POWER & MONEY – KILLER FACTS

MARC MORIAL
  • The U.S. will turn 250 years old on July 4, 2026 (Source: America 250)
  • The 250th birthday is known as the Semiquincentennial (Source: America 250)
  • Wealth and power is more concentrated in the US today than it has been in 100 years (Source: Washington Post)
  • Marc Morial served as Mayor of New Orleans, from 1994 to 2002 (Source: The History Makers)
  • The National Urban League was founded in 1910 (Source: National Urban League)
PAUL PIFF
  • People driving high-end cars are 4 times more likely to cut off other drivers, and 3 times more likely to cut off a pedestrian (Source: Science Mag)
  • “Upper-class” citizens tend to be less compassionate than others (Source: Scientific American)
  • Studies show that the average millionaire is no happier than the average person making $75,000 a year (Source: Time)
  • The rich show greater levels of narcissism and entitlement than normal people (Source: Psychology Today)
  • A “zillionaire” is defined as an immeasurably wealthy person (Source: Merriam Webster)
  • The rich are far more likely to walk out of store with merchandise they haven’t paid for than are normal people (Source: Wired)
  • Studies show that power makes it harder to empathize with other people (Source: Psychology Today)
  • The rich tend to be more depressed because of the relentless pursuit of more wealth (Source: National Center for Biotechnological Information)
AMY SPITALNICK
  • In 2019, the FBI reported 7,314 hate crime offenses with a record 51 murders (Source: FBI)
  • There are currently 838 hate groups operating in America (Source: Southern Poverty Law Center)
  • 29% of Americans report knowing someone who believes the white race is superior to other races (Source: Pew Research)
  • Hate crimes rose by 20% under the Trump Administration (Source: Newsweek)
  • The number of white nationalist hate groups in America rose by 55% between 2017-2019 (Source: Southern Poverty Law Center)
  • Richard Spencer has advocated for the enslavement of Haitians, the ethnic cleansing of minorities, and more (Source: Right Wing Watch)
JAMAL SIMMONS
  • Among US companies with 100+ employees, Black people hold just 3% of executive roles (Source: CNN)
  • Only 4% of full-time college professors are black (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)
  • There are more Fortune 500 CEOs named John than there have been Black CEOs in the history of the Fortune 500 list (Source: Washington Post)
  • 49% of Black law school applicants were not admitted to a single law school. That share is larger than that of any other racial or ethnic group (Source: NPR)
  • Less than 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Black (Source: Fortune)
  • On the current trajectory, it will take about 95 years for Black employees to reach managerial parity across all levels in the private sector (Source: McKinsey)
ANDREA HAILEY
  • Black soldiers in WW2 were often denied GI Bill benefits after returning home (Source: History)
  • In states like Alabama and Georgia poll taxes were cumulative, meaning one had to pay all dues from the age of 21 (Source: Forbes)
  • 55% of voting-eligible young people cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election (Source: Tufts University)
  • The 2020 election had the highest turnout since 1900 (Source: Washington Post)
  • In 2020 Biden carried 85 percent of counties with a Whole Foods Market and 32 percent of counties with a Cracker Barrel Old Country Store (Source: Cook Political)
  • Nearly 2/3rds of eligible US voters cast a ballot for president in 2020 (Source: Pew Research)
ANGELO CARUSONE
  • 17% of Americans believe a sex ring of child trafficking Satanist cannibals control politics and the media (Source: Forbes)
  • 57% of people who’ve heard of QAnon say it’s a “very bad” thing for the country (Source: Journalism.org)
  • In 2020, “QAnon” was included in 5% of videos by the 100 most viewed Youtube news channels (Source: Pew Research)
  • 70% of Americans use social media. 82% of them for more than 30 minutes a day (Source: Pew Research)
  • Twitter has said it will permanently ban all QAnon accounts (Source: New York Times)
ILYSE HOGUE
  • Some species of bat can consume up to 6,000 bugs per hour (Source: Mother Earth News)
  • NARAL was created before Ilyse Hogue was born (Source: NARAL Prochoice America)
  • Republicans were 50% more likely than Democrats, to use a dating site built for extra-marital affairs (Source: The Guardian)
