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      Senator behind billionaires tax denounces Elon Musk Twitter poll stunt

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      US taxationSenator behind billionaires tax denounces Elon Musk Twitter poll stuntTesla owner offers to sell 10% of shares – as poll demandsRon Wyden has proposed tax to help fund Biden plans Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 14.19 ESTFirst published on Sun 7 Nov 2021 07.45 ESTAfter Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, the architect of the proposed billionaires tax that prompted the move dismissed the tweet as a stunt.It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert ReichRead more“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” said Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and chair of the Senate finance committee. “It’s time for the billionaires income tax.”When the poll closed on Sunday, nearly 3.5 million people had voted: 58% said Musk should sell the Tesla stock and 42% said he should not.Asked for comment, he tweeted: “I was prepared to accept either outcome.”Musk, who also owns SpaceX, was named by Forbes magazine as the first person worth more than $300bn. Reuters calculated that selling 10% of his Tesla shareholding would raise close to $21bn.Wyden has led Democrats pushing for billionaires to pay taxes when stock prices go up even if they do not sell shares, a concept called “unrealised gains”.Proponents of the tax say it would affect about 700 super-rich Americans, who would thus help pay for Joe Biden’s $1.75tn 10-year public spending proposal, which seeks to boost health and social care and to fund initiatives to tackle the climate crisis.Unveiling his proposal last month, Wyden said: “There are two tax codes in America. The first is mandatory for workers who pay taxes out of every paycheck. The second is voluntary for billionaires who defer paying taxes for years, if not indefinitely.“The billionaires income tax would ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans. No working person in America thinks it’s right that they pay their taxes and billionaires don’t.”Musk has a history of controversial behaviour on Twitter. Responding to Wyden’s original proposal, he tweeted: “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”On Saturday, he said: “Much is made lately of unrealised gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?“I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes. Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”In one response, the Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman tweeted: “Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll.”When Wyden introduced his proposed billionaires tax, Chuck Marr of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank, used the example of Jeff Bezos, with Musk a competitor for the title of world’s richest person, to explain how the proposal would work.The Amazon founder, Marr said, would contribute to the federal government on the basis of unrealised gains from his stock holdings, worth around $10bn, rather than a declared salary of around $80,000.Citing a bombshell ProPublica report from June this year which showed how little Bezos, Musk and other super-rich Americans pay into federal coffers, Marr titled his analysis: “Why a billionaires tax makes sense – or why the richest people in the country should pay income taxes as if they were the richest people in the country.”Democrats ‘thank God’ for infrastructure win after state election warningsRead moreThe Biden spending plan Wyden wants to help fund, known as Build Back Better, remains held up in Congress. House centrists are demanding nonpartisan analysis of its costs while centrist senators remain opposed to many of its goals.Democrats are also split over the proposed billionaires tax. Among those opposed is Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia who with Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona stands in the way of Build Back Better, wielding tremendous power in a chamber split 50-50 and therefore controlled by the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Speaking to reporters in October, Manchin said: “Everybody in this country that has been blessed and prospered should pay a patriotic tax.“If you’re to the point where you can use all of the tax forms to your advantage, and you end up with a zero tax-liability but have had a very, very good life and have had a lot of opportunities, there should be a 15% patriotic tax.”TopicsUS taxationElon MuskUS domestic policyBiden administrationUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS politicsIt’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working classRobert ReichResults in Virginia and New Jersey do not make Republican dog-whistle politics the future. The left must do more to help Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 01.03 EDTAfter Tuesday’s Democratic loss in the Virginia gubernatorial election and near-loss in New Jersey, I’m hearing a narrative about Democrats’ failure with white working-class voters that is fundamentally wrong.Is this a presidency-defining week for Biden? Politics Weekly Extra – podcastRead moreIn Thursday’s New York Times, David Leonhardt pointed out