This year, the incoming chill of fall is carrying more than just autumn leaves – it’s bringing with it the winds of change. Workers across America are saying enough is enough in response to stagnant wages, brutal working conditions, and mistreatment of workers in the midst of a recession, global pandemic, and skyrocketing corporate profits. Over 100,000 organized workers from across the country have authorized … Continue reading Striketober
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of Americans have faced financial hardship and economic instability. Some have lost their jobs or been furloughed, many have been uprooted from their homes or have even become homeless (not to mention the millions that have gotten severely ill and hundreds of thousands that have died). Even well beyond the peak of the pandemic, 24 million adults … Continue reading Wealth Gap on the Rise
Yesterday, Jeff Bezos went to space. In response, the Patriotic Millionaires released the following statement on the morning of launch day from one of our members, Stephen Prince: “Sixty years ago, we sent the first American into space, and the top income tax rate was 91%. Today, a billionaire launched himself into space after paying a true tax rate of less than 1% for years. … Continue reading If Jeff Bezos Can Afford to Go to Space, He can Afford to Pay more in Taxes
Our history of space travel is a catalog of humanity’s greatest achievements. When the Soviets put a satellite in orbit, that was a first. Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard touched space 60 years ago, our first-ever star voyagers. NASA – a publicly funded agency staffed with the best and brightest American minds – put Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the moon, and got them … Continue reading Don’t Be Impressed with the Space Billionaires
President Ronald Reagan was a popular United States President. Upon leaving office, 63 percent of Americans overwhelmingly approved of the job he had done during his 8 years in office. His post-presidency popularity was solidified with efforts led by lobbyist and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist to convince local governments and private associations to name public spaces after Regan to preserve his legacy— particularly his tax … Continue reading It Is Time We Reexamine the Cost of Reaganomics
Last week the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a bombshell report that showed CEO pay skyrocketed while worker compensation barely budged over the course of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This report comes on the heels of Sarah Anderson’s Institute for Policy Studies’ report that revealed just over half of 100 S&P 500 companies who pay the lowest median worker wages broke their rules to give … Continue reading Despite the Pandemic CEOs Made a Killing in 2020
Last week Governor Kemp made an appearance on Fox News to defend his state’s decision to reduce voting rights throughout Georgia while comparing his actions to my state of Colorado. While listening to Governor Kemp speak, I was disgusted although not surprised. Kemp’s spin was misleading, lacking real context and in areas, blatant lies. Equally important, Kemp and his conservative Georgia lawmakers seem to have … Continue reading Shame on Governor Kemp
Our democracy is under attack. As of today, more than 300 different pieces of voter suppression legislation have been introduced across the country. Just last week, in Georgia, the state that tipped the Senate for Democrats in January, Governor Brian Kemp signed a sweeping 98-page omnibus “election” bill (aka voter suppression bill), into law surrounded by white male legislators under a painting of a slave … Continue reading Use The For The People Act to Fix The Damage of Anti-Voter Legislation
On Monday, March 1, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, and Rep. Brendan Boyle took a stand against out-of-control wealth inequality by introducing The ‘Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act’ to Congress. So what will this tax do? It’s a virtual copy of the wealth tax that Warren ran on in her 2020 presidential campaign. A wealth tax is a yearly tax on the net worth, essentially assets … Continue reading Explaining The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act
We’re living in troubled times, but we’ve gone through troubled times before and come out better for them. I’m not discouraged by the challenges this country faces – I’m hopeful. Despite all of the issues this country currently faces, we have been moving in the right direction, albeit very slowly.
There’s an old saying that as California goes, so goes the nation. It comes from the late 20th century when California led the nation in social and economic reform, with many of those laws going on to influence national law. But this coming election will give that old phrase new weight for the future of labor rights across the nation, as Californians cast their votes … Continue reading California’s Proposition 22: So goes the nation
This blog originally appeared on WalkerViewPoints on 9/30/20 Many kids, like me, first-generation college students, with farm and factory parents realized the American Dream. Ours was postwar America, a time of relative prosperity, when a poor kid could afford a decent college, when good jobs were abundant, and when wages were good.’ Introducing the Great Society in 1964 at the University of Michigan, Lyndon Johnson … Continue reading What Happened to the American Dream?
Last month, I was getting ready to convene yet another meeting by Zoom. I got a message from a wealthy New York lawyer informing me that her second home in East Hampton, a beach area about a two hour drive from New York City, didn’t have reliable enough high-speed internet to handle Zoom. For us, it wasn’t a big problem – we rescheduled our meeting … Continue reading The Digital Divide
California is in crisis. From wildfires, to blackouts, to the deadliest month of the COVID pandemic, disasters of every kind are wreaking havoc across the state. Now with the state facing a $54 billion dollar deficit, due to the economic ramifications of COVID, massive cuts to critical public programs are slated to go into effect come October. That’s only going to make a bad problem … Continue reading Instead of taxing the rich, the California legislature jumped ship
On March 12th, the lights went out on Broadway when Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the theaters to close. The same day, other institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, Carnegie Hall, and the New York Philharmonic announced that they would close too, while performances were canceled across the country in places like California, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Boston. With Broadway fully shuttered … Continue reading Want to Save the Economy? Save the Arts First.
During college in Louisiana, I heard people say, “So much of life is the family one is born into,” I didn’t have a clue what this meant. My father was the first in several Louisiana generations to graduate college. He supported us by selling janitorial products and our mother, who didn’t graduate college, never worked. I’d never imagined life as the one-percent, the top ten … Continue reading Inheriting Opportunity: Public vs. Private Schools
The U.S. has been mired in the worst recession in most Americans’ lifetimes since late February, according to top economists. From the highest rates of unemployment in our country’s entire history to miles-long lines at food banks, it’s obvious that millions of Americans are in dire financial straits. One would expect, then, that the poverty rate in America would also be skyrocketing. However, multiple studies … Continue reading A Closer Look: Mid-Recession, Why Aren’t Poverty Rates Skyrocketing?
We know that the racial wealth gap is real, and large. We also know that it didn’t just happen, it’s the result of a long history of government policies that favored white families over Black ones. Just because many of these programs and policies have ended doesn’t mean we can ignore their legacy.
Sometimes there are moments where conducting business as usual is not only grossly inappropriate, but simply impossible. The nationwide protests this past week are exactly one of those moments. The murder of George Floyd, like the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and every other unacceptable killing of Black Americans before them, have exposed the rotten truth at the heart of our country: the United … Continue reading Black Lives Matter.
A response to NYT article, “California, in Rush to Save Lives, Pushed Potent Economy to Brink”: As a grateful Californian and participant in the “potent economy” I am deeply offended and dismayed by this article on multiple fronts. My biggest beef, is that the article was void of any counterbalancing reasons as to why California shut down in the midst of an MIA (missing … Continue reading Stop Obfuscating. We Know Who’s to Blame.