More than 400 wealthy and upper-income taxpayers, including billionaire financier George Soros, former Rockefeller Brothers Fund chair Steven Rockefeller, and filmmaker Abigail Disney, have signed a letter calling on Congress to reject the Republican tax plan that gives tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires, especially any plan that is not revenue neutral, which would lead to deep cuts in services and critical investments, such as Medicaid, Medicare, and education.   Continue reading

The state of Connecticut is facing a budget deficit of ($2.8 billion for Fiscal Year 2018, which began July 1, 2017.  Proposals for filling that gap include: concessions worth $1.5 billion from the largest public employee union; weakening the Earned Income Tax Credit and other tax credits that benefit lower-income taxpayers; and sharply reducing funding for early education and higher education. On July 20, 2017, a group of wealthy Connecticut residents, organized by Responsible Wealth, took the unusual step of asking Governor Malloy and the Connecticut Legislature to raise their taxes to help fill the budget gap.     Continue reading

As New York State braces for proposed federal budget cuts that would have a devastating impact on health care, education and infrastructure investments across the state, more than 80 New York residents with incomes in the top 1% have sent an open letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature urging passage of an expanded and permanent millionaires’ tax. An expanded and permanent millionaires’ tax would bring in nearly $6 billion in annual revenue, or over $2 billion more than the current tax– set to expire in 2017– generates. Continue reading

Updated March 29, 2016 Continue reading

Little progress has been made on Martin Luther King Jr’s dream since his death over almost 48 years ago. In fact, by many measures we have been moving backwards as a country.  The #BlackLivesMatter movement turns three years old this summer and has exposed modern racism and police brutality.   Continue reading

If we would have told you three years ago that postal banking could be making a comeback, you may have not believed us. Ever since our publication of State of the Dream 2015: Underbanked and Overcharged, the idea of postal banking has been gaining more attention and more support. Senator Elizabeth Warren and presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders have been the most visible proponents of the idea, with Sanders touting the idea on a number of occasions on the campaign trail.   Continue reading

At the Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders famously suggested that the only way to fix our country was with a political revolution. He suggested that in order to get our country back on track, millions of people would need to take to the streets and demand that the government return to its mission of helping people, not corporations. And by all these measures, one of his ideas would revolutionize the way people interact with our economy: postal banking. Continue reading

"Economic justice is not - and has never been - sufficient to ensure racial justice. Owning a home won't stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to a school won't prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside. But when Dr. King led hundreds of thousands of people to march on Washington, he talked about an end to violence, access to voting AND economic opportunity. As Dr. King once wrote, "the inseparable twin of racial injustice was economic injustice. Continue reading

An interesting report came across our desk today. Here are some key findings: Continue reading

In the State of the Union address, President Obama called for strengthening tax benefits for middle class and low-income working families, and for investing more in child care, early education, and higher education, including making the first two years of community college free.  Continue reading