A weekly newsletter from the Institute for Policy Studies |
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Texas, like the rest of the United States, is experiencing one of the hottest summers on record. Undeterred, the state’s Republican Governor Greg Abbott has seized the moment to eliminate the mandatory rest and water breaks the cities of Austin and Dallas have set for construction workers. Texas currently rates as the nation’s deadliest state for the construction profession.
Those water breaks fell victim to a “death star” bill Texas lawmakers have passed to limit local authority, shifting power from the state’s bluer cities to the legislature.
“The governor is trying to win the cruelty Olympics,” says Rep. Greg Casar, a member of Congress from Austin who’s now advocating for federal workplace heat protections that have yet to be implemented. The Biden administration’s Department of Labor, meanwhile, has recently released a heat hazard alert to inform workers of their rights and is also ramping up job-site inspections.
Whether workers are fighting for baseline guarantees like drinks of water or AC in their delivery vehicles or vital "green overhauls" of their industries, they need maximum support.
Extreme heat — exacerbated by inequality — remains a matter of life and death. A recent One Earth study has found that heat stress far overburdens the poor in almost every American city, with heat stress inequities strongly tied to residential racial segregation.
More unseasonably chilling news: CEO pay continues to skyrocket while workers' real wages drop, as the AFL-CIO details in a new blockbuster Executive Paywatch report. S&P 500 CEOs are now averaging $16.7 million a year, their second-highest annual total ever. We’ll have lots more for you on CEO pay later this month with the release of our annual Executive Excess report. Stay tuned.
Bella DeVaan, for the Institute for Policy Studies' Inequality.org team |
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| INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS |
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A First-Gen College Student Explores Our Chance to Reduce Child Poverty
“When I was born into poverty, the deck was stacked against me in all aspects of life,” writes Kassidy Jacobs, an Institute for Policy Studies summer Next Leader intern. “What made the difference? Hard work, yes — but also public investment. Public programs helped keep me fed, healthy, and learning as I grew up.”
The first in her father’s family to graduate high school and the first in her entire family to graduate college, Jacobs now works on community reinvestment and equitable development at the Greater Baybrook Alliance in South Baltimore. She’s using her education and experience to help families just like her own. “My story shows what’s possible,” Jacobs notes, “when we’re given equitable resources and opportunities to succeed.” The expansion of the Child Tax Credit during the pandemic, she adds in a new analysis, reduced child poverty nearly by half, supplying still more proof “that expanding the Child Tax Credit even more would narrow racial economic divides and give low-income students a greater chance to succeed.” For more, check out Jacobs’ insights at the link below. |
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Activating A Luxury Real Estate Transfer Tax Would Benefit Boston
Boston’s City Council nearly four years ago passed an innovative 2 percent tax on luxury real estate transfers — sales worth $2 million or more — to raise revenue for affordable housing. But Massachusetts state lawmakers, facing relentness real estate industry opposition, are dragging their heels on approving Boston’s move.
It's a bad choice. Rental prices are far outpacing median incomes, leaving millions of Bostonians rent-burdened. Sky-high housing costs, says a Massachusetts Taxpayer Foundation report, ranked as a main reason that 111,000 Massachusetts residents left the state over one recent two-year period.
Boston’s luxury tax, if enacted, would have raised $55.3 million last year. The city’s renters can’t afford further delay. Take a look at a new analysis from our researcher Omar Ocampo and Next Leader intern Jiaqin Wu to see why. |
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Have Our Corporate Chief Execs Finally Become Expendable?
Corporate CEO greed — despite the continuing spotlight on it — seems as entrenched as ever. And that reality has some analysts going beyond attacking how much our corporate chiefs execs are making. These critics are increasingly wondering whether we need these chiefs at all. This emerging “bossless narrative,” notes one University of Manchester analyst, has become “especially popular over the last thirty years.” Inequality.org’s Sam Pizzigati has more. |
PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK |
‘Like Finding Ancient Wealth’: A Billionaire’s New ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’
This week’s dour deep pocket: 77-year-old Harold Hamm, the self-styled oil “wildcatter” who’s become the 73rd-richest person on our planet.
