MSNBC, James Downie, MSNBC Opinion Editor, September 16, 2023

The wealthy’s arrogance is wholly unearned.

Tim Gurner wants you to be miserable. Yes, you.

Speaking at the Australian Financial Review’s “property summit,” the property developer and CEO — net worth $584 million — complained that the country’s 3.7% unemployment rate was, in fact, a problem. “We need to see unemployment rise. Unemployment has to jump 40, 50%,” said Gurner, because “arrogant” workers aren’t productive enough for his liking. “We need to see pain in the economy. We need to remind people that they work for the employer, not the other way around.”

For these words, we should thank Gurner. Not because his theory — that low unemployment and the shift to work from home have hurt productivity — is accurate. Australia’s recent dip in productivity started in mid-2022, well after workers were initially sent home and unemployment recovered from its initial pandemic-induced increase. (Gurner admitted his remarks “were wrong” in a subsequent apology.) No, we should thank him for saying the quiet part out loud, baldly stating what the uber-wealthy think of you and me.

As Georgetown University’s Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò wrote, “I can rarely do better at explaining the connection between capital and social-political domination than just pointing at what the guys with the capital do and say.” Though Gurner’s words have gotten unusual exposure on social media, others of his means have expressed similar distaste for the 99%. “The 1% work harder,” said billionaire Sam Zell. “The 1% are much bigger factors in all forms of our society.” According to the Pew Research Center, a majority of the wealthiest Americans believe the “poor have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

This condescension has consequences not just for employees, but also for consumers. It was no coincidence that as inflation spiked last year, corporations posted record profits. The work of economist Isabella Weber and others has shown that many corporations with market power didn’t raise prices because of supply chain issues or upward pressure on wages but simply because they could. “We have more room to take the price as we need to,” Chipotle’s CEO told investors in late 2021. A Kroger executive bragged that “a little bit of inflation is always good for our business.” Your checkbook is merely another thing to exploit as much as possible in the quest for endless growth to satisfy shareholders. As for the free market? “Competition is for losers,” Peter Thiel is fond of saying.

The wealthy’s arrogance is wholly unearned. In the U.S. from 1978 to 2021, according to the Economic Policy Institute, economic productivity grew more than 60%. Yet the typical worker’s wages — which in previous decades had roughly tracked productivity — grew just 18%. The wages of the top 1% of earners, however, grew 385%. CEO pay grew by more than 1,000%. In some sectors, the disparity is even starker: Union workers at the Big Three American automakers are preparing to strike this week, in part because wages for workers on auto production lines have dropped 30% since 2003. Meanwhile, in just the last four years, pay for the three companies’ CEOs grew more than 40%, with each taking home $21 million to $29 million in 2022 alone.

And yet, when politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or other, more moderate voices, like former President Barack Obama, point out these truths, they are accused of stoking “class warfare.”

But the rich have been conducting class warfare for decades. Since the 1970s, the wealthy, particularly in the U.S., have been remarkably successful in supporting politicians and policies that widened income gaps. As inequality rose, many governments hollowed out safety nets — except, of course, when banks needed to be bailed out.

Read More: MSNBC

THE LEVER, Julia Rock, September 16, 2023

Obama’s former acting Solicitor General and a senator-turned-lobbyist are helping a dark money group pressure the high court.

The former Supreme Court lawyer for the Obama administration and a Democratic senator-turned-lobbyist are pressuring justices to block Congress from ever instituting a wealth tax on the superrich, according to court filings reviewed by The Lever.

Former Obama acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal recently submitted an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Moore v. United States on behalf of the group Saving America’s Family Enterprises (SAFE). That anonymously funded group — whose board includes corporate lobbyists — has spearheaded campaigns against Democrats’ efforts to tax the inheritances and wealth of millionaires and billionaires. 

Now the group is aiming to use the seemingly obscure corporate taxation case to elicit a broad ruling that outlaws all wealth taxes. 

