[Champions of a more egalitarian society made important strides,
building the power of workers while reducing the power of wealthy tax
dodgers and greedy pharma execs. ]
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THE TOP 10 INEQUALITY VICTORIES OF 2022  
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Sarah Anderson
December 19, 2022
Inequality.org
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_ Champions of a more egalitarian society made important strides,
building the power of workers while reducing the power of wealthy tax
dodgers and greedy pharma execs. _

, aclu.org

 

Congratulations to everyone who worked to move the country and the
world towards greater equity in 2022. Herewith are 10 of the most
inspiring economic inequality victories of the year.

1. THE UNION BOOM 

No question. The union organizing surge has been this year’s top
story. Petitions for union representation jumped 53 percent
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over 2021. What made the surge truly historic? The explosion of
activity in workplaces once considered hopeless for unionization.

Warehouse workers shook the foundation of Amazon, prevailing against
harsh intimidation tactics to win the first U.S. union election at the
e-commerce giant and building campaigns in several other states, most
recently in Minnesota
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A survey commissioned by the Institute for Policy Studies found that
nearly two-thirds
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residents support the ongoing Black worker-led union drive at an
Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama – a remarkable shift in
what’s been historically a fiercely anti-union state.

Starbucks baristas busted the myth that fast food workers are
impossible to organize. They voted union in at least 260 stores
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Chipotle
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and elsewhere.

Now the overpaid CEOs
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at Amazon and Starbucks need to negotiate fair contracts with these
employees. The top execs at both companies grabbed far more than 1,000
times [[link removed]] as much as
their company’s median worker pay in 2021.

Union power can both raise worker wages – and rein in excessive
wealth at the top. In the middle of the 20th century, as our Sam
Pizzigati points out,
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unions helped “flatten grand private plutocratic fortunes.”

2. TAXING THE RICH 

Remember the heady days of 2021 when the Build Back Better
negotiations had a billionaire tax
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and other bold inequality-busting tax proposals in play, all with
strong public support
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When Republicans and two Democratic Senators blocked that deal, I
thought we’d have to wait until 2024 before seeing any progress on
the fair taxation front. But 2022 saw some important victories – at
the federal, state, and municipal levels.

In a piece for CNN
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Rebekah Entralgo and I run down the tax wins in the Inflation
Reduction Act, the Democrats’ $700 billion climate and social
spending bill. The law’s biggest revenue-raiser: a 15 percent
minimum tax on big corporations that will help curb rampant tax
dodging.

The new law will also boost IRS enforcement so the ultra-rich pay what
they owe instead of getting away with hiding their wealth through
complex accounting tricks. Republicans have over recent years squeezed
the agency’s funding to the point where today the IRS actually has
fewer expert staff
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to audit the complex tax returns of the wealthy and big corporations
than the agency had in the 1950s.

Fair tax advocates also notched big wins this year through ballot
initiatives
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In Massachusetts, voters approved an income surtax
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of 4 percent on annual individual income above $1 million, with
revenue going mostly towards public education and transportation. Can
we get similar campaigns going in other Democratic trifecta states?

Two California cities passed ballot measure taxes to fund affordable
housing. San Franciscans approved a groundbreaking tax on vacant
buildings
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and Los Angeles voters backed a “mansion tax
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3. CRACKING DOWN ON A CEO PAY SCAM

As consumers have struggled with rising costs, corporate CEOs have
splurged on stock buyback sprees. This legal form of stock
manipulation artificially inflates the value of executive stock-based
pay – while doing nothing for workers.

Get this: We calculated
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could’ve given every one of its 325,000 employees a $40,000 raise
with the $13 billion they blew on buybacks in 2021. Instead, the
company’s median worker pay _fell _7.6 percent to $22,697. The
Lowe’s CEO, meanwhile, pocketed $17.9 million.

In 2022, we started to see some blowback against buybacks. The
Inflation Reduction Act introduced a 1 percent excise tax
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on such share repurchases. Biden officials have also started wielding
the power of the public purse against this CEO pay inflation scam. The
administration is giving a leg up
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in the awarding of new semiconductor manufacturing subsidies to
companies that agree to forego buybacks.

