How the US Tax Code Fuels Market Concentration
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(Photo by Inverse Couple Images/Getty Images)
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Today, the top 10 percent of corporations in the United States control 95 percent of profits—and the corporate tax code is partly to blame.
In a new brief, authors Sandy Brian Hager of City, University of London, and Joseph Baines of King’s College London, explore how in recent years, the post-tax profit share of the largest corporations is actually higher than their pre-tax profit share.
“The tax code today, in other words, seems to be providing an important structural competitive advantage to large, super-profitable corporations over their smaller competitors,” Niko Lusiani, director of corporate power at the Roosevelt Institute, writes in the foreword.
What’s more, instead of investing these profits in productive capacity—like increasing employment and wages—corporations have doubled down on paying out shareholders.
Read more in the latest installment of the Roosevelt Institute’s Taxing Monopolies series.
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Securing Long-Term Climate Investment through Policy Feedback
The US has seen massive investment in green energy infrastructure, but how can we be sure that the climate transition is here to stay? Policy feedback might hold the answer, Roosevelt’s research associate for industrial policy and trade, Sunny Malhotra, writes in a new blog post.
Policy feedback is the process through which policies change politics, influencing the creation and implementation of future policies. Malhotra uses the example of a solar power policy implemented in Spain a decade ago—although the program had some unintended effects, by “mobilizing capital, people, and interest groups,” policymakers used policy feedback to “[ensure] lasting change in the renewable energy sector.”
By creating buy-in and bringing in powerful constituencies, the Inflation Reduction Act is likely to secure the longevity of renewable energy policy in the US.
Read more in “Can Policy Feedback Inoculate Clean Transitions? The Case of Spanish Solar.”
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Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Earlier today, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the Roosevelt Institute Board of Directors, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Roosevelt’s grandmother, Eleanor Roosevelt, championed and led the drafting of the UDHR, which was formally adopted by the UN on December 10, 1948.
“It is a particularly fraught time in the world to be celebrating the creation of such an optimistic document,” Roosevelt said. “If my grandmother’s legacy is to have lasting power, we all need to pick up that mantle of human rights and do everything we can to make those rights real in the world today.”
Watch Roosevelt's complete remarks here.
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