How To Solve (Mostly) All Our Problems

 TAX THE RICH!!!

And, by "rich", I mean millionaires. Which, for the U.S., is about 9% of the entire population. This isn't a call for increased taxation on low-income, working families, or the middle-class. It's a call to tax those that have clawed, cheated, and stolen the wealth and productivity gains of the past few decades. No, not all millionaires have clawed, cheated, and stolen. But those who have clawed, cheated and stolen, and who have bought politicians to get legislation and tax laws in their favor, need to be taxed more.

Income has been steadily redistributed upward since the 1980s. Millionaires are reaping more and more of the gains of workers. This is not sustainable. It's time to reverse this. Tax the rich! 

Weekend Reading

Trump Proposes $100 Billion Gift To Richest 1%
Giving Government Workers The Shaft
We Are All Accumulating Mountains Of Things
Unions In The 21st Century: A Potent Weapon Against Inequality
Taxpayers Are Footing The Bill For Sky-High CEO Salaries
Withheld Emails Show Brett Kavanaugh May Have Perjured Himself
Where Labor Unions Aren't Going Away
Where Will The Next Crisis Come From?
The Housing Bubble And Financial Crisis Was Easy To See Coming
Bernanke, Geithner and Paulson Still Don't Have A Clue About The Housing Bubble
The Dangerous Myth We Still Believe About The Lehman Brothers Bust
Misunderstanding Credit And Housing Crises: Blaming The CRA, GSEs
He Was The Resistance Inside The Obama Administration
Many Lawmakers And Aides Who Crafted Financial Regulations After The 2008 Crisis Now Work For Wall Street
An Alternative View Of Boom And Bust Cycles
What Does The Current Slope Of The Yield Curve Tell Us?

Inequality In Milwaukee

2015 Milwaukee Summit - Marc Levine from L&S @ UWM on Vimeo.

Sunday Reading

CEO Pay Rewards What Was Going To Happen Anyway
Refusing To Play Dead For Big Banks, Warren Gives Fellow Senators 17 Chances To Put Consumers First
Scott Walker Does Not Respect Democracy
Stock Buybacks Are Soaring To Record Levels - And Cory Booker Wants To Stop It
Neoliberalism: How Seeing Markets As Perfect Turned Into An Ideology Justifying Crony Capitalism
Republicans Say They Favor Free Markets. Yeah, Right.
Across 20,000 Pages, The Pursuit Of Foxconn Unfolds
Wisconsin Supreme Court Candidate Screnock Says He Wouldn't Hear Cases About Legislative Maps
Foxconn Deal Gets Even Worse
Hundreds Of Canadian Doctors Demand Lower Salaries (Yes, Lower.)
Larry Summers Makes The Case For A Governmental Bailout Of The American Heartland
America Is Giving Away The $30 Billion Medical Marijuana Industry
Why Is California Rebuilding In Fire Country? Because You're Paying For It

Midweek Reading

How Much Does Gov. Scott Walker Affect The Wisconsin Economy? Less Than You Might Think
Why Is CEO Pay Still Soaring?
The $400 Million, Pension Problem
These 8 U.S. Streetcar Projects Could Break Ground By 2020
Labor's Declining Share: A Primer
Discrimination Is Not De Facto
Tackling The 'Nastiest, Hardest Problem In Finance'
How Conservatives Betrayed Virtue For Donald Trump
Want To Fix The Budget? Collect Taxes
Trump And Congress Are About To Ruin America's $220 Billion Economic Secret Weapon

Sunday Reading

Want To See How America Is Changing? Property Taxes Hold The Answer
The Failed Promise Of Miller Park
Paul Krugman Gets Retail Wrong: They Are Not Very Good Jobs
United Isn't The Reason Air Travel Is So Miserable
Where Is The World's Most Sprawling City?
Growing Life Span Inequality Has Given The Rich An Extra $130,000 In Government Benefits
The Retail Apocalypse Is Suburban
Florida's Go-To Stadium Economist Is A Hack, A Shill, And Also Not An Economist
Climate Change Is Altering The Environment In Ways That Increase The Potential For Viruses Like Zika
11 Charts That Show Marijuana Has Truly Gone Mainstream
CEO Pay Is Out Of Control. Here's How To Rain It In

Eight Men Own The Same Wealth As The Poorest Half Of The World

8 people have same wealth as world's poorest half

Income inequality is so now lopsided that eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world. 

