We hate to kick things off with a cliché, but it’s an important one: elections have consequences. While cynics will dismiss elections as a rubber stamp on the status quo, the reality is that two starkly different realities are possible in January of 2025. In one of those realities, a newly inaugurated President Trump kicks off his second term with a series of vengeful abuses of … Continue reading Our First Endorsements of 2024
Happy new year! We hope that you had a wonderful holiday season and that your new year has begun with notes of hope and joy. Like everyone else, the Patriotic Millionaires are using the start of a new year to take stock of our priorities and map out the challenges – and opportunities – we anticipate in the year ahead. For this week’s Closer Look, … Continue reading The Year Ahead
Last week’s 2023 Annual Spring Meeting was a smashing success! Over the course of two days, we hosted policymakers, experts, and activists in conversations about the need to restructure the economy to reduce inequality, and held dozens of meetings with key lawmakers on Capitol Hill to advocate for higher taxes on ourselves and other wealthy Americans. While we were hard at work fighting to transform … Continue reading Why We Don’t Just Send a Check to the IRS
Next week is Tax Day, and you know what that means… ….(yes, you need to stop procrastinating and file your taxes, but that’s not what we’re talking about)…. …The Patriotic Millionaires are holding our Annual Spring Meeting! Every year around Tax Day, the members of Patriotic Millionaires host a conference in Washington, D.C. to gather economic justice advocates, top experts, and lawmakers to discuss how … Continue reading American Agenda (The Money Part)
This week, an unprecedented number of workers around the country have gone on strike. Over 100,000 workers across a variety of industries have voted to vacate their positions and join picket lines, demanding better wages, hours, and working conditions from big-box corporations and their C-suite executives. In light of this, the AFL-CIO cheekily renamed this month “Striketober” on Twitter. Striketober is just one of many … Continue reading American Workers Are Fed Up and Fighting Back
After the sky-high consumer spending of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Giving Tuesday is a day for folks to direct some of their money toward charitable causes instead. While we believe the work we do at the Patriotic Millionaires is certainly a great cause, don’t worry – we won’t be asking for your money today, or ever. As rich people in this country, we’ve certainly … Continue reading We Should All Be Skeptical of Rich People’s Philanthropy
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?
As cities across the US continue to see a swath of uprisings in response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police, our country is being forced to reckon with its racist foundations and systems. That’s long overdue, and there is much more work to be done than what we’ve seen in the past month or so, but the Patriotic Millionaires welcome … Continue reading Anti-Racism & Wealth: Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
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.
The owner of the shuttered Hahneman hospital in my hometown of Philadelphia wants to charge the city a mind-boggling $400,000 per month in rent for its use in adding to the supply of hospital beds. This man, Joel Freedman, is a great example of CEO’s who should remember the words of a young president taking office: “Ask not what your country can do for you. … Continue reading Member Dispatch: We Need Solidarity in Philly and Beyond
As I’m writing this, it’s several days since the Iowa caucuses, our nation’s first step towards choosing a Democratic presidential nominee to face off against President Donald Trump. And it’s also several days after one of the more spectacular election night snafus in recent memory. The Iowa fiasco has already drawn widespread condemnation, and threatened to undermine public confidence in this aspect of our democratic … Continue reading Democracy Needs A Paper Trail
Some members of the Patriotic Millionaires inherited their wealth or accumulated it from highly paid employment or investments that did very well. I, on the other hand, earned much of my own wealth through my knowledge of the American tax system and the advantages it gives to wealthy investors. By using extremely favorable tax laws, I was able to postpone paying taxes on the profitable … Continue reading Why I Am A Patriotic Millionaire: Dr. Karen Seal Stewart
As an American, I believe ours should be a land of golden opportunity—golden opportunity that should be equally available and accessible to all Starting 70 years ago, I experienced American opportunity manifesting into reality in my own life. As descendants of a poor family that raced for land in the Oklahoma Land Rush, my family survived on $90/month and lived in a tiny apartment. In … Continue reading Why I Am A Patriotic Millionaire: John Michael Hemmer
I’m Patricia Martone, and I joined Patriotic Millionaires in 2016. For thirty years, I was a well-paid partner in some of the nations’ leading law firms, and I now run my own consulting law practice. I am also an investor and have benefitted from a strong stock market. I don’t feel guilty about my wealth. I worked hard as an attorney, and my firm’s employees … Continue reading Why I Am A Patriotic Millionaire: Patricia Martone
Every year, the gap between the wealthiest Americans and the rest of the country grows wider and wider. While 40% of Americans would be unable to come up with $400 in an emergency, a select few wonder where they’ll park their next yacht. But we didn’t arrive to a reality where the richest 10% of Americans hold 70% of the countries’ wealth by accident. In … Continue reading “The Triumph of Injustice” and How to Tax Our Way Back
There’s a lot of (welcome) discussion about taxing the rich these days, but so far, there hasn’t been substantive talk about the structural problems that got our country to its current inequality crisis in the first place. I think this is an absolutely vital narrative to communicate to the American public, because if we want to create lasting, sustainable change, voters need to know just … Continue reading We Have to Fix What Reagan Broke
This week, barely noticed amidst all other, bigger headlines in Washington, the Senate confirmed a Labor Secretary who will be a disaster for working people. A corporate lawyer by the name of Eugene Scalia, with an anti-labor, anti-worker record longer than the list of labor complaints against the Trump organization, will be the country’s top authority on protecting workers and fighting for labor rights. In … Continue reading Meet the New (Anti) Labor Secretary
One afternoon in Georgia, a man lifted a $2 can of beer from a corner store. He was quickly caught, prosecuted, and ordered to wear a $1,000 ankle monitoring device as part of a plea deal – at his own expense. The man, already impoverished, sold his plasma to try and make the minimum payments. When he fell behind, the court jailed him for not being able … Continue reading In Revenue Shortfalls, Don’t Fine the Poor – Tax the Rich
Here’s a helpful tip to understanding the current debate over taxing the rich: if you ever find yourself reading an opinion piece, say like the one in this morning’s Wall Street Journal, that begins with the words, “the two of us are quite rich,” take whatever follows with a heaping grain of salt. That may sound a bit counterintuitive coming from a group called the … Continue reading Making Money Doesn’t Make You A Patriot
If you’ve kept pace with the news recently, then you’ve been reading a lot over the last few weeks of horrific conditions in which some people in this country are being held: babies without diapers, children without beds, parents separated from their kids. Honestly, I am having trouble typing the keys on my keyboard because I am so disgusted thinking about it. The Trump administration, … Continue reading Money Shouldn’t Buy A Different Kind of Justice