Sam Pizzigati
Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org. His recent books include: "The Case for a Maximum Wage" (2018) and "The Rich Don't Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970" (2012).
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, August 31, 2010 The August Day Plutocracy Would Love Us to Forget Ex-Presidents almost always follow a small number of well-worn scripts. Some rush to cash in on their celebrity. Some do charitable good deeds. Some just lie low. Exactly one century ago, on August 31, 1910, we had an ex-President who took a brash and bold leap that took him far beyond these narrowly circumscribed roles. On that day, in the middle of Middle America, a former President — Theodore Roosevelt — essentially called on his fellow citizens to smash the nation’s rich down to democratic size. Read more |
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Views Monday, July 05, 2010 The Million-Dollar Penny Every summer, several financial firms competing to get the banking business of the world’s mega millionaires release what amounts to scorecards on global wealth. These data-packed reports tally the current number of our international rich and super-rich, by nation and region. Read more |
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Views Monday, May 24, 2010 Resurrect the Estate Tax Dan Duncan died at the end of March. The Houston gas pipeline mogul left behind a spouse, four children, four grandkids, and a fortune worth $9 billion. Duncan, a prominent philanthropist who supported cancer research and the Boy Scouts, left behind another distinction. He was the first American billionaire to ever leave his heirs a tax-free fortune. Read more |
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Views Monday, October 05, 2009 Getting Past the Smoke and Mirrors BACK IN THE MIDDLE AGES, shadowy figures known as alchemists claimed that they could turn lead into gold. We have alchemists today who don’t have to fake such miracles. We call them CEOs. Our contemporary power-suited alchemists can turn sinking sales, falling profits, even global economic collapse into personal mega-million-dollar windfalls. They have discovered, in effect, the secret to perpetual income growth. Read more |
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Views Wednesday, June 24, 2009 What Happened to the Crackdown on Executive Pay? Last February, amid public anger over millions in bonuses at bailed-out insurance giant AIG , our top national political leaders rushed to express their outrage - and even took some steps to place a lid on over-the-top executive pay. That lid has now come off. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, November 04, 2008 Ike Wanted to Spread Wealth, Too Nearly 50 years ago, a famous American gave a speech that advocated spreading the wealth. In some countries, this notable stated, “a few families are fabulously wealthy, contribute far less than they should in taxes, and are indifferent to the poverty of the great masses of the people.” “A country in this situation,” he went on, “is fraught with continual instability.” Read more |
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Views Tuesday, October 21, 2008 Rewrite Bailout Rules on CEO Pay Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has executed two fairly slick about-faces since Congress passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout two weeks ago. The first makes eminent sense. The second should outrage you. Let's start with Paulson's positive turn. His original bailout plan would have had the Treasury rush to spend billions buying up toxic mortgage-backed securities. His new plan instead will spend the bailout's first $250 billion buying up part-ownership in America's biggest banks. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 23, 2008 The Bailout and CEO Pay: What's 'Excessive'? Everyone knew this bailout was going to be big. Now the bailout has become even bigger. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is not just talking about bailing out mortgage lenders and traders any more. The federal government, Paulson now envisions, will be buying up all sorts of troubled investments. Even foreign banks will be able to get in on the bailout action. Meanwhile, a host of power-suited vultures are hovering overhead, anxiously awaiting federal contracts to manage -- for a handsome fee, of course -- all the bad debts the Treasury starts buying. Read more |
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Views Monday, September 01, 2008 Workers Need Added Clout To Close The Pay Gap with CEOs Polls show that most Americans are outraged by sky- high CEO pay. And why shouldn't they be? A generation ago, top CEOs made 30 to 40 times the pay of average workers. Last year, CEO pay outpaced average worker pay by 344 times. In effect, the gap between worker and executive pay has multiplied an amazing tenfold since the early 1980s. How could that be? Are executives working 10 times harder than they did three decades ago? Are they 10 times smarter? Of course not. Not one iota of evidence supports that notion. Read more |