| Friend, Thousands of workers are on strike across the nation demanding liveable wages, while billionaires like Elon Musk keep having a banner year. Musk is publicly destroying Twitter in front of our eyes, yet he still pocketed $95 billion in just the last seven months. Jeff Bezos made $57 billion. Oracle founder Larry Ellison, $37 billion.(1) All in all, just 500 (mostly) men pocketed $852 billion in the first half of 2023, averaging $14 million a day for each of them.(2) How did they do it? By jacking up prices to obscene levels on the rest of us and squeezing the worker. While these billionaires are pocketing more money than ever, the average middle class household has lost $33,000 in wealth so far this year.(3)
Wealth isn't created in a vacuum -- when the billionaires win big, we lose big. We are by far the richest country in the world, and there is plenty to go around, but not when just 500 people are sitting on top of trillions of dollars. For far too long we've let billionaires hide in tax shelters while corporations pay zero taxes. That's how we've ended up with people like Musk with a bank account the size of a small nation's while 1 out of 2 of the rest of us don't have $1,000 to cover an emergency.(4) But those profitting off of our hard work are trying to blame President Biden when really it's their unethical price increases and worker exploitation causing the inequity. That's where Representative Barbara Lee's Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth and Reverse Community Harms (OLIGARCH Act) comes in.(5) The Act would put a progressive tax in place for all people whose wealth equals at least 1,000 times that of the average household, up to 8% for those whose holdings are 1 million times the average household (like Bezos and Musk). More important, the Act would provide for audits to ensure that the billionaires don't hide their money away. The OLIGARCH Act would help the promise of America -- support for the working class, paid family leave, and affordable care -- become a reality while reining in the power of unchecked wealth. We need to let our representatives know that the vast majority of us want a real tax on out-of-control billionaires. Will you sign on? Yes, I'll tell my representative to pass the OLIGARCH Act now. Thank you for joining the fight. –Irene, along with Angela, Annie, Isidra, Jen, and Lindsay (and the rest of the Courage team)
Footnotes:  |
||||