My name is John Driscoll. I am a member of the Patriotic Millionaires and a Senior Advisor to Walgreens Boots Alliance and the EQT Group. Previously, I was the CEO of CareCentrix, Group President for New Markets at Medco, and Executive Vice President at Walker Digital. I have built my career helping develop and lead high growth companies in health care and technology. We normally … Continue reading The Business Case for Paying the People
For what feels like forever, the Patriotic Millionaires have been talking about the need to tax unrealized capital gains. We’ve been talking about the need to uplift workers affected by the job loss and union decline brought on by deindustrialization. And last, but certainly not least, we’ve been talking about the looming expiration of many provisions of the 2017 GOP Tax Cuts and Jobs Act … Continue reading The New York Times is Validating What We’ve Been Saying
There is an abundance of high-quality podcasts out there. Few among us have time to listen even to just a fraction of them. Still, one upcoming podcast series bears recommendation: Master Plan: The True Crime of Stolen Democracy, from The Lever. The Lever has unearthed never-before-reported documents proving this 50-year plot was a coordinated effort by wealthy individuals. Over the course of 10 episodes, the series follows the historic … Continue reading Master Plan: A Podcast You Won’t Want to Miss
The Patriotic Millionaires are everywhere these days. We’re on the radio. We’re in the Midwest. We’re in the South. We’re in Washington, D.C. and at the United Nations. And now, we’re somewhere new: the big screen! The Deciders, a documentary about our Great Economy Project, was released on Apple TV TODAY! The Deciders tells the story of what happens when working-class residents in a small, Southern town get a strange … Continue reading Watch ‘The Deciders’ on Apple TV
If lawmakers take their oath to uphold and protect the law seriously, they must unconditionally support properly funding the IRS. Otherwise, they are, by definition, criminal apologists – or, in the case of the current GOP presidential nominee, criminals themselves. As part of their Convention in Chicago this week, the Democratic Party released their official party platform. Yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris officially accepted the Democratic Party’s 2024 … Continue reading Law and Order Means Supporting the IRS
Tech broligarchs’ weird adoration of Donald Trump is problematic for a number of reasons, but their fears about having taxes levied on their unrealized capital gains may explain why they’re so willing to abandon the basic tenets of democracy to support their fellow billionaire. In June, we told you about a coterie of billionaires who, despite publicly disavowing Trump after the January 6th Capitol attack, had come … Continue reading Broligarchs Are Wrong About Unrealized Gains
Turns out, the biggest pro-worker piece of Donald Trump’s proposed economic agenda isn’t very pro-worker after all. On June 9, at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Trump pledged to eliminate taxes on tipped income if he wins the White House again. It was a fitting pitch for the location, given that Nevada, a swing state in the upcoming election, has the highest concentration of tipped workers in the US. Since … Continue reading No Tax On Tips Isn’t Very Pro-Worker
The past month will go down as one of the most dramatic four-week periods in American history. This past Sunday, after several weeks of speculation, President Biden announced that he would step out of the 2024 presidential race. Shortly after the news broke, our Chair, Morris Pearl, released a statement on behalf of our organization, lauding Biden for his “unrivaled act of selfless patriotism.” You can read … Continue reading What You Need to Know About Kamala Harris’ Record on Taxes
I have been a subscriber to and reader of The Economist for almost 20 years. I have appreciated their balanced and intelligent coverage of world events, with a perspective of classical economic liberalism (free markets, free trade, deregulation, and globalism). Yet I find myself in the unusual position of taking issue with two of their recent articles: “How to tax billionaires – and how not … Continue reading The Economist is Wrong About Unrealized Capital Gains
Republicans have done a lot of damage to the American tax code over the years by giving massive and harmful cuts to the wealthy and corporations. But if they win back the White House and get the chance to implement Project 2025, that damage will be supercharged to another level. We told you about Project 2025 on July 4th, and it’s since received a great deal … Continue reading Project 2025 Will Be a Tax Nightmare
We’ve known for a while that next to none of the spoils from the 2017 Trump tax bill’s infamous corporate tax cut trickled down to workers. But now, thanks to recent reporting from some of our allies, we’re more certain than ever that the cut’s benefits instead gushed up to wealthy shareholders like many of us. One of the major provisions of the 2017 Tax … Continue reading Corporate Tax Cuts Help No One But The Wealthy
Happy 4th of July! We hope that you and those close to you can spend time today celebrating America’s 248th birthday and everything that makes our country so special. We here at the Patriotic Millionaires like to use Independence Day to remind ourselves what patriotism means and why we go about calling ourselves “patriotic” in the first place. And judging by recent events at the Supreme Court, … Continue reading Happy 4th of July!
The “Memphis Seven” are seven people who worked at a Starbucks cafe in Memphis, Tennessee. For some time, they had been organizing fellow Starbucks workers in their state, telling them that joining a union could improve their lives. In the end, management terminated the Memphis Seven’s employment over claims that they allowed someone to photograph their Starbucks location. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) investigated the … Continue reading Thoughts on the Supreme Court’s Starbucks ruling
We’ve known for a while now that our desire for lawmakers around the world to raise taxes on wealthy people like us isn’t fringe. But now, we officially have the numbers to back it up – and a blueprint for how international leaders can institute minimum standards for taxing the global rich. The last time we discussed our international work was back in April. A lot has … Continue reading We Need A Coordinated Minimum Tax on Billionaires
Happy Juneteenth! Today marks the third year that the United States has celebrated Juneteenth – which commemorates the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, Texas at the end of the Civil War – as an official federal holiday. Juneteenth is an opportunity to appreciate the progress we’ve made on the path toward racial justice over the last 159 years. In doing so, we see plainly … Continue reading Happy Juneteenth!
With summer finally here and some great blockbusters gracing your local cinemas, it seemed like the perfect time to let our hair down and do a Closer Look on something fun. While we typically focus on real-life billionaires and oligarchs, the Patriotic Millionaires team has a bone to pick with several fictional ones, too. There are a plethora of villains across film, TV, and literature wielding … Continue reading Seven Movie Oligarchs We Love to Hate
We’ve always wondered how much billionaires would be willing to pay for American democracy, and now we have the answer: $4.6 trillion. Last Thursday, Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted in a criminal trial after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to a porn star. It’s too early to tell what kind of impact … Continue reading What is Democracy Worth to Billionaires?
It’s the biggest political head-scratcher of the season: President Biden has gotten a lot of questions right on traditional economic tests, but voters refuse to give him passing marks. By all conventional measures, the economy under Biden has thrived. Since Biden took office, 15 million jobs have been created. Unemployment has been below 4% for two and a half years – the longest stretch in over fifty years. Inflation … Continue reading What’s behind America’s “vibecession”?
Family businesses – from restaurants to hardware stores to plumbing companies to hair salons – make up the beating heart of America. But when the “family business” is wielding unfathomable wealth to influence our democracy, it becomes a problem. Last week, our allies at Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) published a report, “The Billionaire Family Business,” which revealed the enormous sums that billionaire families have … Continue reading Political Power Cannot be a Family Heirloom
Last week, our Closer Look explained how North Carolina found its way into the center of the political universe. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are campaigning hard in the state as its economy rapidly evolves with uneven results, huge demographic shifts are underway, and organized labor attempts to upend the South’s broken economic system. As we said, the Tar Heel state has become something of … Continue reading All Roads Lead to Raleigh, Part II