WEALTH Archives • Hightower Lowdown

It’s time for a (teeny) tax on wealth

The rapidly widening divide between the rich and the rest of us is neither natural nor accidental. America needs a "Lizzie"--a way to re-balance the tax burden fairly between wages and wealth. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has taken the lead on this fundamental democratic reform by proposing a return to America's historic tax principle of "ability to pay." Her idea is to shut down the elites' shameful tax dodging with a straight-forward tax on extreme wealth.

Doing the tax-dodge tap dance

For a lesson on how to tap dance around one's tax obligation, follow the lead of Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and White House adviser. A 2018 New York Times investigation reveals that a few years pr... Read more...

Taylorism

BEZOS' COLD, MICROMANAGED, time-motion approach to the workplace is a direct descendant (and extreme extension) of a theory of "scientific management" developed in the 1880's by Frederick Winslow Taylor, an ind... Read more...

The birth of Amazon

LEGEND HAS IT that Amazon is a classic story of pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. In 1994, a bright, young fellow named Bezos heads off to the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, with nothing going for him bu... Read more...

Do elites really think they can knock us down without provoking us to stand up and push back?

Feisty, creative coalitions are standing up to the corporate order While taking in the splendor of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, a tourist came across a monk and asked if he could snap a photo of him. The mon... Read more...

Lessons from corporatized college: Even PhDs are being squeezed out of the middle class

If this can happen to adjunct professors, it can happen to the rest of us Working. Poor. In our US of A, those words ought never be juxtaposed. The very concept of paying poverty wages in the richest... Read more...

The sad death–and “second life”– of an adjunct professor

Until her death last summer, Margaret Mary Vojtkotaught French for 25 years at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, earning high marks from her students. Like most teachers there, Margaret Mary was part of the ad... Read more...

America isn’t broke. There’s plenty of money to build an economy worthy of our ideals and can-do spirit

A simple "Financial Transaction Tax" could fund opportunities for all Several pro football franchises have chosen chest-pounding team names meant to symbolize how big, powerful, ferocious, and scary they are... Read more...

A rebellion of restaurant workers is challenging the deplorable low-wage ethic of the fast-food behemoths

Some local chains show a better way--and it's good for business, too. By gollies, McDonald's cares. Despite being a corporate behemoth (more than 14,000 stores in the US, $27 billion a year in sales,... Read more...

One in three Americans are now poor, sapping our nation’s social, economic, and moral strength

The richest few among us have abandoned the many to a future of poverty Poverty in America: Bigger than ever and rapidly spreading. The flood of poor people in this Land of Plenty is being swollen by... Read more...

The money swamp created by Citizens United: Dark Money, corporate shell games, and SuperPAC plutocrats

Logo Lowdown from the 2012 elections. Part 2--donors OFF the record, or off the radar Some of you might remember "CREEP" from 1972's Nixon-McGovern matchup. It could've been an apt code name for Tric... Read more...

Here’s who is buying America’s democracy

Logo Lowdown from the 2012 elections. Part 1--donors on the record The spark that ignited tea party wrath in 2008 was not such right-wing bugaboos as "Obamacare," the federal deficit, or states' righ... Read more...

Mitt’s Millionaire Club

During his infamous, surreptitiously videotaped, $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Florida, Romney was full of disdain for poor people "who pay no income tax." He didn't mention, however, the most interesting fact ... Read more...

The Big Three Myths fabricated by right wing fabulists to frame America’s elections

Bootstrap BS, Grover Norquistian nonsense, and plutocratic pouts of corporate elites During the past several years, a mess of plutocratic myths has been growing like kudzu across our political landsc... Read more...

Why Congress is so popular

Demonstrating the depth of his insight into the problems of low-wage workers, GOP Rep. Bill Young of Florida recently "discussed" the issue with a voter in St. Petersburg. Appropriately enough, the exchange bet... Read more...

The minimum wage is a disgrace, and raising it would be a boon to the whole economy

More than 100 million Americans live on less than a minimal family budget Sometimes, it's useful to state the obvious. Here's a fact, for example, that we all know to be true: America's economy is en... Read more...

Et tu, Obama?

On Feb. 7, Barack Obama jettisoned his principled opposition to the Court's elevation of Big Money over people by okaying the creation of his own SuperPAC, Priorities USA Action. His rationale was that he could... Read more...

The plutocrats who bankrolled the GOP primaries–and what they want in return

Seven super-rich men, five SuperPACs, $40 million Leave it to Bill Moyers, one of America's most useful citizens, to sum up our country's present political plight in a succinct metaphor: "Our electio... Read more...

Corporate elites and their small-minded political servants are creating the Incredibly Shrinking America

To get America moving, the People must lead. Join the action! "We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for t... Read more...

From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy Nation in just two months

This is a real populist movement--against our financial and political plutocracy Americans who flew bombing missions in World War II had a saying: "You know you're on target when you start getting a ... Read more...

Billionaires’ front groups attack workers, public schools, and young voters

This is class war--part 2 In January, a small group of Indiana schoolteachers encountered their governor, Mitch Daniels, in a hallway of the state capitol. They were part of an outpouring of Hoosiers... Read more...

The Big Three secret funders of the $75 million campaign to trash Democratic candidates

Corporate "mystery money" makes a mockery of our democracy It's unlikely that you have heard of a novel entitled Alpaca, but it was a remarkably portentous piece of political writing by one of Americ... Read more...

Here’s who is buying America’s democracy

Logo Lowdown from the 2010 elections. Part 1--donors on the record In 1986, Richard Kimball, a Democratic state legislator in Arizona, was running for a US Senate seat. In a televised debate, he did ... Read more...

At last, a principled stand in Congress

Is there no balm in Gilead... or in Washington? Will no Democrat soothe the people's anger at the constant giveaways to the rich from our depleted public treasury? Is there at least one strong populist vertebra... Read more...

A new Wall Street sin tax could raise $100B a year to reinvest in Main Street America

Where's the audacity, the fairness... the money? Lonnie Johnson was the early blues and jazz great who turned the guitar into a solo instrument. In the 1920s, he pioneered improvisational guitar piec... Read more...

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