Pillaging by the Super-Rich Will Continue Until the Working Class Revolts / by Les Leopold

_{^{Striking Kaiser Permanente workers hold signs as they march in front of the Kaiser Permanente Vallejo Medical Center on October 06, 2023 in Vallejo, California | Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images}}

American workers are not stupid. They’re getting fleeced and they know it. But until we rebuild large scale working-class power, it’s going to be a very rough ride

_{Reposted from Common Dreams}

_{They’ll stone you when you’re at the breakfast table.
They’ll stone you when you are young and able.
They’ll stone you when you’re tryin’ to make a buck.
They’ll stone you and then they’ll say good luck.}

_{—Bob Dylan, from “Rainy Day Women #12 and 35”}

There comes a time in the history of a nation when extreme inequality turns into pillage. If economic power is concentrated so is political power, and the wealthy are able to do whatever they damn well please. They can lie, cheat, and steal because they know they won’t be held to account.

Have the super-rich now taken control of our political and economic systems? Some current news makes me worry.

Let’s start with the food industry, the food cartel that includes General Mills, PepsiCo, and Tyson, which has been jacking up prices non-stop since 2020. Why are food prices up 25 percent since then?

These giants blame supply chains, the rising costs of labor, and the rising prices of other inputs required to produce and distribute their products. It’s not their fault, they say. But the real culprit, upon closer examination, is stock buybacks, another word for stock manipulation. These firms are fleecing shoppers by raising prices and then using the cash to buy back their own stocks, thereby increasing the market value of each share. Stock buybacks do not increase the value of a company, but they move money effortlessly to the largest Wall Street shareowners and to a company’s top executives, who receive most of their compensation via stock incentives.

Since the deregulation of Wall Street, corporations have been on a job killing spree.

As food prices shot up by 25 percent, “the ten largest grocery and restaurant brands have together returned or pledged to return more than $77 billion to shareholders,” reports Veronica Riccobene in her excellent article “Big Food, Big Profits, Big Lies.”

In related news, California fast-good giants have claimed that the state’s 2023 minimum wage law, which raised wages from $16 to $20 per hour, killed 10,000 jobs. A closer look, picked up by the Los Angeles Times, showed that the industry cooked the numbers by comparing employment in September with December. But every year, September is within the peak dining out season, and in December people dine out least. When adjusted for seasonal variation or compared with the employment levels exactly one year earlier (both standard ways of measuring employment levels) the number of jobs actually increased by 7,000 after the minimum wage law was enacted.

Boeing recently crashed into the news again, when company CEO Dave Calhoun was roasted by a couple of congressional committees about its shoddy production processes. There were plenty of outraged performances, but none of the oh-so-self-righteous lawmakers had the cajónes to ask about the impact on safety of Boeing’s $61 billion in stock buybacks or about how about Calhoun hauled in $30 million in stock incentives while Boeing lost $1.6 billion in 2023. Is it possible that maybe, just maybe, Boeing financed those buybacks by laying off workers, moving work to lower-wage sub-contractors, and cutting safety corners? Radio silence from Congress. (See “Did Stock Buybacks Knock the Bolts Out of Boeing?”)

Then there’s the way Wall Street squeezes out new home buyers by gobbling up houses and turning them into rentals. (See “Wall Street to Working-Class Homebuyers: Fuggeddaboutdit!”)

Let’s not forget that John Deere recently announced moving jobs from the U.S. to Mexico while feasting on government contracts and, of course, using job cuts to finance stock buybacks.

There is no organized mass of working-class folks with enough power to stop corporate looting.

Do we have to even mention how Big Pharma is charging us more than it does Canadians, or how health insurance companies collude to fix prices, or how giant hospital chains over-charge us with impunity?

They rip us off to feed their profits, which then gets shipped to the richest of the rich via stock buybacks. Of the $3 trillion in after tax U.S. corporate profits in 2022, about $1.31 trillion went to stock buybacks. In 1980 there were 13 US billionaires. Now there are 748.

None of this is accidental. Stock buybacks were deregulated in 1982. That’s when Wall Street began its financial war on workers and got filthy rich. (See my new book for the gory details.)

Corporate Welfare

Just hearing that phrase makes me nauseous because it’s a stark reminder of how feeble we are. Progressives have been complaining about government giveaways to large corporations at least since the 1970s and the practice has only grown worse.

