Inequality.org

05/30/2026

This week's Petulant Plutocrat: Gene Woods, the CEO of Advocate Health, the nonprofit hospital giant that rewarded him with $25.8 million in 2024 compensation. The top exec at the nation’s largest for-profit hospital system, HCA Healthcare, that same year only collected $23.8 million.

What has Woods sour: the growing support in North Carolina — the state where the Advocate Health headquarters sits — for capping nonprofit hospital CEO pay. At a certain point, says state senator Jim Burgin, “people need to say, ‘Wait a minute, you’re not-for-profit.’”

Last week, six of the nine commissioners on the influential Mecklenburg county board indicated they would support state legislative action that limits how giant nonprofits can operate.

Woods has left the defense of his paycheck to his media team. His “performance-based” pay, that team maintains, “reflects the scale and complexity of guiding one of the nation’s largest health systems.” In a Harvard Business Review article, meanwhile, Woods is celebrating “internal surveys” showing that 85 percent of his firm’s 170,000 employees “feel proud to be part of Advocate Health.”

The last word: Do the ranks of prideful Advocate Health employees include those workers who labor at the company’s lowest hourly wage? In 2024, the latest year with figures available, these workers took home over 650 times less than what their proud CEO pocketed.

05/29/2026

A secretive provision in Trump's 2017 tax cuts — extended last year — lets billionaires deduct the purchase of an entire private jet from their taxes the year they buy it. But new legislation could end this subsidy for the wealthy

The Stop Subsidizing Private Jets Act of 2026 would close loopholes in Trump's tax codes that allow billionaires to write off planes as business expenses.

05/29/2026

This More Perfect Union video makes the case for Overpaid CEO Tax proposals on ballots in San Francisco and LA this year. Our co-editor Sarah Anderson provides expert commentary, explaining that these taxes give corporations a choice:

1. Maintain huge pay gaps and contribute more revenue for local public services.

2. Narrow their gaps to a reasonably fair level — either by increasing worker wages or reining in CEO pay — and avoid paying an extra dime in taxes.

Since narrow pay gaps tend to increase productivity, either option would deliver positive results for workers and businesses in these cities.

The San Francisco measure is up first -- on the city's June 2 primary ballot.

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol made 1,794x the average worker at the company last year.New ballot initiatives in LA and San Francisco would force big corps like ...

05/27/2026

Billionaires are tipping the scales of democracy in San Francisco, but that isn't enough to guarantee a win.

05/26/2026

Hawai'i's housing affordability crisis has a unique culprit — the U.S. military. Service members, aided by a hefty off-base housing allowance, are pricing local residents out of the private rental market.

Military demand for housing caused rents to increase an estimated 7.1 percent in 2024 alone, causing Hawai’i’s residents to spend an extra $234.8 million on rent.

05/24/2026

Billionaire spending on elections has skyrocketed since 2010's Citizens United decision. Thankfully, last week Hawaii became the first state to pass a law directly challenging that disastrous Supreme Court ruling.

05/22/2026

This week's Petulant Plutocrat is: The billionaire Howard Schultz, the 72-year-old current chairman emeritus of Starbucks, the coffee empire he ran three different times as CEO.

What has Schultz sour: the “socialist rhetoric” of current Seattle mayor Katie Wilson, who, he charges, “vilifies employers, even while she continues to rely on them for revenue.“

Seattle and Washington State, Schultz added in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, appear to be operating on the theory that “prosperity can be mandated through redistribution rather than generated through growth.”

What in particular has America’s coffee king seeing socialism at every corner? Lawmakers in Washington, a state that had gone generations without taxing income, last year enacted a “millionaires’ tax” — a 9.9 percent levy on income over $1 million — that will go into effect in 2028.

The last word: Schultz and his wife Sheri moved from Seattle to Miami this past March to begin “our next adventure together.” Their adventuring will start in a $44-million beachfront penthouse.

05/21/2026

Workers organizing at Waffle House are fighting for an hourly wage hike to $25, which could set a precedent for employers across the South.

05/16/2026

This week's Petulant Plutocrat: Steven Roth, the billionaire CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, one of the nation’s largest commercial landlords.

What has Roth sour: anyone who spouts the slogan “tax the rich.” In an official earnings call last week with Wall Street investors, the eighty-four-year-old exec deemed that tax maxim inherently “dangerous.”

“I must say,” Roth told his potential investors, “that I consider the phrase ‘tax the rich,’ when spit out with anger and contempt by politicians both here and across the country, to be just as hateful as some disgusting racial slurs.”

Among the pols that Roth sees as hate-mongers: Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor who strongly supports a proposed new tax on second homes in his city worth over $5 million. That levy on palaces like billionaire Ken Griffin’s $238-million New York penthouse, charges Roth, would amount to an assault on “the American dream.”

The last word: “Roth says the wealthy should be ‘praised and thanked,’” notes the New York actor and commentator Alfred Tom, but their “towers were built on the backs” of workers who “cannot even afford to live in the city they are building.”

05/15/2026

Yet another case of workers suffering at the expense of luxury for their bosses.