Of all developed nations in the world, the United States has the most unequal distribution of income...and it's getting worse. Tomorrow, you can find out why and what we can do to change this when “ Inequality for All ,” a new documentary by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, opens in select theaters across the country.
Click here to find a theater near you and opening dates and here to visit the film’s Facebook page .
Passing out bags of candy-covered chocolates embossed with the wage gap figures, nearly 100 activists today called on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 84/H.R. 377).
Last summer, a respected policy expert from the Brookings Institution spoke at a large meeting. He introduced himself, saying that he works with a lot of brilliant economists who can't understand why the recovery is so slow.
Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman has an explanation ,"...corporations use their growing monopoly power to raise prices without passing the gains on to their employees."
Did you know that the CEOs of the Campaign to Fix the Debt , the corporate front group that wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and lower corporate taxes, have parked more than $418 billion of untaxed corporate profits overseas? Overall it is estimated that U.S. corporations have as much as $1.9 trillion sheltered overseas. That would make a nice down payment on fixing the debt.
You can read about "Fix the Debt" and more in the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Executive PayWatch launched today. PayWatch not only shines a light on Fix the Debt hypocrisy, but it also explores the huge wage gap between CEO pay and the average U.S. worker . PayWatch started in 1997.
Visit www.paywatch.org .
Today, women make just 77 cents for every dollar made by a man for equal work, about $434,000 over their careers. Sponsors of the reintroduced Paycheck Fairness Act, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), say the proposed bill will help close that gap . The pair has introduced the bill several times in recent years, but Republicans have been able to block action on the bill, most recently last summer with a Senate filibuster.
Do you believe wealthy Americans and corporations should pay their fair share in taxes and women should receive equal pay? Then April 17 is “Twofer Tuesday.” As part of the 99% Spring movement, some 100,000 activists will use Tax Day as a platform to demand that the 1% and corporations pay their fair share. April 17 is also Equal Pay Day , the date symbolizing how far into 2012 women must work to earn what men earned in 2011.
Income inequality has become so severe in this nation that people in Really Important Positions (except for most Republicans in Congress) are starting to take note—and issue warnings.
The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled 5-4 that as many as 1.6 million women who are current or former Wal-Mart employees cannot sue Wal-Mart for pay discrimination in a class-action suit. A lower court had ruled that the women could join together in a class action.
Just in time for April 15, new data shows that since 1979, the nation’s overall average tax rate—the share of income paid in taxes—has fallen slightly, but for those at the top of the earnings ladder, this share has fallen dramatically . The analysis by the Economic Policy Institute ( EPI ) also points out:
At the same time that the tax burden has shifted away from the wealthy, this same top income group has enjoyed massively disproportionate income gains. Between 1992 and 2007, a time in which income for the average household and top one percent grew 13 percent and 123 percent, respectively, the income for the top 400 households grew fully 399 percent.
The nation’s richest are trying to sell us on yet another shell game to keep from paying their fair share of taxes. Their lobbyists are pushing a so-called repatriation tax holiday—a huge cut in the tax rate on money companies are holding outside of the country.
It’s been four years since low-wage workers got a raise. Sign the petition to tell Congress it’s time to raise the minimum wage.
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