wealth inequality

Transcending The ‘Imperial Mode Of Living’

June 26, 2022 James Wilt, Canadian Dimension. Create! Capitalism, climate crisis, Imperialism, wealth inequality

In a giant overcorrection from the anti-consumerism era of No Logo and Adbusters, much of the “climate left” in the Global North now tends to dismiss any critique of resource-intensive consumption—driving and flying, factory farmed meat, smartphones—as reactionary, if not even “Thatcherite” or “Malthusian.” Focusing on consumption, the argument goes, distracts from immense capitalist power and profits, blaming the increasingly immiserated working class for conditions that we have no control over. This conclusion has been widely memeified: think of “no ethical consumption under capitalism,” the “Mister Gotcha” comic, or the (misleading) claim that a mere 100 corporations are “responsible” for 71 percent of emissions.

Let Them Eat (Jubilee) Cake

June 5, 2022 Laura Clancy, Red Pepper. Educate! Britain, Democracy, Monarchy, wealth inequality

When Marie Antoinette discovered her subjects were facing a bread shortage and starvation in around 1789, due to multiple poor crop harvests and rodent infestations, she apparently exclaimed ‘let them eat cake!’ Her hereditary privilege meant she had no grasp of the severity of their suffering, or the fact that cake was much more expensive than bread to produce. Inequality during this period, immediately before the French revolution, was very high. Historians have estimated that around 90 per cent of working-class families lived at or below subsistence level, meaning they could only afford bare necessities. Marie Antoinette’s comment made her a symbol of hatred, which fueled the French revolution and the fall of the monarchy.

The Case For Taxing The Rich Gets An Unexpected Boost

June 1, 2022 Sam Pizzigati, Counter Punch. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Taxes, wealth inequality, Wealth Tax

We’ve had quite a show up in the Alps this week, the first in-person gathering of the world’s mega rich since Covid hit. The occasion? The annual World Economic Forum at the Swiss resort of Davos, an ever-so-sober gathering that has an assortment of global deep thinkers sharing their wisdom with deep pockets ever eager for policy ideas that don’t involve sharing their wealth. Also on hand, in person and remotely: a collection of the world’s most stalwart egalitarians, advocates ranging from activists with the Patriotic Millionaires to analysts at the anti-poverty powerhouse Oxfam. These analysts, on the eve of Davos, released gripping new data on how billionaires in food and energy have been swelling their fortunes — at consumer expense.

Power, Wages, And Inequality

May 15, 2022 Arthur MacEwan, Dollars And Sense. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Power, wealth inequality, Worker Rights and Jobs

On March 7, 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a report titled, “The State of Labor Market Competition.” It is not what one might expect from the U.S. government. It is apparent that something is unusual when the first chapter is “Theories of Labor Market Power,” and the word “power” appears 15 times in the executive summary, 12 times in the introduction, and too many times to count in the body of the report. Power, after all, is generally absent from mainstream myths of how labor markets work. The basic message of the report is that: “...The American labor market is characterized by high levels of employer power.” And: ...A careful review of credible academic studies places the decrease in wages at roughly 20% relative to the level in a fully competitive market.

A Monetary Reset Where The Rich Don’t Own Everything

May 4, 2022 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. Create! Debt, Finance and the Economy, Inflation, wealth inequality

In ancient Mesopotamia, it was called a Jubilee. When debts at interest grew too high to be repaid, the slate was wiped clean. Debts were forgiven, the debtors’ prisons were opened, and the serfs returned to work their plots of land. This could be done because the king was the representative of the gods who were said to own the land, and thus was the creditor to whom the debts were owed. The same policy was advocated in the Book of Leviticus, though it is unclear to what extent this biblical Jubilee was implemented. That sort of across-the-board debt forgiveness can’t be done today because most of the creditors are private lenders. Banks, landlords and pension fund investors would go bankrupt if their contractual rights to repayment were simply wiped out.

Wall Street Bonuses Soar By 20%

March 24, 2022 Sarah Anderson, Inequality.org. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Wall Street, wealth inequality, Worker Rights and Jobs

Powerful Wall Street lobbyists have succeeded in blocking Section 956 of the Dodd-Frank legislation, which prohibits large financial institutions from awarding pay packages that encourage “inappropriate risks.” Regulators were supposed to implement this new rule within nine months of the law’s passage but have dragged their feet — despite widespread recognition that these bonuses encouraged the high-risk behaviors that led to the 2008 financial crisis, costing millions of Americans their homes and livelihoods. In contrast to the Wall Street lobbyists, advocates for the working poor have seen their efforts to raise the federal minimum wage and secure other important worker benefits stalled in Congress. Due to Washington inaction, millions of essential workers continue to earn poverty wages, while the reckless bonus culture is alive and well on Wall Street.

‘Reckoning’ With The Economic Marginalization Of Native Americans

March 11, 2022 Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, Counter Punch. Educate! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, Indigenous Peoples, wealth inequality

Over the last two years, there has been much discussion of a national “reckoning” on race. There can be no complete reckoning without strong analysis and substantive action to address the economic marginalization of Native Americans in 21st century America. Through years of intentional governmental policies that took away their lands and resources, American Indians have been separated from the wealth and assets that were rightfully theirs. Today, we see a consistent lack of information on Native Americans and their socioeconomic issues.