A top corporate CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 garment factory workers in Bangladesh. 

And the world's 10 biggest corporations together have revenue greater than the 180 poorest countries combined. 

These findings by Oxfam, from a report titled An economy for the 99%, was released Sunday as the globe's leaders and the business elite traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for this week's annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The conference is partly aimed at eliminating extreme income inequality. 

The study found that the richest eight people on the planet have net wealth of $426 billion — equivalent to what's held by the bottom half of the world's population.

An Economy For The 99%

Yet the global inequality crisis continues unabated: 

• Since 2015, the richest 1% has owned more wealth than the rest of the planet. 

• Eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world. 

• Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people. 

• The incomes of the poorest 10% of people increased by less than $3 a year between 1988 and 2011, while the incomes of the richest 1% increased 182 times as much. 

• A FTSE-100 CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 people in working in garment factories in Bangladesh.

• In the US, new research by economist Thomas Piketty shows that over the last 30 years the growth in the incomes of the bottom 50% has been zero, whereas incomes of the top 1% have grown 300%. 

• In Vietnam, the country‟s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest person earns in 10 years.

Sunday Reading

Water Diversion From Great Lakes Gets Review
Elon Musk's Growing Empire Fueled By $4.9 Billion In Government Subsidies
This Cheat Sheet Will Make You Win Every Climate Argument
Gov. Sam Brownback's Growth Strategy Goes Up In Flames
11 Stunning Facts About How Kansas Treats The Poor
The Incredible Rise Of CEO Pay
Wisconsin Downturn?
EPA Warns Of High Cost Of Climate Change
Bring On The Bikes: Alternative Transportation Helps Spur Development

U.S. Corporate Tax Avoidance

From The Transcript:

Avoiding taxes has become a hallmark of America’s business icons; Apple, Google, GE, and many more of the Fortune 500. The nation’s largest corporations are sitting on more than $2 trillion in cash while revenue from corporate income taxes have plummeted from just below 40 percent in 1943 to just below 10 percent in 2012. Government and big business have colluded to create what’s tantamount to an “unlimited IRA” for corporations. 

That’s not my term, although I wish I had thought of it, because it explains so much about what’s gone wrong in a country where some 20 million workers who would like a full-time job still can’t get one. Yet the upper one percent of the population takes home a staggering 22.5 percent of America’s income while their effective federal income tax rate has dropped.

Weekend Reading

State To Spend $559 Million More Than It Takes In Next Year
The Top 10 Global Warming 'Skeptic' Arguments Answered
Median CEO Pay Crosses $10 Million In 2013
Does 'Right-To-Work' Create Jobs? Answers From Oklahoma 
Lesson For Other States From Kansas' Massive Tax Cuts
The Polarized Court
In North Dakota, There Will Be Blood
Milwaukee Is A Great Lakes Star
Wife Of Judge That Shut Down Scott Walker Investigation Is A Frequent Walker Contributor

Inequality In America

Rewarding Failure: The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation

Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation's CEO, Reed Hall, Gets 50% Raise

An agency embroiled in controversy (where is money being spent, how is it being spent, and what are the results of that spending?) seems unjustified in giving the CEO a 50% raise.

But that's how Scott Walker rolls. Ignore the questions swirling about efficiency, legality, underhandedness, and cronyism at WEDC. Just give the CEO a raise and pretend everything is going as planned. A perfect example of how the (quasi) private sector operates: regardless of results, those at the top are rewarded.

