Patriotic Billionaires

I. Patriotic Millionaires
To qualify for the Patriotic Millionaires, members must have an annual income of at least a million    dollars, or assets worth more than five million dollars. When the author asked Erica Payne,  founder of the Patriotic Millionaires, how hard it was to persuade rich people to join, she said: "I think the last time I checked, there were about three hundred and seventy-five thousand taxpayers in the country who make a million dollars a year in income --and we now have a couple hundred members." [1]

"Some of the members feel that severe inequality fuels corruption, and has led to the election of Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders across the world. In New York State, the group has lobbied to close the carried-interest loophole,which shields the income of many hedge-fund and private-equity-fund  managers."

"Sean Willentz, a historian at Princeton, told me: 'We live in a word where supply-side economics, which was always a fraud, became a religion.' " "In April, Rag Dalio, the founder of the hundred-and-sixty-billion- dollar  hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, posted a lengthy essay in which he wrote that American workers in the bottom sixty per cent of earners have had no income growth, after adjusting for inflation, since 1980,while the incomes of the top ten per cent have tripled." One graphic he used, ranked wealthy countries in terms of the likelihood that a child born into the lowest economic quartile would move into the top quartile;  the U.S. was second to last, ahead of only China.

When the GOP-controlled House rolled out its tax cut plan, the first item on the agenda was expected to be the multimillionaire surcharge of ten-per-cent, which would be applied to all incomes above two million dollars. Instead of raising the top tax rate for the wealthy, the former top rate of 39.6 per cent was reduced to 37 per cent.

II. A World to Win
"In 1957, when it came to liberation, Ghana was ahead of the United States. "At first, the 20th century looked as if it might be the century of the nation-state," "Instead of liberating the nonwhite domains of World War I's vanquished empires, the League of Nations converted them into a set of quasi-colonies known as mandates, to be governed by outsiders on the understanding that such places weren't fit to rule themselves." "In 1940, nearly one in three of the world's people fell under colonial rule; by 1965, it was about one in 50." "In Nkrumah's version, the African Union would have a single currency and market, a single military and foreign policy, and a central government with the power to tax." Nkrumah and Williams [Eric, Trinidadian historian and political leader] had hoped to lash nations together into larger political bodies." [2]

"The oil revolution bouyed hope, but it also drove a wedge between the oil-exporting countries, and the many 'No PEC' nations, for whom rising oil prices spelled economic catastrophe." "In sub-Saharan Africa, average incomes have risen over tenfold and life spans have increased by more than 20 years since 1900. Yet such growth is barely visible when placed alongside that of a rich country like the  United States,which saw its economy grow twentyfold in the same period,and boasts a per capita G.D.P. almost 40 times that of sub-Saharan Africa." 

"Brexit and Trumpism have shown that the old powers can no longer lead international institutions."

Footnotes:
[1] Sheelah Kolnatkar, "An Embarrassment of Riches," The New Yorker, January 6, 2020.

[2] Daniel Immerwaha, "A World to Win," The Nation, January 13/20, 2020.