But this framing leaves out a critical part of the story. Yes, the wealthy pay more in taxes than everyone else. The real question: whether they’re paying enough, their fair share relative to their rapidly growing share of our nation’s income and wealth. By that measure, the answer must be a clear no. The U.S. tax system, the underlying data show, remains far less progressive than it once was — and far less effective at counteracting inequality than it needs to be.

The Tax Foundation is claiming that the top 1 percent’s share of the nation’s adjusted gross income, AGI, “fluctuates with the business cycle” while the share of the taxes these rich pay has been “generally increasing.” But, in fact, these two indicators track each other rather closely over time. By placing income share and tax share on separate graphs, the Tax Foundation obscures how close this tracking has been.

Graphed together, the obvious correspondence of these two measures becomes unmistakably clear: As the top 1 percent’s share of income rises, so does the top 1 percent’s share of taxes. In other words, the increase in the tax dollars these rich are paying largely reflects the larger slice of total national income these rich are pocketing, not that the tax system has somehow become meaningfully more progressive. The top 1 percent tax share is rising because the top 1 percent income share is rising, not because our most affluent are facing a heavier tax burden on their gains.

By characterizing the top 1 percent’s income share as “fluctuating with the business cycle” while characterizing its tax share as “generally increasing” — and separating the graphic presentation of these two trends — the Tax Foundation is playing fast and loose with our core tax reality.

The timeframe of the Tax Foundation’s analysis further muddies the waters. By starting in 2001, the Tax Foundation misses the longer arc of rising inequality in the United States. Looking back to the 1980s, the trend is unmistakable: The top 1 percent’s share of income has climbed substantially, from 11.3 percent in 1986 to 20.6 percent in 2023. The tax share of these rich has risen as well, from 25.8 percent in 1986 to 38.4 percent in 2023. Meanwhile their average effective tax rate has actually declined over the same period, from 33.1 percent to 26.3 percent, according to IRS data.

Even more importantly, focusing solely on income ignores the explosion of wealth at the top. Adjusted gross income (AGI) itself is a limited and often misleading measure — an arbitrary definition used for tax purposes that fails to capture total economic income, and completely misses the scale of wealth accumulation. Over the past several decades, our nation’s richest households have accumulated an outsized share of the nation’s wealth, with that wealth share far outpacing the top 1 percent’s growing share of national income. Yet the tax system does relatively little to address this imbalance.

Wealth remains lightly taxed compared to income, and many forms of capital income, to make matters worse, enjoy low preferential tax rates or taxes that can be deferred indefinitely. The end result: The overall tax burden on America’s richest is failing to keep pace with their expanding economic power.

The distortions become even clearer when we look beyond the top 1 percent to the tippy top of our wealth distribution, the top 0.01 percent. These ultra-wealthy households have seen extraordinary gains in both income and wealth over time. But their tax contributions have not kept up proportionally.

An Institute for Policy Studies analysis of data collected by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman shows that our top .01 percent more than tripled their share of the nation’s wealth between 1962 and 2018. Yet their share of U.S. taxes paid in 2018 hovered only slightly higher than their share of taxes paid in 1962.

All of this raises a fundamental question: What makes a tax system “progressive”? Just somewhat higher tax rates on higher earners? No. A truly progressive system should meaningfully reduce inequality by redistributing income and wealth and curbing the concentration of economic power at the top. By that standard, the U.S. tax system falls short.

Our current tax system largely mirrors our nation’s underlying distribution of income rather than reshaping that distribution. The rich pay more because they have more. But they don’t pay more at levels sufficient to counterbalance their outsized gains. In 2023, the top 1 percent captured about 20.6 percent of pre-tax income and still held roughly 17.7 percent after federal income taxes, only a modest reduction. That after-tax share is still higher than their 17.4 percent share of pre-tax income in 2001, underscoring how little the tax system has done to curb the growing concentration of income at the top.

Reversing these trends will require more than modest tweaks to the tax code. It will take a more ambitious approach, one that directly addresses both income and wealth concentration at the very top. Until then, claims that the tax system is adequately progressive risk obscuring a deeper reality: Inequality continues to widen, and the tax code is doing too little to stop it.

The post Who Pays Federal Income Taxes? The Rich, But Not Nearly as Much as They Should — or Once Did appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Rodrigo and Wells examine what’s actually being deployed in hospitals: scheduling algorithms, productivity tools, and a fast-growing app-based contingent workforce that is turning bedside care into something closer to gig work. Wells reports that these trends prefigure the broader adoption of AI in healthcare, raising questions not only about the stability of the profession and the quality of patient care, but also about how the degradation of healthcare work affects communities.

…

Listen to the podcast on Tech Policy Press.

The post AI, Gig Work, and the Future of Nursing appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

May Day, often referred to as International Workers’ Day, has a long legacy in the labor movement. In the late 1800’s — an era of extreme wealth concentration much like our own — American workers organized a general strike on May 1st demanding an eight-hour workday. After a wave of violent state and police repression of labor epitomized by the 1886 Haymarket Affair in downtown Chicago, May 1 was enshrined as a celebration of the working class.

This year, organizers are hoping to expand the scope of the day of action into a broader movement against corporate power and the start of a longer organizing process.

Inequality.org spoke with Jackson Potter, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union, about their plans and hopes for this year’s May Day.