Sounds a lot like Scott Walker's political career. Even though he'e been a train-wreck in every office he has held, he keeps getting rewarded with higher offices.

Income Inequality

America Is The Only Rich Country Without Guaranteed Paid Vacation Or Holidays

American Workers Losing Ground On Wages
Globalisation Isn't Just About Profits. It's About Taxes Too
Median CEO Pay Rises To $9.7 Million In 2012
1 Chart Reveals How Unfair The U.S. Tax System Has Become

Public & Private Sector Payroll Jobs

When The Rich Get Richer, Taxes Go Lower

CEO-To-Worker Pay Ratio

Weekend Reading

How The Case For Austerity Has Crumbled
Lessons Of The North Atlantic Crisis For Economic Theory & Policy
Crisis Before & After The Creation Of The Fed
How They Do It Elsewhere
Why Did The U.S. Financial Sector Grow?
Let's Get Real About The Stock Market
Top CEO Pay Ratios

Corporate Profits Up, Their Taxes Have Fallen

Ayn Rand USA: In 20 Years Corporate Profits Are Up 4X and Their Taxes Have Fallen by 50% -- Meanwhile the Workers' Payroll Tax Has Doubled

In the past twenty years, corporate profits have quadrupled while the corporate tax percent has dropped by half. The payroll tax, paid by workers, has doubled... 

Companies call their CEO bonuses "performance pay" to get a lower rate. Private equity firms call fees "capital gains" to get a lower rate. Fast food companies call their lunch menus "intellectual property" to get a lower rate. 

Prisons and casinos have stooped to the level of calling themselves "real estate investment trusts" (REITs) to gain tax exemptions. Stooping lower yet, Disney and others have added cows and sheep to their greenspace to get a farmland exemption... 

The IRS estimated that 17 percent of taxes owed were not paid in 2006, leaving an underpayment of $450 billion. The revenue loss from tax havens approaches $450 billion. Subsidies from special deductions, exemptions, exclusions, credits, capital gains, and loopholes are estimated at over $1 trillion. Expenditures overwhelmingly benefit the richest taxpayers... 

Only 3 percent of the CEOs, upper management, and financial professionals were entrepreneurs in 2005, even though they made up about 60 percent of the richest .1% of Americans. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. Job creators come from the middle class. 

So if the super-rich are not holding the world on their shoulders, what do they do with their money? According to both Marketwatch and economist Edward Wolff, over 90 percent of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), personal business accounts, the stock market, and real estate.

Wack Job

More proof most CEOs are know-nothing, overpaid, blowhards.

Jack Welch doubles down on jobs numbers conspiracy theory.

Weekend Reading

The Arithmetic Of Unemployment & Labor Force Participation 
Austerity Is Much Worse For The Economy
The Evolution Of Airfares In One Chart
A History Of Movies In Four Parts
Housing Recovery In Perspective
Is BofA's Foreclosure Review Really Independent?
Lavish CEO Pay Doesn't Work As Intended
Private Sector Not GSEs Triggered Crisis
The Problem Of Conservative 'Intellectuals'
Ryan Supported Social Security Privatization
Will Paul Ryan's Past Threaten His Future?

Weekend Reading

Foreclosure Inventory Levels Still Declining
GE's Jack Welch Knows About Cooking The Books
Paul Ryan Wants U.S. To Be A Tax Shelter
The Outrageous Attack On The BLS
The Romance Of Start-Up Businesses
Romney Told 27 Myths During The Debate
Wall Street Pay Too High

Weekend Reading

An Investor's Guide To Fees & Expenses
CEOs & The Pay-'Em-Or-Lose-'Em Myth
How Paul Ryan Would Decimate The New Deal
Labor's Declining Share Of Income & Rising Inequality
Radiating Death: How Walmart Displaces Nearby Small Businesses
Should The 401K Be Reformed Or Replaced?