4. BEATING BACK MANCHIN’S “DIRTY DEAL”

Joe Manchin is not used to losing. In the evenly divided Senate, the
conservative Democrat has held enormous power. But climate justice
activists in 2022 mobilized massive – and so far successful –
opposition to the West Virginia coal millionaire’s
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repeated efforts to ram through a permitting reform that would weaken
environmental protections.

My Institute for Policy Studies colleague Basav Sen
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the bill’s fast-track approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline
project as a particularly blatant example of “crony capitalist
corruption.” The developers behind that natural gas pipeline, which
poses serious threats to communities and the climate, have funneled
more than $70,000 into Manchin’s political campaign coffers.

“We can’t predict the final outcome of this fight,” Sen says,
“but supporters of Manchin’s dirty deal can rest assured they’ve
picked a fight with the wrong people.”

5. STRIKING A BLOW AGAINST BIG PHARMA GREED 

Big Pharma’s not used to losing either. Pfizer alone has
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76 lobbyists working to protect the industry’s enormous profits by
keeping drug costs high. But the pharma lobby suffered a rare setback
in 2022 when Congress included measures in the Inflation Reduction Act
that require the makers of 10 high-priced drugs to either negotiate
the pricing of those drugs with Medicare or face a new excise tax. The
law also requires drug companies to pay rebates to Medicare if they
hike prices faster than inflation for drugs used by Medicare
beneficiaries.

Bitter about this rare loss on Capitol Hill, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla
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labeled the law’s provisions “to single out” his industry as
just plain “wrong.” The pharma exec no doubt has a hard time
relating to people who’ve had to choose between paying for medicine
or putting food on their family’s table. Bourla’s 2021 pay soared
above $24 million.

6. RAISING WAGE FLOORS 

With Republicans blocking a raise in the federal minimum wage for more
than a decade now, advocates are fighting this battle through state
and local legislation and direct democracy.

In the November election, voters in two states
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approved ballot initiatives to increase their wage floors –
including in deep-red Nebraska, where they greenlighted a $15 minimum.

The federal minimum wage for restaurant servers and other tipped
workers has been frozen [[link removed]]
even longer, stuck at just $2.13 per hour since 1991. But outside the
Washington beltway, that’s changing too.

Mid-term voters in the District of Columbia overwhelmingly approved
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a ballot measure to phase out the city’s subminimum wage for tipped
workers. Eight states have approved similar  proposals, although a
Michigan measure is tied up in the courts.

Andy Shallal, the owner of nine Busboys and Poets restaurants,
applauded
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the outcome of the DC ballot initiative, saying it “will bring us
one step closer to being a more equitable society.”

7. RIGHTING A HISTORIC WRONG FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS 

Through a shameful holdover from slavery, labor laws in most of the
United States explicitly exclude domestic workers. These workers, not
coincidentally, are almost all women and mostly women of color.
Finally, they are winning some long-overdue rights.

In early December, the D.C. Council voted unanimously to adopt a
Domestic Workers Bill of Rights that extends crucial protections –
like pay and leave rights and health and safety protections – to the
capital city’s nearly 10,000 domestic workers. Final approval is
expected on December 20.

That approval will leave three cities – D.C., Seattle, and
Philadelphia – and 10 states with such protections on the books. And
in a sign of progress at the federal level, Congress this year held
the first hearing
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on a national Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

A National Domestic Workers Alliance survey
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has revealed that workers in states with Bill of Rights protections
have better working conditions than those in other states.

“The more places that are advancing these policies,” advocate
Erica Sklar told Inequality.org’s Bella DeVaan
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“the more other states can look to them as a model, to know that
these protections are achievable and powerful for workers, employers,
and allies.”

8. A PROGRESSIVE WAVE IN LATIN AMERICA

Social movements catapulted three presidential candidates with strong
inequality-fighting agendas to victory over the past year: Gustavo
Petro in Colombia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, and Gabriel
Boric in Chile.