that the non-college voters who are abandoning the Democratic party “tend to be more religious, more outwardly patriotic and more culturally conservative than college graduates”. He then quotes a fellow Times columnist, the pollster Nate Cohn, who says “college graduates have instilled increasingly liberal cultural norms while gaining the power to nudge the Democratic party to the left. Partly as a result, large portions of the party’s traditional working-class base have defected to the Republicans”.Leonhardt adds that these defections have increased over the past decade and suggests Democratic candidates start listening to working-class voters’ concerns about “crime and political correctness”, their “mixed feelings about immigration and abortion laws”, and their beliefs “in God and in a strong America”.This narrative worries me in two ways. First, if “cultural” messages top economic ones, what’s to stop Democrats from playing the same cultural card Republicans have used for years to inflame the white working class: racism? Make no mistake: Glenn Youngkin focused his campaign in Virginia on critical race theory, which isn’t even taught in Virginia’s schools but comes out of the same disgraceful Republican dog-whistle tradition.The other problem with this “culture over economics” narrative is it overlooks the fact that after Ronald Reagan, the Democratic party turned its back on the working class.During the first terms of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. They scored some important victories, such as the Affordable Care Act and an expanded earned income tax credit.But both Clinton and Obama allowed the power of the working class to erode. Both ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing the millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs any means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.They stood by as corporations hammered trade unions, the backbone of the working class. Both refused to reform labor laws to impose meaningful penalties on companies that violated them or enable workers to form unions with simple up-or-down votes. Union membership sank from 22% of all workers when Clinton was elected to fewer than 11% today, denying the working class the bargaining leverage it needs to get a better deal.The Obama administration protected Wall Street from the consequences of its gambling addiction through a giant taxpayer-funded bailout but let millions of underwater homeowners drown.Both Clinton and Obama allowed antitrust to ossify – allowing major industries to become more concentrated and hence more economically and politically powerful.Finally, they turned their backs on campaign finance reform. In 2008, Obama was the first presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to reject public financing in his primary and general-election campaigns. He never followed up on his re-election campaign promise to pursue a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United v FEC, the 2010 supreme court opinion that opened the floodgates to big money in politics.What happens when you combine freer trade, shrinking unions, Wall Street bailouts, growing corporate power and the abandonment of campaign finance reform? You shift political and economic power to the wealthy and you shaft the working class.Adjusted for inflation, American workers today are earning almost as little as they did 30 years ago, when the American economy was a third its present size.Biden’s agenda for working people – including lower prescription drug prices, paid family leave, stronger unions and free community college – has followed the same sad trajectory, due to the power of big money. Big Pharma has blocked prescription drug reform. A handful of Democratic senators backed by big money have refused to support paid family leave. Big money has killed labor law reform.Resilience: the one word progressives need in the face of Trump, Covid and more | Robert ReichRead moreDemocrats could win back the white working class by putting together a large coalition of the working class and poor, of whites, Blacks and Latinos, of everyone who has been shafted by the huge shift in wealth and power to the top. This would give Democrats the political clout to reallocate power in the economy – rather than merely enact palliatives that paper over the increasing concentration of power at the top.But to do this Democrats would have to end their financial dependence on big corporations, Wall Street and the wealthy. And they would have to reject the convenient story that American workers care more about cultural issues than about getting a better deal in an economy that’s been delivering them a worsening deal for decades.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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      Elon Musk asks Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of Tesla stock

