My name is Morris Pearl. I am the Chair of the Patriotic Millionaires and a former managing director at BlackRock. We usually write this newsletter in the collective voice of our entire membership. This week though, I’d like to take the reins and give you my perspective on the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) failure that has been dominating the news over the last few days. (Two other … Continue reading The Silicon Valley Bank Failure Explained
It’s official: ultra-rich corporate executives are chicken plumping the American economy with stock buybacks. After a brief hiatus during the height of the pandemic, corporations have doubled down on stock buybacks. Last month, big public companies spent an incredible $132 billion on buybacks, more than triple what they spent in January 2022. By some estimates, in 2023, buybacks by S&P 500 companies alone are projected to top $1 trillion for … Continue reading Corporations are chicken plumping the economy with stock buybacks
In case you hadn’t noticed, there is very little that US employers won’t do to save a buck or two. As of late, that even includes breaking the law and hiring children as young as 12 to work dangerous jobs. Last Friday, news broke that Packers Sanitation Services, one of the country’s largest food sanitation service providers, paid $1.5 million in penalties for illegally employing 102 children to clean … Continue reading Child Labor is Not a Thing of the Past in America
For most Americans, Valentine’s Day is a lighthearted holiday filled with roses, chocolates, and maybe even a few of Cupid’s arrows. But for the 12 million workers in America’s restaurant industry, February 14th is one of their busiest days of the year. If you are one of the millions of Americans going out to eat tonight, you may be interested to know how much – or, more accurately, how little – your … Continue reading Give tipped workers raises, not roses, this Valentine’s Day
The House Ways and Means Committee is one of the most important centers of decision-making in the entire federal government. It’s the House’s chief tax-writing committee, where members of Congress make calls about who gets taxed and how much and, in the process, decide how our economy should be structured. With so much power over our tax code, the House Ways and Means Committee has … Continue reading Unmasking Jason Smith
If you thought the GOP’s dedication to cutting taxes for rich people at any cost couldn’t get any more extreme, you might want to think again. The latest proposal out of the House takes their radicalism to a whole new level. Earlier this month, a group of House Republicans – including Earl “Buddy” Carter, Scott Perry, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene – re-introduced legislation … Continue reading The FairTax Act is Nowhere Near Fair
Earlier this week, the Department of the Treasury released its report, Disparities in the Benefits of Tax Expenditures by Race and Ethnicity, which outlines the differences in how tax deductions impact White, Black, and Hispanic families. The results show a troubling trend: there are clear disparities in how tax benefits and expenditures impact different racial and ethnic groups, and a significant amount of tax breaks … Continue reading How the Tax Code Makes the Racial Wealth Gap Worse
We’ve known for a long time that the National Restaurant Association (the “other” NRA) is an awful organization. As a representative of some of the biggest, most profitable, and often most exploitative businesses in the restaurant industry, the NRA has fought for years to keep the tipped minimum wage for restaurant workers as low as possible. Unfortunately, it’s been largely successful and has kept Congress … Continue reading The Other NRA is Exploiting Workers
When you add up the numbers from reporting by the New York Times and the recently released House Ways and Means Committee Report on Trump’s taxes, Donald Trump paid total federal income taxes of about $1.8 million between 1996 and 2020, a 25-year period. He paid another $70 million or so between 2005 and 2007, but had all of that refunded to him when he … Continue reading Who’s Taxed More: Trump or a Cardiologist?
As the rich and powerful have gathered this week in Davos for the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Annual Meeting, there has been a lot of talk about how to make the world a better place. Davos attendees, from world leaders to billionaires, have made a massive show of how they will build “Cooperation in a Fragmented World,” as the title of this year’s gathering is … Continue reading Demanding Change at Davos
This week, over 2,700 world leaders are attending the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland – better known as simply “Davos.” Every year, elites from business, politics, and civil society meet at this annual conference held at an exclusive and luxurious Swiss ski resort to discuss humanity’s most pressing problems. And every year, they fail to make any real change because they refuse to … Continue reading Survival of the Richest
Last week, after a historic five-day battle involving no fewer than 15 rounds of voting, Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives for the 118th Congress. In order to win the gavel, McCarthy had to make concessions to a group of 20 far-right Republicans, the majority of whom belong to the House Freedom Caucus. We don’t know the details of many of these back-room … Continue reading Get Ready for a Debt Ceiling Showdown
As the new House GOP majority tries over and over again to elect a Speaker, the already-glaring dysfunction of the 118th Congress is hard to miss. But as we watch the GOP caucus fight amongst itself and paralyze our government, we should be preparing for something even worse – House Republicans working together. They may disagree on who should be their leader, but House Republicans … Continue reading House Republicans Want to Protect Wealthy Tax Cheats
Happy New Year! We hope you and your loved ones enjoyed a peaceful, joy-filled holiday and are feeling optimistic about the new year. If you were traveling over the holidays, you might have been one of the hundreds of thousands affected by the flight cancelation chaos at Southwest Airlines. Between December 22 and December 29, Southwest canceled more than 15,000 of its scheduled flights, leaving customers and … Continue reading Blame Corporate Greed for the Southwest Fiasco
Back in the 1990s, I was making good money working for an investment bank, and I was putting the maximum amount allowed into my individual retirement account (IRA) and a 401(k) plan (that was later merged into my IRA). So part of my retirement savings are now in these tax advantaged plans. The tax advantage is that I never paid any income taxes on all … Continue reading The New Omnibus Package’s Retirement Changes Are a Giveaway to Rich People Like Me
As you finish your last-minute holiday shopping, you may notice that prices for, well, everything are higher than they were this time last year. Inflation has thankfully cooled a bit in recent months, but it’s still running hot enough to cause a tremendous amount of sticker shock this holiday season. Our current bout of inflation is driven by a complicated confluence of factors – the war in … Continue reading Corporate Greed is the Villain This Holiday Season Closer Look
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is one of the most blue-collar cities in America, and has been a proud union town with many traditional trade-based professions. Even the city’s football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, is named after the union steelworkers who call Pittsburgh home. You would think that because Pittsburgh is so union-friendly, most employers, even ones not in blue-collar fields, would be pro-union and pro-worker. Sadly, that … Continue reading The Rise of Unions In Pittsburgh
We’d like to wish you all a happy holiday season from everyone here at the Patriotic Millionaires. It’s been a long and eventful year, so we’d like to commemorate it by looking back over some of the main events, praising those who did good for our nation, and calling out those who did bad. For this final Roundup before the end of the year, let’s … Continue reading Happy Holidays!
Congress is facing an important deadline this week. By this Friday, December 16th, lawmakers must adopt a new spending bill to fund the federal government for the 2023 fiscal year, or they will face the prospect of a government shutdown. Both Republicans and Democrats are eager to get this done. They might not care equally about the need to prevent the economic fallout that would inevitably ensue with a … Continue reading Don’t Extend Trump’s Corporate Tax Cuts
There isn’t a single state in the country where an individual can afford a modest one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent on the current minimum wage. Not one. This shouldn’t be a surprise considering the increased cost of living over the years (inflation rates have jumped to 7.75% this year alone) and the stagnant federal minimum wage (which hasn’t been raised since 2009). But what … Continue reading Florida’s Minimum Wage Is Not a Living Wage