmark win for labor organizing in the South. The region has suffered deeply because of its low-road, anti-union economic model. Seven out of ten states with the highest levels of poverty are in the South, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Another UAW election, at a Mercedes-Benz facility in Vance, Alabama, where management was more aggressively anti-union, went the other way in May. But the union has vowed to continue organizing in the region.

Rich-People-Friendly Think Tank Confirms Richest Pay Under One Percent In Annual Taxes

December 2, 2024 Bob Lord, Inequality.org. Educate! Taxes, Think Tanks, wealth inequality, Wealth Tax

The Washington, D.C.-based Tax Foundation has long functioned as an apologist for America’s deepest pockets. Analysts at the Foundation have spent years assuring us that our wealthiest are paying far more than their fair tax share — in the face of a reality that has our richest aggressively growing their share of the wealth all Americans are creating. This past August, the Biden administration’s Treasury Department commissioned a new study that documented just how little of their wealth America’s richest are actually paying in taxes. Last month, the Tax Foundation responded with a predictable critique.

The Corporate Campaign To Repeal The New York Stock Transfer Tax Rebate

September 26, 2024 Russell Mokhiber, Corporate Crime Reporter. Organize! History, New York (NY), Stocks, Taxes, Unions, Wall Street, Worker Rights and Jobs

Ray Rogers is a veteran of corporate campaigns – pressuring corporations to recognize unions and stop blocking progressive legislation. Unions have hired his organization Corporate Campaign in battles against Farah Slacks, J.P. Stevens & Co., Hormel, International Paper, American Airlines, Inc., Campbell Soup Co. and Coca-Cola. Now Rogers has launched a campaign to repeal the stock transfer tax rebate.

The World’s Richest Just Got Extraordinarily More Wealthy

July 13, 2024 Max B. Sawicky, In These Times. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Taxes, wealth inequality

In every measurement of economic inequality, personal wealth is found to be more unequal than income. Naturally, this state of affairs invites attention and criticism, along with demands for a reduction of that inequality by various means, including to reduce the stubborn racial wealth gap. The latest World Wealth Report for 2024, published last month by The Capgemini Research Institute, brings this level of inequality into stark relief. We learn from the report that very high net-worth individuals (“HNWI,” defined as those with at least $1 million of investable assets) have been doing quite well, which is probably not a surprise.

A Practical Prescription For Taxing Our World’s Richest

June 29, 2024 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Tax the rich, Taxes, wealth inequality

Ever wonder why the divide between the world’s richest and everybody else keeps getting wider? Gabriel Zucman, one of the world’s finest young economists, has just produced a report that riffs on one key reason: Our super rich pay next to nothing in taxes. Just how close to nothing? This close: Over the past four decades, the world’s “ultra-high-net-worth individuals” have seen their fortunes increase, after taking inflation into account, an average 7.5 percent per year. How much annually have these rich paid in taxes? They’ve been paying, Zucman calculates, an effective tax rate “equivalent to 0.3% of their wealth.”

IMF-Driven Policies Spark Deadly Protests In Kenya

June 27, 2024 Robert Inlakesh, MintPress News. Resist! Debt, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kenya, Mass Action, State Violence, Taxes

At least 23 Kenyan protesters were killed on Tuesday after hundreds stormed the nation’s parliament in response to a proposed tax-hike bill, which threatens to deepen the country’s cost of living crisis. The IMF’s pressure on Nairobi to balance its budget is central to the issue. Videos of bodies strewn across the concrete and protesters storming the parliament went viral on social media. This follows protests the previous week that brought the nation to a standstill. President William Ruto, elected to address the cost of living crisis, is now seen attempting to combat dissent with force, having failed to improve conditions.

Kenya Protests: Gen Z Shows The Power Of Digital Activism

June 25, 2024 Job Mwaura, The Conversation. Organize! Digital Activism, Kenya, Mass Action, Media, Social Media, Taxes, Youth Activism

This is a powerful moment for digital activism. The protests have seen significant participation from young Kenyans who are using digital media to organise and voice their opposition. A great number of those driving the protests are Generation Z (often referred to as Gen Z) – individuals born roughly between the late 1990s and early 2010s and characterised by digital prowess and social consciousness. They have created this organic, grassroots movement which has used platforms, like social media, to mobilise and coordinate efforts quickly. Through my work I’ve documented how essential digital media has been in political participation in Kenya in the past decade.

For The Rich, One Nation Isn’t Rolling Out The Red Carpet

June 10, 2024 Sam Pizzigati, Inequality.org. Create! Norway, Taxes, wealth inequality, Wealth Tax

So you think the rich have life easy, do you? Just try telling that to the deep pockets who’ve spent tens of millions buying condos at 432 Park Avenue, the 11-year-old Manhattan luxury tower that once rated as our hemisphere’s tallest residence. Condo owners in the tower have had to put up with “faulty elevators, leaky plumbing, and noise issues.” They’re now suing the building’s operator. Or consider the plight of those fabulously wealthy souls who’ve had to pay millions to move their mansions off the sandy coast of Nantucket, the one-time hippie refuge that’s become a summer “holiday hot spot for billionaires.” The problem?

Tackling California’s Budget Crisis: Taxes, Cuts, Or Form A Public Bank?

May 7, 2024 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Strategize! California, Finance and the Economy, Public Banks, Taxes

In 2022, the state of California celebrated a record budget surplus of $97.5 billion. Two years later, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office, this surplus has plummeted to a record budget deficit of $73 billion. Balancing the budget will be challenging. Unlike the federal government, the state cannot just drive up debt and roll it over year after year. The California Balanced Budget Act, passed in 2004, requires the state legislature to pass a balanced budget every year. The usual solutions are to cut programs or raise taxes, but both approaches are facing an uphill battle. Raising taxes would require a two-thirds vote of the legislature, which would be very challenging, and worthy public programs are in danger of getting axed, including homelessness prevention and funding for low-income housing.

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