Gangster Capitalism: Welcome to the new economy.

Starbucks is the worst with a pay gap of 6,666 to 1 between CEO and workers. In 2024, the boss man got $98 million including stocks while the average worker got $15,000. Ask yourself – what does any person need with $98 million? Note that Starbucks has the most complaints of illegal union busting than any company in NLRB history, and in four years, it has refused to sign a contract with 12,000 workers. It was announced on December 2, 2025 that Starbucks must pay about $35 million through New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to more than 15,000 employees to settle claims that it deliberately denied them stable schedules and arbitrarily cut their hours. The workers complained of chronic short-staffing, complex online orders, and last-minute calls ramping up stress. A shift supervisor said Starbucks refused to fairly schedule. The refusal to give regular hours means employees can’t plan daycare, education, other jobs, medical appointments etc. Starbucks also refused to give extra shifts so employees would not become fulltime workers. To settle the complaints, Starbucks even agreed to follow the city’s Fair Workweek law in the future. Imagine a corporation agreeing to follow the law. I have never gone there for their overpriced and bad tasting coffee and never will.

CEO pay in general has risen 35% since 2019 but worker pay has not even kept up with inflation. If it had kept up with CEO pay, minimum wage would be $31/hour. The corporations have the money to pay their workers but have been spending it on stock buybacks which used to be illegal because it falsely inflates stock and CEOs then ask for raises based on that. Even Lowe’s where median pay is only $30,606 has been spending money on buybacks that they could have used to give each employee an annual bonus of $28,456 or nearly double their pay. Same with McDonalds whose prices have increased 200% from 2019 – 2024: Medium Fries $1.79 to $4.19, McChicken $1.29 to $3.89, Big Mac $3.99 to $7.49, 10 McNuggets $4.49 to $7.58, Cheeseburger $1.00 to $3.15. They are also one of the largest employers of SNAP recipients. McDonalds could have given workers who are creating that income an extra $18,338 a year which is more than the company’s median wage. A lot of workers at Amazon warehouses are homeless. They sleep in their cars and move from federal land to federal land where you can stay free for a month before moving on. In addition, taxpayers fund these companies’ workers as we subsidize their health care plans, they qualify for SNAP, and their kids get free lunch at school.

One solution is to increase taxes on corporations with big gaps. Even 71% of Republicans said they would support that. If the measly 1% tax on stock buybacks were raised to 4%, that would pay for 327,218 public housing units for two years. Poverty is a choice. The creation of homelessness is a choice. Our country has made the wrong one.

Not only Congress but the courts are helping companies stiff working people. In Space Exploration Technologies v. National Labor Relations Board in August 2025, the notoriously right wing Fifth Circuit Trump appointed judge granted an injunction in a challenge brought by Space X (Musk) against the NLRB regarding the ability of the administration to fire the judges. It will be appealed. The companies that sued all had labor charges against them which are now on hold.But this is no surprise. By August, the administration had shielded 165 companies, including the big tech ones – one-third of the total – from pending federal enforcement actions for misconduct.

The American Dream is quickly fading as we wake up. Only 25% of Americans think they can improve their standard of living; 70% said working hard was no longer a way to get ahead as their parents could start a business, buy a home, and raise a child easier than they can. While the median income went up 5.5 times from 1971 to now, the cost of a car increased 12 times, the cost of a house went up 14 times, college education has gone up 29%, and health care costs have gone up 37%. This is the first generation of Americans whose financial futures are less prosperous than their parents.

In 2020, there were 927 American billionaires but by 2024, 1,135. The 100 richest controls more than half of the total monetary value. From 1975 to 2018, at least $50 trillion moved out of the hands of 90% of Americans into the greedy hands of the top 1%.

In 2024, CEOs got a $1.4 million raise making their average income $18.9 million, a 7% raise. The median worker made $49,500 or got a 3% increase. To make as much as the boss, the typical workers would have to start before 1740 – before the American Revolution! Under the new Big Billionaires Bill, the richest .1% will have their income increased by $83,000 or more while the poorest 40% will decline in income.

I never understood why business supports Republicans because of the 52 million jobs created since the Cold War, 50 million were in Democratic administrations. All the recessions were in Republican administrations. Red states don’t care about their people: they pay more in taxes than blue states; life expectancy, infant mortality, deaths of despair, wages, and uninsured rates are all worse; blue states contribute to the federal purse while red states take from it; blue states have lower gun deaths and murder rates than red ones. The system is not working for humans.

When the current president was elected my first thought was, he’s going to rob us blind. And he is. So far, and we are not a year in, he and his family have hauled in $3.4 billion.

The result of the illegally established and misnamed DOGE has been a record number of layoffs of American workers – double the previous year. Why? Laying off and deporting thousands of people means the money they were spending is not circulating in the economy, fewer goods are needed, so companies must downsize to meet the reduced demand. This reduction in our economy will cost us billions. The second biggest reason is the uncertainty in the economy with inflation, interest rates, tariffs, and constant chaos making it impossible to plan.

While the economy is going down and wages are not going up, prices are. In September average prices were 1.7% higher than January and 3% higher than September 2024. Inflation continues and increases month over month. Under this administration the average family is paying $700 more per month on necessities as of November. Making less, paying more, is that what you voted for?

Arizona has particularly refused to invest in its citizens. We are the fifth-lowest state in investment per capita. Kentucky has the same size budget but half our population. Tennessee with the same population has a budget 1.4 times bigger. And that’s the South. The idiotic flat tax in 2021 is one reason and the ESA vouchers sucking money from public education is another.

