Tag: income inequality

The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You

New York Times logoAlmost a decade ago, Warren Buffett made a claim that would become famous. He said that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary, thanks to the many loopholes and deductions that benefit the wealthy.

His claim sparked a debate about the fairness of the tax system. In the end, the expert consensus was that, whatever Buffett’s specific situation, most wealthy Americans did not actually pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. “Is it the norm?” the fact-checking outfit Politifact asked. “No.”

Time for an update: It’s the norm now.

For the first time on record, the 400 wealthiest Americans last year paid a lower total tax rate — spanning federal, state and local taxes — than any other income group, according to newly released data.

View the complete October 6 commentary by David Leonhardt on The New York Times website here.

Most Americans think of themselves as middle class. For many, the line between a stable life and a fragile one is thinning.

New York Times logoExamine the typical American family’s monthly budget, line by line, and a larger story emerges about how the middle class has evolved.

What it means to be middle class hasn’t changed much — there’s a steady job, the ability to comfortably raise a family if you choose to, a home to call your own, an annual vacation. But what it takes to achieve all that has become more challenging.

The costs of housing, health care and education are consuming ever larger shares of household budgets, and have risen faster than incomes. Today’s middle-class families are working longer, managing new kinds of stress and shouldering greater financial risks than previous generations did. They’re also making different kinds of tradeoffs.

View the complete October 3 article by Tara Siegel Bernard and Karl Russell on The New York Times website here.

To G.M. Workers, U.A.W. Strike Is Chance for Overdue Reward

New York Times logoDETROIT — A decade ago, when General Motors was on the brink of collapse and was ushered into bankruptcy by the federal government, the company’s unionized workers bore a significant portion of the pain to bring the automaker back to financial health.

The United Auto Workers agreed to allow General Motors to hire substantial numbers of new workers at roughly half the hourly wage of those already on the payroll and with reduced retirement benefits. In the following years, G.M. was also able to bring in temporary workers with even slimmer wage-and-benefit packages and little job security.

The bitter medicine helped reinvigorate the automaker, and for the last several years it has been reaping record profits. Along the way, it has pared its United States payrolls, closed several plants and moved more work to Mexico.

View the complete September 16 article by Neal E. Boudette on The New York Times website here.

More Americans go without health coverage despite strong economy, Census Bureau finds

Washington Post logoIncomes are rising and poverty is falling, but the gap between the rich and poor has grown

The proportion of Americans without health insurance grew significantly last year for the first time this decade, even as the economy’s strength pushed down the poverty level to its lowest point since 2001, according to federal data released Tuesday.

The finding that 27.5 million U.S. residents lacked coverage in 2018, based on a large U.S. Census Bureau survey, reverses the trend that began when the Affordable Care Act expanded opportunities for poor and some middle-income people to get insurance.

Taken together, the census numbers paint a portrait of an economy pulled in different directions, with the falling poverty rate coinciding with high inequality and the growing cadre of people at financial risk because they do not have health coverage.

View the complete September 10 article by Amy Goldstein and Heather Long on The Washington Post website here.

CEO pay up 940.3% over last four decades

Over the same time period, the pay of an average worker has increased 11.9%.

CEO pay in the last four decades has grown 940.3% while the pay of an average worker increased 11.9% over the same time period.

That is what the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on the low- and middle-income Americans, found in a study released last week.

The study’s authors tracked CEO pay beginning in 1978. They found compensation took off in the 1990s, peaked in 2000 and has fluctuated since, most notably around the burst of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s and around the recession of 2008 and 2009.

View the complete August 18 article by Patrick Kennedy on The Star Tribune website here.

Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity

Center for American Progress logoAuthors’ note: CAP uses “Black” and “African American” interchangeably throughout many of our products. We chose to capitalize “Black” in order to reflect that we are discussing a group of people and to be consistent with the capitalization of “African American.” 