What has him sour: Energy policies that discourage drilling for oil and gas. Hamm’s just-published new book, Game Changer, argues for boosting fossil-fuel production. As Hamm asserted in one recent interview: “We’ve certainly seen some great days in shale. But have we got a long way to go? Yeah.”
The last word: Hamm, sums up Greenpeace USA research director Mark Floegel, comes “straight out of the fossil fuel industry’s central casting.” He’s been a “climate-denying serial liar who made his billions at the expense of the Earth and its people.” |
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This week on Inequality.org
Dan Petegorsky, Here We Go Again, Again With the Commercial Donor-Advised Fund Industry and A Perfect Example of Donor-Advised Fund Slipperiness in Silicon Valley. Charitable intermediaries are touting their generosity. Reporters should take a closer look.
Elsewhere on the Web
Adam Shank, Overpaid executives remain overpaid, SF reaps tax benefits, San Francisco Examiner. This city’s “Overpaid Executive Tax” is generating more revenue than initially expected. Malaika Jabali, The Disturbing Truths We’re Learning About Capitalism This #HotLaborSummer, Essence. Hollywood CEOs have set themselves up to be cartoon villains while workers across the country attempt to cope with how costly just existing has become.
Allison Morrow, You’d have to work five lifetimes to make what your boss makes in one year, report shows, CNN. The average CEO compensation among S&P 500 companies last year amounted to $16.7 million, the second-highest level of executive pay ever, according to the AFL-CIO’s annual Executive Paywatch report.
Levi Sumagaysay, As Hollywood strikes continue, unions call out excessive CEO pay: 'We need to look at what they're doing with executive compensation,' MorningStar. Media- and entertainment-company CEOs made an average of $35 million last year.
Brett Heinz, How Lockheed’s $7.9B stock buyback bonanza is paid for by you, Responsible Statecraft. This arms industry titan pockets billions a year in federal contracts, then turns around and uses those billions to enrich its richest shareholders, a gang that includes, of course, its top execs.
Pass a Wall Street Tax, 52 Groups Tell Congress, Public Citizen. The Wall Street Tax Act would create a financial transaction tax of 0.1 percent on purchases of stocks, bonds, or derivatives. That tax would raise an estimated $752 billion over 10 years.
Louisa Buck, Jetting away with it: the challenge of parting the super-rich from their private planes, The Art Newspaper. A lack of legislation to deter private flying is hampering efforts to convince the art world's elite to kick the habit.
Sawdah Bhaimiya, Rich millennials are creating new status symbols as they start to buy homes and have kids. Here are 10 ways they are redefining luxury, Business Insider. From creating Instagrammable laundry rooms to splashing out on pricey hand soap, the rich nearing 40 are setting new luxury norms. |
Why Postal Banking? Mandla’s Story, Take On Wall Street. Americans would have a much higher level of trust in an institution like the post office that “is not also not attempting to steal your money as a side job." |
Jeff Wise and Chuck Collins, The air-istocracy, Vox's Today Explained. AOC is calling out Hollywood executives for their multiplying fleet of private jets, and European nations are trying to ban these private energy-hogs. Some people are even calling Taylor Swift part of the problem.
Tracy Alloway, Joe Weisenthal, and Isabel Webb Carey, Why the UAW Is Digging in Against the Big Three Carmakers, Bloomberg's Odd Lots. Jacobin reporter Alex Press and UAW Region 9 director Dan Vicente join to explain why a new generation of labor leaders are taking a harder line during historic negotiations.
Cyrus Webb, Altar to an Erupting Sun, #ConversationsLIVE. Chuck Collins discusses his new novel and what he hopes readers will take away from it. |
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A new GAO report is showing massive retirement account disparities between income groups for households headed by Americans ages 51-64. From 2007 to 2019, the share of low-income workers with any retirement account balance dropped by half. High-income workers saw their account balances nearly double over the same time period. Current tax code provisions meant to incentivize workers to save for the future have unequally benefited higher-income workers.
For more on retirement inequality, check our Tale of Two Retirements study. |
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Inequality.org | www.inequality.org | inequality@ips-dc.org Managing Editor: Isabella DeVaan
Co-Editors: Sarah Anderson, Chuck Collins, and Sam Pizzigati Production: Isabella DeVaan |
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