  • 17 “Pro-Life” state attorneys general sued to dismantle the ACA (Source: Health Affairs)
  • Since 1977, there have been 11 murders, 26 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 189 arsons, directed toward abortion providers (Source: Vox)
SARU JAYARAMAN
  • 1 in 4 Black restaurant workers live in poverty (Source: Shriver Center on Poverty and Law)
  • White service workers receive larger tips than Black service workers for the same quality of service (Source: Economic Policy Institute)
  • There are 16 states that  pay their tipped workers a measly $2.13 per hour (Source: Touch Bistro)
  • In 1914, Henry Ford – a racist anti semite – raised wages of his factory workers to $5 per day for 8 hours of work. That is the equivalent of $16 per hour today (Source: The Henry Ford Fund)
  • Alaska, California, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington are “One Fair Wage” states where workers make tips on top of the full state minimum wage (Source: Touch Bistro)
  • 46% of tipped workers and their families rely on public assistance (Source: Workplace Fairness)
  • 59% of voters support a $15 minimum wage (Source: Reuters)
MAURICE MITCHELL
  • Only 33% of Americans think the two major parties are doing a good job of representing the American people (Source: The Hill)
  • WFP was founded in 1998 by a group of community activists and union organizers (Source: Wikipedia)
  • Fusion voting allows candidates to appear on the ballot line of more than one party (Source: Wikipedia)
  • Politico reports that Gov. Cuomo secretly supported the IDC, which chose to caucus with Republicans to control the NY State Senate (Source: Politico)
  • 50% of US adults identify as political independents (Source: Gallup)
  • In 2019, 81% of American families had at least one working family member (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
KEDRIC PAYNE
  • Politicians who become lobbyists get an average raise of 1,500% (Source: The Atlantic)
  • Politicians are four times more likely to meet with donors than their own constituents (Source: The Washington Post)
  • The finance sector is by far the biggest contributor to political campaigns in the country (Source: Open Secrets)
  • Half of Senators become lobbyists after they retire (Source: Vox)
  • In the 70s, fewer than 5% of retiring legislators became lobbyists. Now, 1/3rd of retiring house members do (Source: The Atlantic)
  • The Senate Ethics Committee has not issued disciplinary sanctions against a member since 2007 (Source: Roll Call)
SARAH ANDERSON
  • The average CEO earned 320 times as much as a typical worker in 2020 (Source: Economic Policy Institute)
  • Between 1978 and 2019, CEO compensation rose 1,033%, while worker compensation rose just 12% (Source: Economic Policy Institute)
  • The unemployment rate peaked in April 2020 at 14.7%, the highest rate on record ever (Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics)
  • The CEO of McDonald’s makes 2,000 times the median McDonald’s worker (Source: Business Insider)
  • In 2019 the CEO of Disney made over 1,000 times the median worker at Disney (Source: CNBC)
BILL LAZONICK
  • Less than half of American households own any stock (Source: Pew Research)
  • 94% of households in the top 1% own stock (Source: The Washington Post)
  • Over the last 15 years, 94% of corporate profits have gone to shareholders in the form of buybacks and dividends (Source: Inequality.org)
  • Sen. Elizabeth Warren calls stock buybacks “fluff and buff” (Source: CNBC)
  • Boeing spent $43 billion on stock buybacks instead of safety measures or training for its 737 Max 8, which ended up killing hundreds (Source: Newsweek)
  • Over the last two decades, ExXonMobil spent $210 billion on stock buybacks. In 2020, they were cut from the Dow Jones Industrial Average (Source: Reuters)
  • Since 2012, Apple has spent $460 billion to repurchase stock, and they plan on doing hundreds of billions more (Source: Above Avalon)
  • 7 out of 10 leading pharma companies spent more than 100% of their net income on payments to shareholders (Source: Roosevelt Institute)
RYAN GRIM
  • Gordon Gekko made “Greed is good” famous in the movie Wall Street (he was the villain) (Source: Investopedia)
  • Gekko’s cell phone in the movie weighed 2 pounds and was 13 inches long. They called it “the brick” (Source: Slate)
  • You can also make that much money by “disrupting” an existing industry with an app that reclassifies employees as “independent contractors” (Source: National Employment Law Project)
