Taxes

By Angela Bradbery | – When U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said that he wouldn’t support President Joe Biden’s signature Build Back Better Act, he set off a wave of breaking news alerts. It was fitting. For months, media coverage has breathlessly focused on the behind-the-scenes wrangling and hour-by-hour negotiations around the legislation. How much […]

Inequality

These Real Estate and Oil Tycoons Avoided Paying Taxes for Years: The Secret IRS Files on the .01%

ProPublica

By Jeff Ernsthausen, Paul Kiel and Jesse Eisinger | – ( Propublica) – Here’s a tale of two Stephen Rosses. Real life Stephen Ross, who founded Related Companies, a global firm best known for developing the Time Warner Center and Hudson Yards in Manhattan, was a massive winner between 2008 and 2017. He became the […]

Pentagon

Can the Runaway Pentagon Budget ever be Reined in?

Tomdispatch

By Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung | – Even as Congress moves to increase the Pentagon budget well beyond the astronomical levels proposed by the Biden administration, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has outlined three different ways to cut $1 trillion in Department of Defense spending over the next decade. A […]

Inequality

U.S. Billionaire Wealth Surged by 70 Percent, or $2.1 Trillion, During Pandemic

Institute for Policy Studies

By Chuck Collins | – (Institute for Policy Studies) – Sen. Wyden’s billionaires income tax tapping those huge returns could raise big revenue to fund President Biden’s Build Back Better investment plan. America’s billionaires have grown $2.1 trillion richer during the pandemic, their collective fortune skyrocketing by 70 percent—from just short of $3 trillion at […]

Employment

We don’t need a Debt Ceiling, we Need Gov’t to Invest in Truly Rewarding Jobs

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Who is at fault for a standoff on the debt ceiling? Republicans are the obvious choice because when in power deficits don’t matter but out of power deficits and a growing debt are the path to hell. Deficits will burden our grandchildren and so we must accept […]

Congress

Why is Social Spending Controversial but Congress lavishes $7 trillion a Decade on Pentagon?

OtherWords

By Sister Karen M. Donahue | ( Otherwords.org) – Right now, the United States is locked in a contentious debate over the Build Back Better plan, which will make a significant difference in the lives of millions of individuals and families. Even though the provisions included in the plan — including universal child care, home […]

Banking

Make them Pay Up: Pandora Leaks show that the Super-Rich rob Public of $200 bn a year in lost Tax Revenues

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The rich have always flaunted their wealth. It was rarely good enough to enjoy financial success, you had to be conspicuous about it. They build enormous homes for everyone to gawk at. They throw lavish parties. They commission paintings, statues, biographies. They endow institutions so that their names […]

Inequality

If even the Democratic Party can’t raise Taxes on the Super-Rich, is the US even a Democracy Any More?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The struggle over efforts to revise and reform the tax code offers left and labor activists as well as the “democratic wing” of the Democratic Party an opportunity to test its strength and to clear up some widely circulated but misleading facts about the distribution of wealth […]

Inequality

Fund the Jobs bill by taxing the Billionaires who have made the $1.8 trillion during the Pandemic

OtherWords

By Chuck Collins | – ( Otherwords.org) – As lawmakers scramble to finalize a historic jobs and infrastructure package, huge fights are underway to figure out how to fund it. The simplest, most effective, and most popular way is to tax the extremely wealthy, like the billionaires who’ve seen their collective wealth grow by $1.8 […]