Tag: income inequality
Robert Reich: Should We Abolish Billionaires?
Krugman shuts down conservative complaining his taxes are too high with a few facts about liberal states subsidizing Trump states
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman pointed out that blue states massively subsidize red states economically.
Krugman noted a recent piece by New York Times columnist Brett Stephens where he bashed Democrats.
“A party that puts more of its faith, and invests most of its efforts, in them instead of us,” Stephens wrote. “They speak Spanish. We don’t. They are not U.S. citizens or legal residents. We are. They broke the rules to get into this country. We didn’t. They pay few or no taxes. We already pay most of those taxes.”
View the complete June 30 article by Bob Brigham of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.
Robert Reich: Here’s why we need to break up Big Tech
The combined wealth of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sergey Brin, and Larry Page is larger than the combined wealth of the bottom half of the American population.
They are the leaders of a second Gilded Age – ushered in by semiconductors, software and the internet – which has spawned a handful of hi-tech behemoths and crushed competition.
View the complete June 25 article by Robert Reich on the AlterNet website here.
Robert Reich: Socialism of the Rich, Capitalism for the Rest
Why does everybody suddenly hate billionaires? Because they’ve made it easy.
When did “billionaire” become a dirty word?
Maybe it was when former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz dismissed Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s proposal for higher taxes on fortunes of $50 million or higher as “ridiculous.”
Or when an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, laughed out loud at the suggestion that the super-rich should contribute more.
View the complete March 13 article by Roxanne Roberts on The Washington Post website here.
Here’s How Much America’s Rising Income Inequality Is Costing Social Security
Just a few weeks into the 116th Congress, Democrats’ takeover of the House of Representatives has already exposed the huge gulf between what American voters want and what the previous House leadership and the Trump administration have thrust upon them in recent years. Congressional Democrats’ bold agenda—such as higher taxes on the rich, universal health care, and expanding Social Security—has strong support not just among progressives but also across party lines. This popularity is a direct rebuke to Trump’s and his congressional colleagues’ massive 2017 tax giveaway to the wealthy and corporations; Trump’s ongoing efforts to sabotage the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Medicaid; and Trump’s and congressional Republicans’ continued efforts to cut Social Security.
Perhaps nowhere is the gulf between voters’ wishes and the policies Trump and his colleagues in Congress are pursuing greater than when it comes to Social Security—a program that voters overwhelmingly want to see expanded rather than cut. A 2017 Pew Research Center poll found that 95 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of Republicans preferred to maintain or expand Social Security. Yet, despite promising not to cut Social Security on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2019 budget would have slashed $72 billion from the program—cruelly targeting people with disabilities—over the coming decade. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) didn’t even wait until the ink was dry on their $2 trillion tax giveaway to begin insisting that everyday Americans face cuts to Social Security to pay for their deficit-busting tax bill. Continue reading “Here’s How Much America’s Rising Income Inequality Is Costing Social Security”
Trump’s Economic Policies Only Benefit Those At The Top
Trump may try to tout his economic policies, but the reality is that they have only benefited those at the top. Trump’s tax law led to the national debt surpassing $22 trillion for the first time in history, and did nothing to benefit workers.
The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time in history, in part because of Trump’s tax law, and could jeopardize our economic security.
USA Today: “The national debt surpassed $22 trillion for the first time on Tuesday, a milestone that experts warned is further proof the country is on an unsustainable financial path that could jeopardize the economic security of every American.”
Axios: “That figure has climbed at a faster pace following the enactment of President Trump’s tax cut bill in December 2017.”
Trump promised that his tax law would raise wages. Instead, after touting one-time bonuses, corporations continue to buy back billions in stock.
NBC News: “Corporations are using savings from the 2017 tax law to continue to buy back billions in stock after trumpeting employee bonuses and benefits.”
NBC News: “For many of those same companies, a tiny fraction of the total number of U.S. businesses, executives haven’t yet announced another round of bonuses or wage increases with the same fanfare — even though the tax law continues to mean billions for their bottom lines. … Most American businesses that announced bonuses and wage increases seem to be more like Emerson, which has ‘no plans to make an additional 401(k) contribution this year,’ a company spokeswoman said. That’s what has made the promise of higher compensation so far elusive.”
A record 7 million Americans are 90 days or more behind on their auto loan payments, which economists warn is a red flag.
Washington Post: “A record 7 million Americans are 90 days or more behind on their auto loan payments, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported Tuesday, even more than during the wake of the financial crisis. Economists warn that this is a red flag.”
The Federal Reserve chair warned that income inequality was the biggest challenge in the next 10 years as income growth for working-class Americans “has really decreased.”
Washington Post: “Powell, who was appointed by President Trump but has been a frequent target of Trump’s ire, said he was concerned that income growth for middle- and working-class Americans ‘has really decreased,’ while ‘growth at the top has been very strong.’ Powell pointed out that the United States used to be a global leader in mobility — the ability of people born into poverty to move up to the middle class or even the wealthiest echelons of society. But that is no longer true.”
Trump’s Agenda: CEO Pay Jumped To $19 Million And Real Wages For Workers Declined
Under Trump’s agenda, the gap between CEO and workers’ pay has increased to its highest point in about a decade. Average CEO compensation skyrocketed to $19 million last year, and thanks to Trump’s corporate tax breaks, CEOs and wealthy shareholders collected billions more in profits. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released numbers showing real wages for workers have declined over the past year.
Last year, the average annual compensation for CEOs jumped to $19 million. The pay gap between CEOs and workers became the largest it’s been in a decade.
Washington Post: “Top executives of America’s biggest companies saw their average annual pay surge to $18.9 million in 2017, according to a report released Thursday, fueling concerns about the gulf between the nation’s richest and everyone else. The dramatic 18 percent jump in chief executive pay came as wages for American workers remained essentially flat, pushing the gap between executive compensation and employee pay to its highest point in about a decade.” Continue reading “Trump’s Agenda: CEO Pay Jumped To $19 Million And Real Wages For Workers Declined”
The key takeaways from that depressing study about women being less likely to get raises than men
The following article by Kaitlin Menza was posted on the Mic.com website July 11, 2018:
When discussing the wage gap, it’s tempting to try to explain away the dramatic discrepancy. Some common theories: It’s because women take lower-paying jobs. It’s because all women are nurses or teachers (or something). It’s because women don’t negotiate well. It’s because women don’t ask for more money.
None of these are particularly good arguments against the wage gap, but we now have further proof that the last point simply isn’t true. New research published in May in the journal Industrial Relations found that actually, women do ask for raises at the same rate as men. They just aren’t granted the raises as often as men are.
Examining a dataset of 4,600 people in 800 workplaces from a nationwide workplace survey in Australia, researchers found that when they petition for a raise, men obtain it 20% of the time, while women only get it 15% of the time. Much discussion has been dedicated to why women don’t ask, or the words they usewhen they ask — the seminal 2003 book on the subject is literally called Women Don’t Ask. To understand how that theory has finally been toppled, Mic spoke to two of the researchers, Amanda Goodall, a senior lecturer at the Cass Business School at University of London, and Benjamin Artz, an associate professor at the Oshkosh College of Business at University of Wisconsin. Here are some takeaways.