Katyal is an MSNBC mainstay who came to prominence as a liberal defender of Republican President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, all of whom will now rule on the case. In recent years, Katyal has helped Nestlé defend itself in a child slavery case before the Supreme Court and representedJohnson & Johnson in its bid to use bankruptcy to block lawsuits from cancer victims.

Listed on the Katyal-authored amicus brief alongside SAFE is the group’s senior adviser, former Louisiana Sen. John Breaux (D), who also lobbies for ExxonMobil, Norfolk Southern, and Boeing — corporations whose top executives could have a financial interest in the outcome of the case. Breaux also lobbies for billionaire financial magnate and Democratic megadonor James Simons.

SAFE is organized as a so-called social welfare nonprofit, which allows it to hide the identity of its donors and avoid taxes while spending money to influence policy decisions.

In response to recent ethics scandals at the Supreme Court, 34 Democratic senators have signed onto legislation that would require organizations filing amicus briefs to disclose their donors. But because that bill is stalled, SAFE can pressure the Supreme Court to block a wealth tax while refusing to disclose its benefactors.

SAFE did not respond to a Lever request for a list of its donors.

Katyal v. Billionaire Tax

Democratic lawmakers and the Biden administration have touted a wealth tax as a way to tackle record levels of inequality and fund programs that slash poverty and expand access to healthcare and education.

(more…)

LABOR NOTES, Luis Feliz Leon, Jane Slaughter, September 15, 2023 

“For the last 40 years, the billionaire class has been taking everything and leaving everybody else to fight for the scraps,” UAW President Fain said. “We are not the problem. Corporate greed is the problem.”

Tick, tock. At midnight the clock ran out, and auto workers massed on picket lines.

The first-ever simultaneous strike at the Big 3 automakers—General Motors, Ford, Stellantis—started September 15 with 13,000 workers walking out of three assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri. There are 146,000 Auto Workers (UAW) members at the Big 3.

The UAW is calling its strategy the “stand-up strike,” a nod to the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-1937 that helped establish the union.

The shot across the bow came two hours shy of midnight via a very short Facebook Live video where UAW President Shawn Fain shared the strike targets: Stellantis’s Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio; GM’s Wentzville Assembly Center, near St. Louis; and the final assembly and paint departments at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant, west of Detroit. These plants make highly profitable full-sized SUVS and trucks, including the Jeep Wrangler, Chevy Colorado, and Ford Bronco.

Fain laid out the union’s escalation strategy on Wednesday. The union will target a few plants at first, letting the Big 3 know the union is willing to inflict financial pain.

The idea is to keep the companies guessing. If they don’t move on the union’s demands, more pain will be applied—but the companies won’t be able to predict where.

“An all-out strike is still a possibility,” Fain said.

ON PINS AND NEEDLES

Some members who’d been expecting an all-out strike right away were disappointed. On Thursday, some at Toledo Assembly wore black in mourning. But as the deadline approached, regional director Dave Green was seen in town and people’s spirits were buoyed as it became apparent that their plant would be one of the strike sites.

A few hours before the deadline, Chris Falzone, working the evening shift at the Toledo Assembly plant, reported the scene inside. “Corporate management is walking the floor, along with all the first- and second-shift management, in case of a strike,” he said. “What I’m hearing from paint shop is that they are emptying the paint department in Gladiator and Wrangler side in case of a strike.” He was walking the floor distributing leaflets about what happens if they continue to operate under an expired contract at midnight.

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Meanwhile day-shift workers like Auston Gore, a 12-year veteran on the assembly line and a strike captain, were waiting at home. “We’re all waiting on pins and needles,” Gore said. “Normally, I’d be going to bed right now. But I’m staying up late.”

Workers at Toledo Assembly have been pinning their hopes on being selected to strike, because they expect that management will resort to a campaign of terror against the workers who stay on the shop floor.

“The company puts up a facade that they care about their employees, telling us that we are one big family,” said Gore. “Meanwhile, they’re going to have their supervisors walking around dinging us for the tiniest stuff if we are working under an expired contract. We feel like unprotected prey.”

Read More: LABOR NOTES