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      Elon MuskElon Musk asks Twitter followers if he should sell 10% of Tesla stockEntrepreneur refers to US proposal for ‘billionaires tax’Nearly 56% of respondents say Musk should sell shares Reuters in New YorkSat 6 Nov 2021 17.38 EDTLast modified on Sat 6 Nov 2021 21.05 EDTElon Musk on Saturday asked his 62.5 million followers on Twitter if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.Let them eat space! Elon Musk and the race to end world hunger | Arwa MahdawiRead more“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk wrote in a tweet referring to a “billionaires’ tax” proposed by Democrats in the US Senate.Musk tweeted that he would abide by the results of the poll. It received more than 700,000 responses in the hour after Musk posted it, with nearly 56% of respondents approving the proposal to sell the shares.Musk’s shareholding in Tesla comes to about 170.5 million shares as of 30 June and selling 10% of his stock would amount close to $21bn based on Friday’s closing, according to Reuters calculations.Analysts say he may have to offload a significant number of shares anyway to pay taxes since a large number of options will expire next year.The comments from Musk come after the proposal in Congress to tax billionaires’ assets to help pay for Joe Biden’s social and climate-change agenda. Musk is one of the world’s richest people and owner of companies including SpaceX and Neuralink. He has criticized the billionaires’ tax on Twitter.“Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere,” Musk said. “I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”Tesla board members including Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal have recently sold shares in the electric carmaker. Kimbal Musk sold 88,500 shares while fellow board member Ira Ehrenpreis sold shares worth more than $200m.TopicsElon MuskTeslaUS taxationUS domestic policyUS politicsBiden administrationUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Biden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure bill

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      The ObserverJoe BidenBiden hails ‘monumental step forward’ as Democrats pass infrastructure billThe president will sign $1tn package into law after House ended months-long standoff by approving bipartisan deal

      ‘She betrayed us’: Arizona voters baffled by Kyrsten Sinema
      0Martin Pengelly in New York and David Smith in WashingtonSat 6 Nov 2021 12.41 EDTFirst published on Sat 6 Nov 2021 10.45 EDTJoe Biden saluted a “monumental step forward as a nation” on Saturday, after House Democrats finally reached agreement and sent a $1tn infrastructure package to his desk to be signed, a huge boost for an administration which has struggled for victories.Trumpism without Trump: how Republican dog-whistles exploited Democratic divisionsRead more“This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America,” Biden said, “and it’s long overdue.”There was also a setback, however, as Democrats postponed a vote on an even larger bill. That 10-year, $1.85tn spending plan to bolster health, family and climate change programmes, known as Build Back Better, was sidetracked after centrists demanded a cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Biden said he was confident he could get it passed.Walking out to address reporters at the White House, the president began with a joke at the expense of his predecessor, Donald Trump.“Finally, it’s infrastructure week,” he said.Under Trump, the administration’s failure to focus on infrastructure amid constant scandal became a national punchline.“We’re just getting started,” Biden said. “It is something that’s long overdue but long has been talked about in Washington but never actually been done.“The House of Representatives passed an Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That’s a fancy way of saying a bipartisan infrastructure bill, once-in-a-generation investment that’s going to create millions of jobs, modernise our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our broadband, a range of things turning the climate crisis into an opportunity, and a put us on a path to win the economic competition of the 21st century that we face with China and other large countries in the rest of the world.”The House approved the $1tn bill late on Friday, after Democrats resolved a months-long standoff between progressives and centrists. The measure passed 228-206. Thirteen Republicans, mostly moderates, supported the bill while six progressive Democrats opposed it, among them Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.Approval sent the bill to the desk of a president whose approval ratings have dropped and whose party struggled in elections this week. Biden said he would not sign the bill this weekend because he wanted those who passed it to be there when he did so.“We’re looking more forward to having shovels in the ground,” Biden said. “To begin rebuilding America.“For all of you at home, who feel left behind and forgotten in an economy that’s changing so rapidly, this bill is for you. The vast majority of those thousands of jobs that will be created don’t require a college degree. There’ll be jobs in every part of the country: red states, blue states, cities, small towns, rural communities, tribal communities.“This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America, and it’s long overdue.”This week, Democratic candidates for governor lost in Virginia and squeaked home in New Jersey, two blue-leaning states. Those setbacks made leaders, centrists and progressives impatient to demonstrate they know how to govern a year before midterm elections that could see Republicans retake Congress.At the White House, Biden said: “Each state is different and I don’t know but I think the one message that came across was, ‘Get something done … stop talking, get something done.’ And so I think that’s what the American people are looking for.“All the talk about the elections and what do they mean? They want us to deliver. Democrats, they want us to deliver. Last night we proved we can on one big item. We delivered.”The postponement of a vote on the spending bill dashed hopes of a double win. But in a deal brokered by Biden and party leaders, five moderates agreed to back the bill if CBO estimates of its costs are consistent with numbers from the White House and congressional analysts.The agreement, in which lawmakers promised to vote by the week of 15 November, was a significant step towards shipping the bill to the Senate. Its chances there are not certain: it must pass on the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris and with the approval of Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, centrists who have proved obstructive so far.The spending bill “is fiscally responsible”, Biden said. “That’s a fancy way of saying it is fully paid for. It doesn’t raise the deficit by a single penny. And it actually reduces the deficit according to the leading economists in this country over the long term. And it’s paid for by making sure that the wealthiest Americans, the biggest corporations begin to pay their fair share.”Republicans have highlighted what they say will be the bill’s effects on dangerous economic inflation.Why does the media keep saying this election was a loss for Democrats? It wasn’t | Rebecca SolnitRead more“According to economists,” Biden said, “this is going to be easing inflationary pressures … by lowering costs for working families.”He also said: “We got out of the blue a couple of weeks ago a letter from 17 Nobel prize winners in economics and they determined that [the two bills] will ease inflationary pressures not create them.”Biden acknowledged that he will not get Republican votes for the spending bill and must “figure out” how to unite his party. Friday was an exhausting day for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. She told reporters: “Welcome to my world. This is the Democratic party. We are not a lockstep party.”Biden said he was confident he could find the votes. Asked what gave him that confidence, the president alluded to his legislative experience as a senator and vice-president, saying: “Me.”On Friday night, Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, delayed travel to Delaware as the president worked the phones. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters Biden even called her mother in India. It was unclear why.“This was not to bribe me, this is when it was all done,” Jayapal said, adding that her mother told her she “just kept screaming like a little girl”.
      Associated Press contributed to this report
      TopicsJoe BidenThe ObserverBiden administrationUS politicsUS domestic policyUS taxationUS economyUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Democrats’ tax plan to pay for Biden agenda would affect 700 of America’s super-rich

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      US SenateDemocrats’ tax plan to pay for Biden agenda would affect 700 of America’s super-richProposed tax on wealthiest people in the US would include Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Charles Koch Lauren Aratani and agenciesWed 27 Oct 2021 15.05 EDTFirst published on Wed 27 Oct 2021 08.13 EDTSenate Democrats on Wednesday unveiled a new billionaires tax proposal, an entirely new entry in the tax code, designed to help pay for Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic policy package and edge his party closer to an overall agreement on a shrunken version of the administration’s $3.5tn flagship legislation.‘If we had a deal we would tell you’: disagreements rage over Biden agenda despite White House assurances – liveRead moreThe proposed tax would affect those with more than $1bn in assets or incomes of more than $100m a year, and it could begin to shore up the ambitious social services and climate plan Biden is racing to finish before departing this week for the global climate summit, Cop26, in Scotland.Democrats behind the proposal say that about 700 of America’s super-rich taxpayers would be affected by the new tax proposal.The wealthiest people in the US include household names such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who is worth almost a quarter of a trillion dollars. Also included are Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, investor Warren Buffett, the Walton family members behind Walmart, and the industrialist and libertarian activist Charles Koch.Reports show that the wealthiest Americans became even richer during the pandemic, with the 400 richest seeing a 40% rise in their wealth as the pandemic shuttered large parts of the US economy.