Wealth Inequality

A report by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has been making the rounds, and its message is not pretty: the country is hurtling toward social collapse. The “Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada” points to compounding crises, from economic stagnation and ecological disaster to technological disruption and a general erosion of trust in institutions.

Americans are increasingly unlikely to believe that those who work hard will get ahead and that their children will be better off than they are, according to two recent polls.

Why it matters: The polls reflect concerns that the American dream is dimming — or already extinguished.

Driving the news: The WSJ asked respondents whether they believe "the American Dream — that if you work hard you'll get ahead — still holds true."

Google CEO Sundar Pichai received a hefty pay raise last year, making him one of the highest-paid CEOs in America. Last week, his company announced the authorization of a $70 billion stock buyback.

Meanwhile, Google parent Alphabet has been aggressively cutting costs, including the elimination of 12,000 jobs, in response to slowing revenue growth.

Earth Day is Saturday! Hooray?

"Saving humanity from the climate crisis," says EarthDay.org, requires us to "push away from the dirty fossil fuel economy."

Sounds logical.

But my latest video explains why doing that is cruel to poor people.

U.S. President Joe Biden will seek to raise the Medicare tax on high earners and push for more drug price negotiations to help keep the federal health insurance program solvent through at least 2050 as part of his budget proposal this week, the White House said.

The tax increase from 3.8 percent to 5 percent on earned and unearned income above $400,000 is part of a package of proposals aimed at extending the solvency of Medicare’s Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund by at least 25 years, the White House said in a statement on Tuesday.

Billionaires have had a bad year.

Globally, the world’s billionaires lost nearly $2 trillion, combined, in 2022, according to Forbes. The United States’ billionaires lost $660 billion collectively, the highest of any country by Forbes’s count, as tech stock prices took a nosedive fueled by rising interest rates, soaring inflation and a worsening economy.

Of America’s billionaires, Tesla, SpaceX, and newly minted Twitter CEO Elon Musk saw his fortune diminish the most. Musk’s net worth dipped by about $115 billion this year, according to Forbes.

Low-income Americans are no longer the only ones living paycheck to paycheck. High-income earners have a hard time balancing the family books, too.

According to a recent LendingClub report, as of August, 45% of Americans who make six figures are living paycheck to paycheck, up from 38% a year ago.

The Internal Revenue Service is receiving $80 billion from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, sparking concerns that the tax collection agency will use the injection of cash to expand audits on Americans making less than $400,000.

The Biden administration vows that will not happen.

And Treasury Department officials insist they have a plan for going after wealthy tax cheats while keeping their promise not to expand the likelihood of auditing folks at lower income levels.

They did it: Senate Democrats have finally passed a reconciliation package after more than a year of negotiations. Gone are one-time priorities like child care and housing; Americans will have to settle for the country’s largest ever investment in fighting climate change, plus some important strides toward lowering health care costs.

So now Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter.

It wasn’t enough to loudly criticize the platform — on the platform — for not adhering to his personal standards.

It wasn’t enough to secretively buy a 9.2 percent stake in the social media company, becoming its largest individual shareholder. It wasn’t enough to accept an offer to join the company’s board (which provoked huge internal outcry from the company’s employees). It wasn’t even enough of a power trip for him to then reject that offer five days later.