  • Corporate raiders took over Toys R Us in 2010. By 2020, the company was bankrupt and investors walked away with $470 million (Source: Mercury News)
  • Together, Sears and Kmart have closed more than 3,500 stores and cut about 250,000 jobs in the past 15 years (Source: USA Today)
  • Nancy Reagan frequently consulted astrologer Joan Quigley on her husband’s comings and goings (Source: Los Angeles Times)
  • In 1981, Reagan fired striking air controllers and banned them from federal employment for life (Source: Wikipedia)
BARRY LYNN
  • One out of five union election campaigns involves a charge that a worker was illegally fired for union activity (Source: Economic Policy Institute)
  • The last time a government broke up a monopoly was the 1980s, when AT&T was forced to spin off regional networks (Source: Business Insider)
  • Researchers say outsized corporate power is the primary driver of wage stagnation (Source: Economic Policy Institute)
  • Industries with a mix of large and small businesses innovate more than those consisting of a few giant corporations (Source: Open Markets Institute)
  • The longest game of Monopoly played upside down lasted 36 hours (Source: MonopolyFandom.com)
  • The average Amazon employee would have to work 11,131 years to make what Jeff Bezos makes in one day (Source: Business Insider)
SARAH MILLER
  • The song Love Game by Lady Gaga was the number one song the last time the minimum wage was raised in July 2009 (Source: Wikipedia)
  • Amazon and Walmart combined employ nearly 3 million Americans, or almost 2% of the American workforce (Source: Quartz, CBS News)
  • In 2016 three former MMA fighters sued the UFC for using monopoly power to suppress fighter earnings (Source: Sportico)
  • Just three companies control about 80% of mobile telecoms (Source: Forbes)
  • There is a 64% chance you will land on a Railroad each time you circle the board in Monopoly (Source: MonopolyFandom.com)
  • Google controls 90% of the global search engine market (Source: StatCounter)
  • In 1911, Standard Oil was found guilty of monopolizing the oil industry and was broken up into 34 companies. They have since recombined (Source: Britannica)
CHUCK COLLINS
  • Experts estimate that Russia holds over $1 trillion in dark money abroad, with almost ¼ of that directly controlled by Putin and the Kremlin (Source: Atlantic Council)
  • Around 30% of luxury apartments in New York are empty almost all year (Source: New York Times)
  • Fees for company registration and corporate services are the second biggest source of revenue for the state of Delaware (Source: Townsquare Delaware)
  • The last time the top 0.1% held such a high percentage of the country’s wealth was 1929 – right before the Great Depression (Source: MarketWatch)
  • Jeff Bezos is more than twice as rich as the British Royal family (Source: Business Insider)
  • The US is ranked as the second-worst country in the world for financial secrecy and tax evasion, behind only the Cayman Islands (Source: The FACT Coalition)
  • The IRS currently has the same number of investigators now as it did in 1953, when the economy was one-seventh its current size (Source: ProPublica)
  • Marie Kondo books have sold 11 million copies in 40 languages (Source: The Atlantic)
VICTOR FLEISCHER
  • More than 1 million registered nurses are projected to leave the workforce by 2030 (Source: American Association of Colleges of Nursing)
  • The top 25 hedge fund managers earned a total of $16.8 billion in 2017 (Source: Forbes)
  • 75% of voters want to eliminate the carried interest loophole (Source: Take On Wall Street)
  • David Rubenstein, billionaire co-founder of The Carlyle Group, created the phrase “access capitalism” to describe his business (Source: The New Republic)
  • The New Yorker ran a story called “The Billionaires Loophole” about David Rubenstein’s efforts to preserve special tax treatment for carried interest (Source: The New Yorker)
  • In the last ten years, 600,000 people working at retail companies owned by private equity or hedge funds have lost their jobs (Source: Bloomberg)
KATE TAYLOR MIGHTY
  • Consumer spending accounts for 70% of all economic activity (Source: The Balance)
  • The minimum wage has lost 40% of its purchasing power since 1968 (Source: Economic Policy Institute)
  • Black, Latinx, and Indigenous Americans are almost 2 times more likely to be infected with COVID-19 than white Americans (Source: CNN)
  • 70% of Americans believe the economy is rigged against them (Source: Pew Research)
