Chuck Collins
Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he co-edits Inequality.org, and is author of the new book, "Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good." He is co-founder of Wealth for the Common Good, recently merged with the Patriotic Millionaires. He is co-author of "99 to 1: The Moral Measure of the Economy" and, with Bill Gates Sr., of "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes."
Articles by this author
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Views Wednesday, April 21, 2021 Responding to Concerns About the Emergency Charity Stimulus Proposal Few people welcome change when they benefit from the status quo. So it’s not surprising that players within the philanthropic community would raise concerns about a proposal to change how much they are required to take out of their warehouses and give directly to charities. On the other hand,... Read more |
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Views Thursday, April 15, 2021 A Third of U.S. Billionaire Wealth Gains Since 1990 Have Come During Pandemic The wealth of US billionaires has steadily grown over the last thirty-one years. But a third of $4.3 trillion in billionaire wealth gains since 1990 have come during the last 13 months of the pandemic. Between 1990 and April 2021, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires increased 19-fold, from $... Read more |
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Views Thursday, April 01, 2021 Global Billionaire Wealth Increases to $4 Trillion During Pandemic As over 2.8 million people have died globally from Covid-19 in the past year, the wealth of the world’s billionaires has surged. The planet’s 2,365 billionaires have seen their wealth increase $4 trillion, or 54 percent, during the pandemic year. Their combined wealth rose from $8.04 trillion to $... Read more |
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Views Sunday, March 28, 2021 To Fix the Nation's Woes, Tax Wealth An annual wealth tax, levied on those with assets of more than $50 million, could solve a number of festering problems, from raising revenue for pandemic relief to slowing a democracy-disrupting concentration of power. It’s an idea whose time has come. A wealth tax would reverse more than a half-... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 25, 2021 Sanders Estate Tax Bill Shuts Down Wealth Hiding Loopholes Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced two new pieces of legislation, including a bill to restore the corporate tax rate to its pre-Trump levels. The second bill, the "For the 99.5 Percent Act," is a reform of the federal estate tax, our nation’s only levy on the inherited wealth of multi-... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, March 24, 2021 10 Biggest Pandemic Profiteers A year ago, the Institute for Policy Studies published " Billionaire Bonanza 2020: Wealth Windfalls, Tumbling Taxes and Pandemic Profiteers," and began tracking billionaire wealth gains as unemployment surged. We teamed up with Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) to track the wealth growth of America’... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 18, 2021 The Rich Are Not Remotely Paying Their Fair Share We hear it all the time: The wealthy must pay their fair share in tax. Many of the wealthy, and the members of Congress they sponsor, contend they already are. And they have all sorts of facts and figures to make that appear true. After all, for a billionaire, even a tiny tax payment in percentage... Read more |
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Views Monday, March 01, 2021 COVID-19 Has Exacerbated Extreme Levels of Inequality. It’s Time for a Billionaire Wealth Tax What should good societies do when a wealthy few reap enormous financial windfalls during a global pandemic? While millions lost their lives, livelihoods, health and wealth, the world’s billionaires and super-rich prospered. According to research from Americans for TaxFairness and the Institute for... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 23, 2021 Nomadland: The Lifetime Impacts of Gender-Bias in Wages If you grew up agitated that "women earn 59 cents on the dollar," for the same work as men, there’s a movie for you. At the beginning of the new film, Nomadland , one of the characters tells Fern, the lead character played beautifully by Frances McDormand: "My social security check is $550. How am... Read more |
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Views Saturday, February 13, 2021 Taxes on the Rich: One-Sixth of What They Used to Be America hasn’t stopped taxing its wealthiest citizens entirely. But that’s where we’re headed. According to a new IPS briefing paper , the richest .01 percent of Americans, about 33,000 lucky souls today, now pay just one-sixth of what they used to pay in tax, when measured as a percentage of their... Read more |