I’ll bet you already know how bad it is. We taxpayers give the oil industry about $20 billion a year in subsidies while BP, Shell, Chevron, Exxon Mobile and TotalEnergies plow $104 billion in dividends and stock buybacks into the pockets of their shareholders (2022). Wall Street may be getting as much as $800 million a day via the Federal Reserve, according to one report. I have yet to find a credible source that adds it all up. I’m guessing it’s well over a trillion dollars a year in direct subsidies, tax breaks, and financial market supports. To rub it in, the richest corporations have successfully lobbied for so many tax loopholes that they pay little or nothing at all. (See here and here.)

“But wait,” they tell us, “Tax cuts and subsidies create jobs.”

That’s the biggest and most painful lie of all. Since the deregulation of Wall Street, corporations have been on a job killing spree. Stock buybacks are financed with job cuts. More than 30 million of us have suffered through mass layoffs (defined as 50 or more workers let go at one time) since 1996. Kill the jobs, save some money, buy back your stocks, put the money in your pocket, rinse and repeat.

Working Class Revolt?

We’re nowhere near any kind of organized mass uprising. But American workers are not stupid. They may not be able to spell out in detail how they are getting ripped off, but they know it’s happening. Most importantly, they understand that the government works for the rich and not for them. That’s why so many are willing to support train-wrecking outsiders who attack the government, even when they are anti-worker billionaire buffoons. In 1964, 77 percent of Americans had trust in the federal government. Now it’s 16 percent.

We’re living with the results of the collapse of countervailing working-class power. In 1955, 35 percent of the private sector workers were in labor unions. Today it’s only 6 percent. That means there is no organized mass of working-class folks with enough power to stop corporate looting.

Somehow, somewhere, a new working-class movement has to emerge.

I hate to be alarmist, but we’re really in bad shape and it is likely to get worse. Power is so tilted towards the rich that more and more people are giving up on politics, leaving the field open to the modern-day robber barons. This corrupt environment is a petri dish for conspiracy theories and hate.

Somehow, somewhere, a new working-class movement has to emerge. I’ve been begging progressive labor leaders to start a new organization that would fight against mass layoffs and for workers who are not in unions. (How about Workers United for Justice?)

While labor unions must organize shop by shop, they should also acknowledge that labor law is so tilted against workers, that it will be very difficult to make major inroads into the 94 percent with no union protection. We need a new parallel path to connect with these workers that doesn’t involve years and years of costly combat within a rigged labor law system.

Victims of mass layoffs are everywhere. They need a voice. They need an organization that will fight for them. If leaders like Shawn Fain of the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Sara Nelson from the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA) reached out to non-union workers who are getting crushed by Wall Street stock buybacks, those workers just might come running.

Until we rebuild large scale working-class power, it’s going to be a very rough ride. If we have learned anything at all since 1980, it’s that greed begets greed. The super-rich always want more and they’re not shy about grabbing it, even if democracy crumbles all around them—and us.

_{Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It.” (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.}

On MLK’s 95th Birthday, the Check for Racial Economic Equality Is Still Bouncing / by Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Chuck Collins

_{^{The civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. waves to supporters on August 28, 1963 on the Mall in Washington D.C. during the March on Washington | Photo: AFP via Getty Images}}

_{Compared to the political and economic progress of the 1960s, the 21st century has been much less fruitful.}

_{Reposted from Common Dreams}

This January marks what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 95th birthday. Nearly a century after the late civil rights leader’s birth, it’s a good time to reflect on the work still to be done.

Just over 60 years ago, in his famous “I Have A Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington, King declared: “We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.”

Sixty years on, as our report “Still A Dream” highlighted late last year, there’s been some progress. The African American community is experiencing record low unemployment, record highs in income and educational attainment, and has seen a massive decline in income poverty since the 1960s.

Going 60 years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth and income divide is a policy failure.

Despite all that, the check for racial economic equality is still bouncing. Without intervention, we found it will take centuries for Black wealth to catch up with white wealth in this country.

The 1960s were years of crucial economic progress for African Americans, even as the Black Freedom struggle faced assassinations and government suppression. In 1959, when King was 30, 55% of African Americans lived in income poverty. By what would have been his 40th birthday in 1969 (a year after his assassination), that poverty rate had dropped to 32%.

Yet this substantial progress still wasn’t enough to bridge the radical and ongoing racial economic divide between Blacks and whites. And since then, progress has slowed.

Compared to the political and economic progress of the 1960s, the 21st century has been much less fruitful—even as the country saw its first African American president and a national recognition of police brutality through the Black Lives Matter protests. From 2000 to 2021, there was only a three percentage-point decline in Black poverty (22.5% to 19.5%).

One modest area of progress: The unemployment rate for African Americans is no longer twice that of whites. Since 2018, Black unemployment has reached record lows of 5 and 6%, except during the 18-month recession caused by Covid-19. But as of 2021, Black unemployment was still about 1.8 times that of white unemployment.