“The Billionaires Income Tax would ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans,” said the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the chairman of the Senate finance committee who authored the new billionaire tax proposal. “No working person in America thinks it’s right that they pay their taxes and billionaires don’t.”However, the proposal drew doubts and criticisms from Republicans and some Democrats, including Joe Manchin, a centrist who has been central to efforts to slim down the reconciliation bill.Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, the West Virginia senator said wealthy Americans should pay a “patriotic tax” of 15% to ensure that all citizens are giving something back to their country.But when it comes to the billionaire tax, Manchin said: “I don’t like it. I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people.”Wyden’s House of Representatives counterpart, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, said the billionaire tax “will be very difficult because of its complexity.”Later, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked whether the administration was confident that Democrats’ plan would withstand legal scrutiny.“We’re not going to support anything we don’t think is legal,” she said. “But I will tell you the president supports the billionaire tax. He looks forward to working with Congress and Chairman Wyden to make sure the highest-income Americans pay their fair share.”At the heart of the proposal is a change in what the federal government considers income for the wealthiest individuals. Rather than just basing tax on the paycheck a billionaire receives from a company, the tax would target the unrealized gains of billionaires, which includes the billions of dollars of shares they hold in their companies.Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, for example, makes a salary of about $80,000 a year, though his Amazon stock holdings increase in value over $10bn a year.“If Mr Bezos does not sell any of his Amazon shares in a given year, the income tax ignores the $10bn gain, and effectively he is taxed like a middle-class person making $80,000 a year,” wrote Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities thinktank, in a Twitter thread explaining the Democrats’ proposal.This happens, Marr said, because the federal government does not treat gains made on stocks as income until the stock is sold. What billionaires do to get money is take out huge personal loans, using their shares as collateral. ProPublica revealed that Tesla’s Elon Musk pledged 92m shares of Tesla stock, currently worth over $1,000 a share, as collateral for personal loans.“Why do wealthy people take out these loans? A big reason is to avoid paying taxes they would have to pay if they sold some of their assets,” Marr wrote. “With this proposal, policymakers, in effect, are acknowledging that this is a glaring loophole in the income tax that needs to be closed.”Musk took a dig at the plan on Twitter, responding to a user who expressed concern that the proposal, if passed, would open the door to future tax hikes that would cover a wider range of middle-class Americans with investments.“Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you,” tweeted Musk, who could owe as much as $50bn in taxes under the proposal.Coupled with a new 15% corporate minimum tax, the proposal would provide alternative revenue sources that Biden needs to win over one key Democrat, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who had rejected the party’s earlier idea of reversing the Trump-era tax breaks on corporations and the wealthy to raise revenue.Biden met late on Tuesday evening with Sinema and Manchin at the White House.With the US Senate split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, Biden needs every Democratic senator on board to pass the budget bill with the allowable simple majority, using the so-called reconciliation process – with Vice-President Kamala Harris the casting vote in the traditional role of president of the Senate.“No senator wants to stand up and say, ‘Gee, I think it’s just fine for billionaires to pay little or no taxes for years on end’,” said Wyden.Biden and his party are homing in on at least $1.75tn in healthcare, childcare and climate change programs, scaling back what had been outlined as a $3.5tn plan, as they try to wrap up negotiations.Taken together, the new tax on billionaires and the 15% corporate minimum tax are designed to fulfill Biden’s promise that no new taxes hit those earning less than $400,000 a year, or $450,000 for couples. Biden insists all the new spending will be fully paid for and not added to the national debt.TopicsUS SenateUS CongressDemocratsJoe BidenUS taxationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Why corporate social responsibility is BS | Robert Reich

