Take Action
How can we build an economy that works for everyone, not just the very wealthy? How can we reduce our contemporary concentration of wealth and power?
The Working Group on Extreme Inequality is actively coordinating a number of educational campaigns in support of public policies and corporate governance proposals that aim to reduce massive concentrations of wealth at the summit of the American economy. These campaigns complement ongoing efforts to “raise the floor” – by, for instance, increasing the minimum wage – or “level the playing field,” by making higher education truly accessible to all American families.
Why Do We Focus on the Top?
Whatever the specific issue that concerns us – poverty, climate crisis, education, local food systems – we all face the same problem. The urgent changes we need to make as a society stand blocked by the power of concentrated wealth. As long as so much wealth and power resides in the hands of a few, we will remain tethered to an economic system more focused on the perpetuation of privilege than strengthening the common good.
Grand concentrations of private wealth create fiscal obstacles as well. To improve our society, we need - as a society - to make substantial investments. If we’re serious about expanding economic opportunity, reengineering our energy systems, improving education, and restoring our public infrastructure, we need to budget for these investments. Our proposals to end extreme inequality in the United States would raise revenue for these investments from those most able to pay.
Where Will The Money Come From?
As a society, we can raise revenue several ways. We can be smart about raising revenue or we can be irresponsible. Two foolish ways of raising revenue:
- Borrow the funds we need and add trillions more to our federal debt, leaving future generations to pay for today’s obligations.
- Institute regressive taxes on working families, those who have benefited the least from the unequal economic growth of the last several decades.
Two smart ways of raising revenue:
- Shifting our current priorities – and recovering funds from wasteful military ventures and subsidies for oil companues and other corporations that don’t need or deserve taxpayer support.
- Reinstituting progressive taxes to raise revenue from those who have reaped the most benefit from our unequal economy, those from the richest one-tenth of one percent of income earners and wealth holders.
The Working Group on Extreme Inequality is developing proposals in this last option, initiatives that would reinstitute progressive taxes on households with incomes over $500,000 and wealth over $2 million. Our initiatives have a dual benefit. They would both reduce the power of concentrated wealth and raise revenue for urgent public investments.
In the June 30, 2008 extreme inequality special issue of The Nation, co-edited by the Working Group on Extreme Inequality, Sarah Anderson and Sam Pizzigati offer an overview of the concrete and practical steps we can take to narrow our grand economic divides, in a piece entitled “Ending Plutocracy: A 12-Step Program For Progressives.”
The Working Group this year will be advancing four primary initiatives. We’ll be organizing to put in place:
1. A progressive estate tax reform
3. An end to the preferential tax treatment of income from capital gains and dividends
4. A tax rate increase on incomes over $5 million (More information coming soon)
Watch this web site for campaign updates. For more information, contact Chuck Collins at chuck@ips-dc.org.