CEO-Worker Pay Resource Guide

February 13, 2022 Inequality.org. Organize! Class Struggle, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality, Worker Rights and Jobs

Since 2018, U.S. publicly held corporations have had to annually report the ratio between their CEO and median worker compensation. Corporate lobby groups and allied Republicans fought hard to repeal, delay, or water down this disclosure mandate, a measure initially enacted as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation. But institutional investors weighed in heavily to defend pay ratio disclosure, as did hundreds of thousands of individuals outraged about the extreme pay gaps at the vast majority of large U.S. corporations. The CEO-worker pay ratios the new disclosures have begun revealing are boosting momentum behind efforts to use tax, contracting, and subsidy policy to narrow our compensation divides.

Capitalist Bonanza: Share Buybacks Reached Record High In 2021

January 5, 2022 Otto Fors, Left Voice. Educate! Capitalism, COVID-19, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality

The coronavirus pandemic continued to wreak havoc in 2021, with the Omicron and Delta variants, supply chain disruptions, and inflation battering the global working class. In the United States, companies continued to put profits before worker well-being while the Biden administration refused to provide relief like continuing the child tax credit. Amid much bad news for workers last year emerged a key victor: wealthy shareholders. Share buybacks hit a record high last year. Companies in the S&P 500 — a market index which tracks the stock prices of 500 leading U.S. companies — repurchased shares worth over $245 billion in the third quarter alone. These exorbitant buybacks helped U.S. stock market indices reach record peaks: the S&P 500 broke 67 records in 2021 and increased its value by 25 percent.

The Year In Inequality

December 21, 2021 Sarah Anderson and Brian Wakamo, Inequality.org. Educate! Jobs, Pandemic, Taxes, wealth inequality

A year ago we had such high hopes. We expected the Covid vaccine rollout to bring a swift end to the pandemic, opening a window for pushing bold solutions to the long-standing economic, racial, and gender divides that had grown even wider under Covid. Where are we as 2021 comes to a close? These 10 charts highlight major inequality developments of the year, covering some steps back and some important steps forward. The combined wealth of the 745 U.S. billionaires surpassed $5 trillion in 2021, up 70 percent since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness analysis of Forbes data.

A Critique Of Obscene Wealth

December 19, 2021 Richard D. Wolff, Counterpunch. Educate! Capitalism, Finance and the Economy, wealth inequality

Wherever and whenever obscenely rich people existed, they always protected their wealth and the privileges that come with it from the majority of non-wealthy people working for them and around them. Emperors, kings, czars as well as masters of huge slave plantations, lords of big feudal manors, and major shareholders and top executives of capitalist megacorporations did so partly by the use of brute force, or through the exercise of power, and bribery. All of them also used ideological persuasion, but none more so than capitalists today. And while “the weapon of criticism can never replace the criticism of weapons,” according to Karl Marx, a critique of capitalism’s obscene wealth today and its ideological justifications is arguably much needed.

Wage Inequality Continued To Increase In 2020

December 16, 2021 Lawrence Mishel And Jori Kandra, Economic Policy Institute. Educate! Finance and the Economy, Wages, wealth inequality, Worker Rights

Newly available wage data from the Social Security Administration allow us to analyze wage trends for the top 1.0% and other very high earners as well as for the bottom 90% during 2020. The upward distribution of wages from the bottom 90% to the top 1.0% that was evident over the period from 1979 to 2019 was especially strong in the 2020 pandemic year, yielding historically high wage levels and shares of all wages for the top 1.0% and 0.1%. Correspondingly, the share of wages earned by the bottom 95% fell in 2020. Two features of the pandemic economy distorted wage patterns in 2020 and led to faster wage growth, especially at the top. One feature was that inflation grew at a subdued 1.2% rate, boosting the average real wage (but not affecting distribution).

How China Is Taking On Billionaires And Big Tech To Combat Inequality

December 5, 2021 Rania Khalek, BreakThrough News. Resistance Report China, Media, Socialism, wealth inequality

China is imposing harsh regulations on private education, big tech, and billionaires. The new Cold Warriors in the U.S. government and media call these moves authoritarian, leftward tyranny, and bad for business. But Chinese president Xi Jinping calls it part of a “common prosperity” agenda to create a more equitable society on the road to building socialism. To help understand the Chinese point of view, Rania Khalek was joined by Tings Chak, a writer and researcher with Dongsheng News and the Tricontinental Institute.

Anti-Imperialism You Can Try At Home

October 30, 2021 Mattea Kramer, Tom's Dispatch. Create! Anti-Imperialism, Illinois, Reparations, wealth inequality

Robin Rue Simmons had been very curious about the truth of American life as a young person. But it was only after she finished high school, left her native Evanston, Illinois, and returned as an adult — ready to buy a house in the historically Black neighborhood in which she grew up — that she delved deep into her city’s history and fully understood the policies that had kept Black residents poor while enriching their white neighbors. Of course, this isn’t the kind of history that’s taught in school, even if today’s students do sometimes learn unsavory truths about the American empire. Local history is different, perhaps because it can be especially uncomfortable to examine how that empire’s economic plunder shaped our present-day communities.

Black Families Passed Their Homes From One Generation To The Next

October 18, 2021 Sarah Sax, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Black America, Housing, Land Rights, wealth inequality

Margaret Alston doesn’t remember the night that Hurricane Matthew hit, but she remembers how afraid she was of the flooding that followed. The biggest hurricane to hit South Carolina since 1999, the storm caused massive inland flooding across large swaths of the south-east. In Bucksport, the small, unincorporated town where Alston grew up, the Wacamaw River overflowed, inundating the street Alston’s house is on and making it impassable. “The water was everywhere,” she says. “And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.” She found refuge at a nearby community center, before moving in temporarily with her sister in Conway, 14 miles away. Six years later, she is still in Conway, her house sits abandoned and in disrepair, and the funding allocated to Hurricane Matthew victims has dried up.

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