Economic Injustice

“The question of our time is this: will we tolerate it? Or will we take back our democracy from the oligarchs who run this country?” By Julia Conley Common Dreams (10/7/19) For the first time in U.S. history, the 400 wealthiest Americans paid less in taxes last year than people in any other income group, thanks to decades of tax cuts and loopholes benefiting the rich. A year after the Republican tax plan—often called the #GOPTaxScam by critics—was passed into law, the richest people in the country were subject to a 23 percent rate in local, state, and federal taxes….

    “As America’s political dysfunction has grown worse, the economic stagnation of the middle class has deepened. this is not a result of blind economic forces, Adam Smith’s invisible hand, globalization,or some nebulous cause. Specific committees of congress, inevitably assisted by specific K Street lobbyists, wrote legislation that achieved this result.” — Mike Lofgren, “The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went CRAZY, Democrats Became USELESS, And the Middle Class Got SHAFTED”, 2012 (p.1)

By Chris Hedges On Contact / RT (9/14/19) Host Chris Hedges talks to Elizabeth Anderson, professor of philosophy at University of Michigan, about the tyranny of the corporate workplace from non-disclosure agreements to punitive, restrictive work conditions and censorship. Their discussion comes as California lawmakers passed landmark legislation challenging the business model of “gig-economy” companies forcing companies to reclassify certain contract workers as employees. Anderson’s new book ‘Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It)’, was published by Princeton Press. Link to 28-Minute Video

And how to stop it in five more. By Robert Reich RobertReich.org (8/21/19) Average CEO pay at big corporations topped 14.5 million dollars in 2018. That’s after an increase of 5.2 million dollars per CEO over the past decade, while the average worker’s pay has increased just 7,858 dollars over the decade.  Just to catch up to what their CEO made in 2018 alone, it would take the typical worker 158 years. This explosion in CEO pay relative to the pay of average workers isn’t because CEOs have become so much more valuable than before. It’s not due to the so-called “free market.”…