Introduction and summary

The U.S. economy was built on the exploitation and occupational segregation of people of color. While many government policies and institutional practices helped create this system, the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and the New Deal—as well as the limited funding and scope of anti-discrimination agencies—are some of the biggest contributors to inequality in America. Together, these policy decisions concentrated workers of color in chronically undervalued occupations, institutionalized racial disparities in wages and benefits, and perpetuated employment discrimination. As a result, stark and persistent racial disparities exist in jobs, wages, benefits, and almost every other measure of economic well-being.

This report examines how government-sanctioned occupational segregation, exploitation, and neglect exacerbated racial inequality in the United States. Eliminating current disparities among Americans will require intentional public policy efforts to dismantle systematic inequality, combat discrimination in the workplace, and expand access to opportunity for all Americans.

Slavery and Jim Crow concentrated workers of color in chronically undervalued occupations

For centuries, Black people were enslaved and forced to work in brutal conditions as agricultural, domestic, and service workers. By some estimates, slaveholders extracted more than $14 trillion worth of labor, in today’s dollars, from their captives.1 Enslaved people plowed and sowed fields; harvested and packaged crops; and raised, milked, and butchered livestock.2 They cooked and served food, cleaned houses, weaved and mended clothing, and provided child care services.3 They cut hair, carried luggage, and drove wagons, carts, and carriages.4 When enslaved Black people attempted to flee, federal laws such as the 1793 and 1850 Fugitive Slave Acts helped ensure their recapture by fining officials who did not arrest alleged runaways and imprisoning anyone who aided in their escape.5 If captured, enslaved people could be tortured, mutilated, and even killed without legal repercussions.6

View the complete August 7 article by Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell and Abril Castro on the Center for American Progress website here.

 

The Super-Wealthy Have Outsize Influence in Politics. Here’s How We Can Change That

In 2018, the 10 largest individual donors funneled more than $436 million to Super PACs in the most expensive midterm elections ever. Big money in politics has overwhelmed the political process, granting wealthy special interests more power now than at any time in recent American history. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC and other court decisions left Congress and the states constitutionally prohibited from putting limits on raising and spending money in elections, unleashing a flood of corporate dollars in U.S. elections and opening the door for the super-rich to fuel their own interests in our government at the expense of ordinary Americans. While this trend has been decades in the making, these decisions further dismantled our campaign finance laws.

This summer, I joined with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and other Senate Democrats to introduce the Democracy for All Amendment, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United v. FECand other disastrous court decisions. The amendment would give Congress and the states the power “to regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections” as well to draw a distinction “between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law.” Continue reading “The Super-Wealthy Have Outsize Influence in Politics. Here’s How We Can Change That”

Corporate Governance and Workers

Center for American Progress logoWhy Today’s Economy Fails Working Families—and What To Do About It

The economic headlines are chock full of soaring corporate profits, booming CEO pay, and record share buybacks.1 Yet, America’s working families and communities are struggling to get by since wages and family wealth have barely budged after decades of stagnation. This is a dangerous situation, as the deep imbalances in how the U.S. economy works—and whom it fails to work well for—increasingly expose America to social and political division.

This issue brief explores why companies share their benefits overwhelmingly with those at the top, leaving little for working families. It discusses why this is the case and what can be done to shift corporate accountability and governance so that economic growth is genuine, lasting, and more equitably shared with working families.

A shift in corporate governance

The boards and managers running companies, especially public companies, respond to the stakeholders who have the power to make demands of them.2 Stakeholders include the consumers who buy their products and services; workers and suppliers who produce them; investors who provide capital and other know-how; and even communities who provide a clean, safe environment and educated workers.3 However, boards and managers have been implementing corporate governance strategies that prioritize Wall Street and corporate executives, over the rest of the stakeholders. Why are America’s companies so responsive to some stakeholders, to the detriment of others?

View the complete August 14 article by Andy Green, Christian E. Weller and Malkie Wall on the Center for American Progress website here.