Petro recently scored a major triumph with the passage of a new law
that will increase taxes on corporate profits and on coal and oil
windfalls. Most notably, it will introduce a permanent progressive
wealth tax. The government estimates this wealth tax will generate
$319 million per year from the ultra-rich. In my colleague Omar
Ocampo’s analysis
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revenue could be far higher if the law’s new anti-evasion mechanisms
prove effective.

Lula, the former trade union leader who will start his third stint as
Brazil’s president in January, has vowed
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to scrap rigid spending caps so his government can prioritize fighting
poverty and inequality. He’s also committed
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to raising taxes on the income and wealth of the country’s economic
elites.

Former student movement leader Gabriel Boric had a challenging first
year as Chile’s president. In September, voters rejected a
constitutional reform that would’ve ushered in sweeping democratic,
social, and economic changes in one of the world’s most unequal
nations. But Boric — at 36, the world’s youngest national leader
— has vowed to revive that reform process and advance key
legislative priorities, including a wealth tax and increased levies on
large mining corporations.
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9. CANCELING STUDENT DEBT 

Dare I put this on a list of victories? Hopefully by doing so I
won’t be jinxing the outcome of various legal attacks that have kept
Biden’s debt cancellation plan in limbo. But this just seems too big
to leave out.

Under intense pressure from progressive activists and lawmakers, the
president issued an executive order in August to cancel student loan
debt up to $10,000 for all individual borrowers who earn under
$125,000 annually — and up to $20,000 for Pell grant recipients.

Biden’s plan would “free up a significant portion of people’s
paychecks, supercharge our economy, and combat a major source of
inequality among hardworking Americans of all ages and backgrounds,”
writes my colleague Olivia Alperstein
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Something tells me the student debt justice fight will continue — no
matter how the Supreme Court rules.

10. REJECTING THE TRICKLE-DOWN MYTH 

The biggest big picture victory? The growing backlash against failed
trickle-down economic theories. Tax loopholes for the rich and
austerity for the rest of us – that’s the prosperity formula
Republicans and too many Democrats have been selling for the past 50
years. Americans just aren’t buying it anymore.

Every Congressional Democrat voted for the 2022 Inflation Reduction
Act, a law that will raise close to $500 billion
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over a decade from big corporations and the rich to address the
climate crisis and create thousands of good-paying jobs. This came on
top of major public investment bills
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passed over the past two years that pulled the country out of the
pandemic recession and will funnel federal dollars towards public
transit, semiconductor manufacturing, broadband, and other key
sectors.

Republicans mistakenly believed the tax hikes in the Inflation
Reduction Act would help them win a “red wave” in the mid-terms.
According to Americans for Tax Fairness
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spent more campaign ad dollars trying to tarnish their Democratic
opponents on tax policy than on any other issue. They failed.

American billionaires’ misbehavior – from union-busting and
pandemic joyriding in outer space to crypto swindling and Twitter
authoritarianism – has dimmed the public’s long-romanticized view
of the role of the ultra-rich in our economy.

In the past, reputational problems could be easily glossed over with
grand philanthropic gestures. But a poll the Institute for Policy
Studies commissioned
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2022 revealed growing skepticism of such gestures. A majority across
the political spectrum now favors tighter regulation of charitable
contributions to crack down on tax tricks of the wealthy and to make
sure funds move quickly to active charities on the ground.

Chuck Collins
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head of the Institute’s Charity Reform Initiative, believes more and
more Americans are coming around to the view that philanthropy “will
never be an adequate substitute for an effective tax system where
billionaires pay their fair share and democratically elected
governments make decisions about investment priorities, not
billionaires.”

As we turn the page on 2022, the United States and the world face
daunting challenges. But the surge in worker organizing and the
growing rejection of trickle-down myths provide a strong foundation
for building the just, equitable, and sustainable economy we need.

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project and co-edits
Inequality.org at the Institute for Policy Studies.

* Equality Victories in 2022;
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