Inequality undermining Social Security
The upward redistribution of income in the U.S. is undermining the nation’s Social Security:
if you’re a millionaire, February 16th is the last day that you will pay into the social security for the entire year. That’s because the Federal payroll tax cap is set at $127,000, so any money made beyond this point, is not subject to taxation that would fund this very crucial Federal social program.
See Real News Network interview with Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy Research here.
The people’s park service
U.S. National Park Service employees defend the people’s commons:
Read about it here.
American bifurcation
Inequality by the numbers:
Source: “Economic growth in the United States: A tale of two countries,” by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
Taxing inequality in Portland
Portland, Oregon, has instituted a first-ever tax on corporations that pay their CEOs more than 100 times as much as their workers. Econ4’s Doug Smith told the Portland City Council:
“Instead of building a real economy beneficial to all, these unethical pay practices spread outsourcing, offshoring, tax avoidance, downsizing and the substitution of good-paying permanent jobs with temporary, precarious employment.”
Read about it here.
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Here are the 50 states, ranked from “most shortchanged” to “least shortchanged” by the U.S. government. The ranking is based on an index combining: (i) votes in the Electoral College per state resident and (ii) benefits received per tax dollars paid to the federal government.
Source: New York Times.
This is not a typo
When I first saw this, I thought it must be a typo. Incredibly, it’s not.
[T]he Defense Department’s inspector general found more than $6.5 trillion “wrongful adjustments to accounting entries” in the Army’s general fund in 2015 alone. It’s a number that’s difficult to wrap your head around. First of all, it’s much larger than the entire annual federal budget. But that sum represents not only current spending, but a lot of money from previous years that can’t be accounted for either. The sheer scope of the malfeasance is so staggering that the question that comes to mind isn’t “Why?” but “How?”
Read more here. And here. And here.
You can download the Inspector General’s report that uncovered the mess here.
The Trumpbeat of inequality
Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz writes:
Where the trade agreements failed, it was not because the US was outsmarted by its trading partners; it was because the US trade agenda was shaped by corporate interests….
We need to rewrite the rules of the economy once again, this time to ensure that ordinary citizens benefit. Politicians in the US and elsewhere who ignore this lesson will be held accountable. Change entails risk. But the Trump phenomenon – and more than a few similar political developments in Europe – has revealed the far greater risks entailed by failing to heed this message: societies divided, democracies undermined, and economies weakened.
Read more here.
The deserving rich?
Nancy Folbre takes issue with Harvard professor Gregory Mankiw’s defense of the one percent:
The rich are not like you and me. They contribute far more to society than everybody else, so argues Harvard University economist Gregory Mankiw in his essay “Defending the One Percent.” Mankiw’s praise for talented superstars such as Steven Jobs, J.K. Rowling, and Steven Spielberg quickly blooms into a more general argument that competitive labor markets pay workers what they deserve. This is music to the ears of high earners, and it sings to a very human desire to believe that the world is fair….
Some of us contribute more than members of the top one percent to the economy, and some of us contribute less. None of us gets exactly what we deserve. One difference between the rich and us is that they have more money. They also enjoy—both as cause and effect—a lot more power.
Read her blog here; read her working paper on “just desserts” here.
Offshore shell games
A new report details how companies duck paying their taxes – and free-ride on those of us who do:
Fortune 500 companies are holding nearly $2.5 trillion in accumulated profits offshore for tax purposes.
Read the report here.
What could a democratized economy look like?
Econ4’s Gar Alperovitz describes a pluralist commonwealth – an alternative to the concentration of wealth and power:
Source: The Democracy Collaborative.
