California votes on billionaire tax

This November, Californians will vote on Proposition 40, a union-backed initiative levying a one-time five percent tax on the net worth of the state's billionaires.

Wealth tax momentum spreads

Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Ro Khanna have introduced a federal version. A dozen states have advanced millionaire or billionaire taxes this year. Maine, Washington, Hawaii, and Rhode Island have all enacted one.

The wealth gap widens

The twenty five wealthiest Americans pay a true tax rate of just three point four percent, a fraction of what nurses and teachers pay, while holding about two percent of the nation's wealth.

“true tax rate of just 3.4%”

Record billionaire wealth

This spring, Forbes counted a record three thousand four hundred twenty eight billionaires worth twenty point one trillion dollars, up four trillion dollars since last year.

Labor's share hits historic low

Workers' share of economic output fell to fifty two point eight percent, the lowest since records began in nineteen forty seven.

Billionaires are symptoms

Billionaires create damage, but they are not themselves the underlying reason for economic dysfunction. The root cause is corporate power: how modern corporations are owned, governed, and permitted to organize markets and politics to their…

Corporate concentration soars

Since the late nineteen nineties, three quarters of American industries have grown more concentrated. Corporate margins have roughly tripled since nineteen eighty. After tax profits now exceed twelve percent of GDP, near the record.

Shareholder primacy gutted labor

Since nineteen seventy, when Milton Friedman declared that a corporation's only social responsibility is profit, businesses have been re engineered around delivering the most value possible to shareholders.

Fortunes built on suppressed wages

Nobody earns eight hundred thirty nine billion dollars from a paycheck.A fortune of that scale can only be made by accumulating equity from corporate profits.

Corporate money dominates politics

Over the past half century, political spending has become a core business strategy.Business now outspends labor and public interest groups thirty four to one.

Wealth taxes won't fix the system

Wealth taxes only claw back winnings after the fact. This year's Forbes Billionaires list added three hundred ninety newcomers. Taxing billionaires does not touch the executives, boards, and political machines that keep minting new ones.

Restructure corporate power itself

The real solution requires rebuilding labor power through labor law reform, reviving antitrust, and getting corporate money out of politics.Alternative models like steward ownership, employee ownership, and benefit corporations address wealth concentration at its source.