  • In 2020, 65% of all Americans support labor unions (Source: Gallup)
STEPHANIE KELTON
  • 26.5% of national debt (about $5.83 trillion) is owed to another arm of the federal government itself (Source: Pew Research)
  • The highest federal debt in US history was 119% of GDP, just after World War II (Source: USGovernmentSpending.com)
  • The US stopped using the gold standard in 1933. President Trump said he wanted to return to the gold standard (Source: History, Investing News)
  • The US government has run a budget deficit for nearly all of the past 60 years (Source: Investopedia)
  • The last time the US government was completely debt-free was January 8, 1835.  Deficit hawks were so bored (Source: History)
  • The worst economic downturn in US history was in 1835 — when the US government paid off the entire national debt (Source: NPR)
FELICIA WONG
  • 20% of low-wage workers lost their jobs in 2020. Less than 1% of high-wage workers did (Source: Forbes)
  • The wealth gap between America’s richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016 (Source: Pew Research)
  • In 2018, households in the top fifth of earners brought in 52% of all U.S. income (Source: Pew Research)
  • Jobs in the clean energy sector have higher salaries than the US average (Source: Solar Power Wind Online)
  • President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, setting a national minimum wage for the first time (Source: Department of Labor)
  • In 2018, 13 million children lived in families with incomes below the poverty line (Source: The Guardian)
  • The Biden administration just directed all government agencies to transition to zero-emission vehicles (Source: Yale Climate Connections)
  • Only 1% of nearly 15,000 bills have been enacted into law between January 3, 2019, and September 2020 (Source: Newsweek)
  • Schoolhouse Rock debuted “I’m Just a Bill” in 1976 (Source: CNN)
  • A majority of voters want Congress to pass more bills and move faster (Source: Data for Progress)
ADAM JENTLESON
  • The Senate filibuster was created accidentally in 1806 when VP Aaron Burr removed a rule permitting a majority of the chamber to force a vote on a bill (Source: History)
  • Senator Thurmond’s filibuster lasted 24 hours 18 minutes long and was intended to stop the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (Source: Wikipedia)
  • Senator Strom Thurmond holds the record for the longest filibuster in US history (Source: Wikipedia)
  • In 1975 Republican Vice President Nelson Rockefeller ruled against the parliamentarian (Source: Senate.gov)
  • Senator Joe Manchin has indicated support for a “talking filibuster” (Source: Vox)
  • In 2001 Republican Vice President Dick Cheney disagreed with the parliamentarian; they fired the parliamentarian (Source: The Washington Post)
  • VP Aaron Burr shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel (Source: PBS)
TIFFANY MULLER
  • 0.26% of the population gives 68% of the money raised in politics (Source: Vox)
  • The 2020 election saw more than 1 billion in dark money spending at the federal level (Source: The Brennan Center)
  • Missouri, Utah, and Virginia are the only states with no limits on campaign contributions (Source: Ballotpedia)
  • 88% of Americans want to reduce the influence large campaign donors wield over lawmakers (Source: The World)
  • 66% of Republicans and 85% of Democrats back a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United (Source: The World)
MICHAEL WALDMAN
  • In 1787, James Wilson argued in favor of a powerful federal government, saying that the Pennsylvania state legislature might have all polling places in Pittsburgh (Source: JSTOR)
  • A 16-year-old Ben Franklin became famous for writing essays while pretending to be an elderly widow named “Silence Dogood (Source: Smithsonian Magazine)
  • In 1874 the Supreme Court ruled that it was okay to deny women the vote as voting is not tied to citizenship — some states allow non-citizens to vote (Source: Britannica)
  • The U.S. ranks 26th out of the 35 democracies in the OECD for voter turnout (Source: ARCGIS)
  • Trump called the January 6th insurrectists “patriots” and “very special people” (Source: WFYI)
  • More Americans are hit by lightning every year than commit voter ID fraud (Source: Politifact)
  • Approximately 6 million Americans, or 1 in every 40, are prevented from voting due to a felony conviction. (Source: Sentencing Project)

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