The racial wealth divide was created by federal policies and national practices like segregation, discrimination, redlining, mass incarceration, and more. So it will require federal policy and national practices to close the divide.

And just as massive federal investment was necessary to develop the white American middle class, so too is it essential for a massive federal investment to bridge racial economic inequality.

Investing in affordable housing and programs designed to strengthen homeownership for African Americans will be essential. Other important policies include investments like a national baby bond program targeted at African Americans, national healthcare, and breaking up the dynastic concentration of wealth that’s made our country more unequal for all Americans.

Going 60 years without substantially narrowing the Black-white wealth and income divide is a policy failure. In this election year, policies that can finally bridge the Black-white divide should be at the forefront of our national debate.

Making a dream into a reality is challenging work, but it’s something our country has the resources to attain. The national celebration of Dr. King’s 95th birthday should be a time to rededicate ourselves to this work.

_{Dedrick Asante-Muhammed has been a long-time thought leader focused on racial economic inequality. He started his work as the first Racial Wealth Divide Coordinator at United For A Fair Economy. He then went on to work with Chuck Collins at Institute for Policy Studies Inequality and Common Good Program. Dedrick then went on to become the Senior Director of the Economic Department for the NAACP and currently is the Chief of Race, Wealth and Community for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.}

_{Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org. His near future novel “Altar to An Erupting Sun” explores one community’s response to climate disruption. He is author of numerous books and reports on inequality and the racial wealth divide, including “The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Spend Millions to Hide Trillions,” “Born on Third Base,” and, with Bill Gates Sr., of “Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why American Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes.” See more of his writing at www.chuckcollinswrites.com}

New Massachusetts ‘Tax the Rich’ Law Raises $1.5 Billion for Free School Lunch and More / by Julia Conley

_{^{Children eat lunch in an elementary school cafeteria on July 28, 2008 | Photo: Rick Loomis/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images}}

_{Reposted from Common Dreams}

“Taxing the rich, it’s good,” said one progressive advocate in the state.

A new “millionaire’s tax” in Massachusetts was expected to generate $1 billion in revenue last year to help pay for public education, infrastructure, and early childcare programs, but projections were a bit off, according to a fresh state analysis.

The state Department of Revenue estimated late last week that the Fair Share Amendment, which requires people with incomes over $1 million, to pay a 4% annual surtax, will add $1.5 billion to state coffers this fiscal year, which ends in June—surpassing expectations.

Universal free school meals, much-needed improvements to an aging public transportation system, and tuition-free education for community college students are just some of the programs Massachusetts’ wealthiest residents have helped pay for after voters approved the law in 2022 amid growing calls across the United States to tax the richest households and corporations.

The amendment was narrowly passed via a statewide ballot initiative in 2022 despite claims by opponents that it would force wealthy residents and businesses to leave the state.

The state analysis of the law shows that requiring wealthy households to pay more in taxes to contribute to the greater good has overall benefits for the state, said observers including Jonathan Cohn, political director for Progressive Massachusetts.

“The Fair Share Amendment has had a great first year. Looking forward to many more!” said the organization.

According to Fair Share, which advocated for the passage of the referendum in 2022, $150 million of the new revenue has been allocated to expanding green infrastructure and other construction projects in schools, while it cost the state’s richest taxpayers just $69 million to fund free school meals for every child in Massachusetts, “saving families hundreds of dollars.”

More than $205 million is being spent to upgrade, repair, and maintain the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority system, and $150 million is going toward bridge and road repairs. Expanded access to high-quality childcare and pre-kindergarten is being paid for with just $70.5 million, and $50 million is going toward tuition-free community college.

The investments are “only possible because the voters passed this constitutional amendment and we created this new tax,” Andrew Farnitano, spokesperson for the Raise Up MA Coalition, toldWBUR.

“The money is going where it was promised,” he added. “Those are fundamental investments in our economy that are needed to make sure it works for everyone.”

Farnitano toldMassLive that revenues from the Fair Share Amendment are expected to increase as much as $2 billion by the time the 2025 budget goes into effect.

“Over the past few months, we’ve seen the impact, and that will only grow,” he said.

An overall decline in other state revenue shows that the public spending would be impossible without the Fair Share Amendment, Farnitano told WBUR.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll found in September 2021 that 74% of Americans agreed with the statement, “The wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes,” and a Gallup survey found in August 2022, three months before the Massachusetts law was passed, that 52% of respondents believed the U.S. government should “redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich,” while 47% disagreed.

_{Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.}