Economy
We Must Tame Big Ag To Tame Climate Change
The Democratic primary debate on Thursday night was probably the first time that soil management—as climate policy—was ever mentioned at a primetime presidential campaign event. It was also one of the first tangible mentions of farm policy in two nights of debates....
How The Super-Rich Avoid Paying Their Share
We have a great deal of statistical data, in America today, about the economic circumstances of Americans who live in poverty. We know far less, by contrast, about Americans who live amid great wealth. And much of what we do know, suggests a revealing new study, turns out to be wrong. America’s wealthiest, this new study details, almost certainly hold substantially greater personal fortunes than our standard analyses of the nation’s distribution of wealth indicate.
The Reality Behind the ‘Surging’ U.S. Economy
Recent economic reports have President Donald Trump crowing. The big headline numbers do sound encouraging. The unemployment rate is down to 3.6%, the lowest since 1969. Average earnings are finally outpacing inflation, the stock market has been hitting record highs,...
A Revolutionary Idea To Close The Racial Wealth Divide
The gap between America’s ultra-wealthy and the rest of us is growing dramatically as wealth continues to concentrate at the top at the expense of the rest of us. One major symptom of this economic rift is the racial wealth divide, which is greater today than it was...
How Big Corporations Take Your Tax Dollars
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Bernie Sanders, castigator of the one percent, is a millionaire now. So are Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. Big whoop. There’s a crucial difference between these candidates seeking the Democratic presidential nomination and the super wealthy –...
America Needs a Public Credit Registry
For many Americans, the words “bad credit” are like the sound of a closing door. That’s because there’s a deeply harmful, but seldom-spoken, truth about credit reporting: It ruins lives, and crushes hopes. When private companies gather data on our borrowing history...
Reaching Critical Mass On Taxing The Rich
Serious societal change typically only takes place when the pressure for change hits “critical mass.” At one level, we’ve had critical mass for years now on seriously taxing America’s rich. Polls regularly show broad public support for having our wealthiest pay quite...
A 'Buyback' for Our Future?
The dollars top corporate execs are plowing into "buybacks" of their own stock could, if invested elsewhere, help significantly share the wealth the modern American economy creates. Imagine how much brighter our future would be now if the over $5 trillion that S&P 500 corporations have spent on buybacks since 2007 had gone instead to paying higher wages or training workers in new skills or making corporate operations more eco-friendly.
Trump Hates Farmers
Have you noticed how often Donald Trump prefaces his comments and tweets with phrases like “frankly,” “to tell the truth,” and “believe me”? More than a verbal tic, these qualifiers subliminally admit that being frank, truthful, and believable are not normal for him....
Moneyball in a Deeply Unequal Age
Star baseball outfielder Mike Trout has just signed the biggest pay deal in pro sports history, and no one may be happier than America’s staggeringly overpaid CEOs. Corporate chiefs — and those who sing their praises — simply love to see big paydays for big-time athletes. Every million a ballplayer makes seems to give top execs and their cheerleaders still another justification, another excuse, for stratospheric CEO pay.