We also have a ridiculous law that tax cuts and exemptions only require a majority vote in the legislature, but tax increases require a two-third vote of each legislative body. Even a ballot measure that would increase taxes has to meet 60%. The race to the bottom has become de rigor. We must get over the fear of raising taxes because that is precisely what needs to happen i.e. create a progressive tax not the regressive system we have now where the poor pay more. Taxes are the price we pay for living in a civilized and decent society. I don’t begrudge them when used for those purposes. Bombing fishing boats? No.

In 1970, 61% of the U.S. was middle class; now it’s down to 50%. Today the top 1% has snatched 31% of the wealth while the bottom 50% scrambles for just 2.6%. Think about that. Think again.

Today the median income is $80,000 – that means half of Americans earn less than that while groceries have gone up 28% in five years and corporate profits have gone up 29%. Some estimate that 53 cents of every dollar is corporate profit. More than half of what you spend is profit going into the pocket of the already obscenely rich. In the past 45 years, CEO compensation went up 1,085% while worker pay went up 24%.

To show how preposterous it has gotten, the Tesla board voted three times to pay Musk $50 billion. Twice a judge rejected it based on shareholder objection (awaiting new case). $50 billion is greater than the entire annual budget of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. At $1.6 million per hour, it is 220,000 times the federal minimum wage. We have salary caps for professional sports athletes, why not corporate CEOs? It would make them more competitive and benefit workers and society.

Oxfam has put out a new report: Unequal: The rise of a new American oligarchy and the agenda we need. Elizabeth Warren wrote the introduction and outlines how after World War II the workers shared in the profit they created, and the government invested in the people through public education, infrastructure, and policies. The middle class was built. Then with Reagan in 1980, we started the trip backward with the rich accumulating wealth and not paying their fair share.

This new analysis of federal wealth data reveals stark divides (see box 1). Between 1989 and 2022, a household at the 99th percentile (the cutoff for the top 1%) gained over $8.35 million, while the median U.S. household gained less than $83,000, and a household at the 20th percentile, less than $8,500 (see figure 2).

The accumulation at the top has been especially relentless—a household that would just qualify for the top 0.1% gained $39.5 million between 1989 and 2022, (9) while in 2025, the share of total assets owned by the top 0.1% hit its highest on record (12.6% of total assets) since the Federal Reserve began publishing data in 1989.

U.S. inequality is also shaped by historic and continued discrimination, resulting in stark and enduring disparities based on race and ethnicity, as well as gender (sic). In recent decades, average White household wealth increased 7.2 times more than Black household wealth, and 6.7 times more than Hispanic/Latin household wealth. As of 2022, the average wealth of a household headed by a White man was 16 times higher than that of households headed by a Black or Latina woman.

There’s not a single state, city, or county where a full-time worker making the minimum wage can afford a modest two-bedroom rental. Food insecurity is the highest it’s been since 2014.

It’s not an accident; it’s the plan.

The wealthiest 0.1% in the U.S. own 12.6% of assets and 24% of the stock market. The bottom half of the U.S. owns just 1.1% of the stock market. The Big Billionaires Bill will reduce the tax bill of the highest-earning 0.1% by an estimated $311,000 in 2027, while the lowest-income households—those making less than $15,000 annually—are expected to face tax increases.

Over 40% of the U.S. population—including 48.9% of children—is considered poor or low income. …During that same period, the average male-headed household gained four times the wealth of the average female-headed household, (31) and the wealth of the average White household increased 7.2 times more than the average Black household and 6.7 times more than average Hispanic/Latin household.

The high-income average of the U.S. is not helping the people. Of the 10 largest economies in the world, the U.S. has the highest rate of relative poverty, second-highest rate of child poverty and infant mortality, and the second lowest life expectancy. At the same time, we are second to last in using taxes and transfers to reduce equality, second to last in public spending, but number one for how much work is required to exit poverty. Within that same group of peer countries, the U.S. is dead last in generosity of unemployment benefits and second-to-last in public spending for families with children. Today the richest control more wealth than they did in the Gilded Age just before the 1929 Crash and a 10-year depression.

The disparities by race, sex, and wealth are illustrated in the following charts.

While the rates of poverty are higher for people of color, the rate for white men increased from 1989 to 2022 and the number of people under the poverty line and getting TANF and SNAP are more likely white. It is past time that we realize we are in the same boat and start working together.

One example of choosing poverty as a policy was the destruction of AFDC under President Clinton. AFDC had been one of the most effective poverty reduction programs. Many of us fought valiantly against this change but we lost. TANF was created and moved us one step further toward the poverty we now see.

Another big step toward poverty was the destruction of the estate tax starting with George W. Bush and finding fruition in the Big Billionaires Bill. Remember it was vilified as a “death tax” when in fact the purpose was to prevent accumulated wealth from being passed on without taxes to let the next generation either engage in more grift or piss away the money.

Corporations as well have benefited from changes in the tax code so today they pay nearly nothing especially compared to the profit they make. Fossil fuel companies still get an oil tax depletion allowance deduction as if they were start up corporations or as if the oil under the ground belongs to them in the first place. Rather, the cuts in the Big Billionaires Bill will toss 10 million people off health insurance and 2.4 million off SNAP.

We need policy to prohibit the race to the bottom globally. Unions need to work with unions in other countries not compete so we can prevent this. What we must do is simple and we have done it before – break up the big corporations, make the tax code progressive, support unions, and provide services and education.

Reject cuts to the safety net and embrace programs that in fact end poverty and ensure the human rights of all. Provide cash not government policing. Provide high quality public goods like education, mass transit, health care, childcare, paid leave. Support unions and provide worker protections such as heat protection. Raise the obscene federal minimum wage of $7.25, make no exceptions and link it to inflation. Get started now in creating cooperatives with worker and community ownership of such public goods as telephone services, garbage pick-up, electric delivery etc.

The rich are not going to help. As long as they can buy senators and representatives, they are not going to help. We have to do this ourselves. We have before and we can again.