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      OpinionBiden administrationWhy corporate social responsibility is BSRobert ReichWhile big corporations tell Americans how virtuous they are, they lobby up a storm against Biden’s social policy bill Sun 26 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 27 Sep 2021 09.46 EDTIn recent years, “corporate social responsibility” has been viewed by some as the answer to the multiple failings of capitalism. Chief executives have responded to all sorts of problems – worsening climate change, widening inequality, soaring healthcare costs and so on – by promising their corporations will lead the way to solutions because they’re committed to being “socially responsible”.House Democrats are scared to tax billionaires – that’s a costly mistake | Robert ReichRead moreNinety-eight percent of this is rubbish. CEOs won’t do anything that hurts their bottom lines. They’re in the business of making as much money as possible, not solving social problems.In fact, real social change would prevent them from doing many of the hugely profitable things they now do. Which means they won’t change their ways unless they’re required by law to change (and even then, only when the penalty times the probability of getting caught is higher than the profits from continuing anyway). Their soothing promises of social responsibility are intended to forestall such laws.I’ve seen this repeatedly. When I was secretary of labor, big corporations would violate laws on worker safety, wages and hours and pensions, whenever doing so was cheaper than obeying the laws. And they’d fight like hell against such laws to begin with – all the while telling the public what wonderful citizens they were.You may recall that in August 2019, the Business Roundtable – one of Washington’s most prestigious corporate groups, on whose board sit the CEOs of Apple, Walmart and JPMorgan – issued a widely publicized statement expressing “a fundamental commitment” to the wellbeing of “all of our stakeholders” (emphasis in the original), including their employees, communities and the environment.The statement was widely hailed as marking a new era of corporate social responsibility.Since then, the Roundtable and its members have issued a continuous stream of jejune statements about their dedication to such things as providing childcare, pre-K and affordable healthcare, promoting community college and workforce training, alleviating poverty and reversing climate change.It turns out these are exactly the priorities in Joe Biden’s $3.5tn reconciliation bill. But guess what? The Business Roundtable isn’t lobbying for the bill. It’s lobbying intensely against it.Jessica Boulanger, a spokeswoman, told the Washington Post the Roundtable is engaged in “a significant, multifaceted campaign” to stop tax increases that would finance the bill, and will “continue to ramp up our efforts in the coming weeks”. The group is launching a seven-figure digital advertising campaign to oppose the bill.Hypocrisy? Only if you believed the Roundtable BS about corporate social responsibility. If you know the truth – that corporations will do whatever they can to maximize their profits and share values, social responsibility be damned – there’s nothing surprising here.Why didn’t business groups fight the president’s infrastructure bill? Because government spending on infrastructure helps their bottom lines by lowering their costs of procuring supplies and getting goods to market. Social responsibility had nothing to do with it.It’s tempting to chalk all this up to “corporate greed”. But that makes sense only if you think corporations are capable of emotions, such as greed. They’re not. Corporations aren’t people, no matter what the supreme court says. They’re bundles of contracts.The specific people who enter those contracts (on behalf of big corporations as well as thousands of people who run vast investment funds on behalf of millions of shareholders) are neither greedy nor socially responsible. They’re merely doing what they understand to be their jobs. Greed and social responsibility have been laundered out of these transactions.If we want these transactions to change – to align better with public needs rather than private profits – laws must change. For example, taxes on big corporations must rise in order to fund public investments and safety nets.But such laws won’t change if corporations continue to spend vast sums on politics. Corporate spokespeople like Boulanger of the Business Roundtable – along with platoons of corporate lobbyists and influence peddlers, corporate lawyers and hired-gun economists, corporate political operatives and PR flaks – together form in effect a fourth branch of government, wielding huge and increasing power. About one out of every four people now working in downtown Washington fills one of these roles.US’s wealthiest 1% are failing to pay $160bn a year in taxes, report findsRead moreThe result is clear. The most telling trends over the last three decades have been the growing share of the economy going into corporate profits – generating ever-greater compensation packages for top executives and ever-higher payouts for big investors (all of whom live off shares of stock) – and the declining share going to most Americans as wages and salaries.The meaningless blather over “corporate social responsibility” is intended to mask these trends. Biden’s $3.5tn plan is aimed at reversing them.But big business is doing everything in its power to sabotage Biden’s plan. The only way to stop this sabotage is to ignore all mention of corporate social responsibility and make one hell of a ruckus in support of Biden’s plan, as well as laws to reduce the power of big money in politics.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsBiden administrationOpinionUS domestic policyUS politicsUS political financingUS taxationcommentReuse this content More