For people who don’t follow labor or politics closely, what do you want them to understand about what is happening this May Day?

May Day has always been International Workers Day, and this year it is something more. On May 1, workers, students, and families across the country are going to march, rally, and in many cities, refuse business as usual entirely, no work, no school, no shopping, to show this country what it looks like when working people decide not to show up for the people who profit from our labor.

The reason for that is straightforward. Working people are already being forced to choose between food on the table and medicine on the shelf, between paying rent and keeping the lights on. At the same time, resources that should be going to schools, housing, and health care are being diverted to pay for billionaires’ fortunes and arming federal agents to attack our neighbors. People are fed up, and they have every right to be. May Day is the moment when that fed-up energy takes a coordinated form.

The Chicago Teachers Union voted to make May Day a civic day of action. What does that mean, and why did CTU decide to do it?

It means that on May 1, instructional time in Chicago public schools will be devoted to civic engagement, with buses being provided for students who want to attend the rally, discussions in classrooms, and educators and students participating in the kind of collective action that we spend all year teaching young people about in the abstract.

Teaching students what civic action looks like requires more than textbooks. It requires educators who are willing to model what it looks like to stand up when the stakes are real. We teach about the eight-hour workday, about the labor movement, about the history of people organizing to change what was considered politically impossible, including the Children’s Crusade in Birmingham, when on May 2, 1963, young people left their classrooms and helped force the country to confront injustice.

This is not a new idea for CTU. When Rahm Emanuel tried to turn our 300-page contract into a 50-page document and close 50 schools in Black communities, we did not just file grievances. We organized parents, students, and community members and fought back. May Day is that same tradition applied to this moment.

You have watched the Department of Education be systematically dismantled over the past several months. What does that mean concretely for public school students and teachers?

We have seen this before. In Chicago, we watched the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club publish a report calling for 100 charter schools in the city’s Black communities, and watched Democratic and Republican mayors alike implement it. Closing 200 schools over two decades. The research has been clear for years that school closings destabilize communities, increase violence, and produce no educational gains. None of that stopped it. What stopped it, finally, was organized power. It was parents, educators, and community members who refused to accept that their schools were expendable.

The dismantling of the Department of Education is the same agenda, scaled to the national level. It is not about improving education. It is about transferring public resources to private operators. And the response has to be the same, organized power at every level.

How do attacks on public education, the threat of undermining elections, and an illegal war in Iran connect? Are these separate fights or the same fight?

They are the same fight, and understanding that is essential to building the kind of coalition that can actually win.

Think about who benefits from the war in Iran. Oil companies that invested $75 million in Trump’s reelection are collecting tens of billions in extra revenue from the price spike. That money does not go to schools, or health care, or housing. It goes to executives and shareholders. Meanwhile, working families are paying more for gas and groceries, and the U.S. Postal Service has proposed a fuel surcharge on package deliveries because of war-driven oil prices. The war is not separate from the affordability crisis, it is one of its causes.

The attack on elections follows the same logic. When working-class communities cannot vote, the people making decisions about school funding, about ICE operations, about war, do not have to answer to them. The corporate oligarchy did not start with Trump. It was built over decades by Democrats and Republicans alike who put the interests of billionaires before workers. Protecting free and fair elections is not a procedural question. It is a question of who has power over the decisions that determine whether working families can survive.

Workers are already stretched thin by the affordability crisis. How does the war in Iran make that worse?

The connection is direct and it is not complicated. When U.S. oil companies are generating an extra $63 billion in revenue because of war-driven oil prices, that money comes from somewhere. It comes from every working family filling up a gas tank, every small business paying more for deliveries, every school district paying more for transportation. The war is a wealth transfer from working people to the top of the income distribution, and it is happening in real time.

The three demands of May Day Strong are not random. Tax the rich, no ICE and no war, expand democracy. They fit together because the same billionaires driving authoritarianism are the ones profiting from federal contracts, war spending, and the suppression of wages and unions. You cannot address the affordability crisis without confronting the concentration of wealth and power that is producing it.

What are you seeing on the ground heading into May 1? What does it look like when labor and community organizations actually move together?

The school district has officially made May Day a civic day of action. The labor movement has called for an economic blackout. That kind of alignment does not happen automatically. It is built through years of relationships, through showing up for each other’s fights. In Chicago, the CTU has been in relationship with immigrant rights organizations, with tenant organizing groups, with community organizations in Black and Latino neighborhoods for a long time. Those relationships are what make it possible to move together at scale.

Nationally, more than 500 labor and community organizations have come together under the May Day Strong coalition. That includes National Nurses United, SEIU, UNITE HERE, and hundreds of others. As many as 3,000 events are anticipated across all 50 states. This is not a moment. It is a movement that has been building.

What do you want someone reading this to do on May Day and after?

Show up on May 1. Find a march or rally in your city. If there is not one, organize one. The May Day Strong website has a map.

But the more important answer is what comes after. May Day is not the destination, it is a test of the infrastructure we are building. After May Day, go back to your workplace and organize your union. Connect with the community organizations in your neighborhood. Find out what your local school board is doing about funding, about ICE in schools, about the resources your students need. Run for something. Support someone who is running.

The corporate oligarchy did not get here overnight and it will not be dismantled overnight. What has always changed the balance of power is workers and communities moving together over time. That is what we are building. May Day is where we show what that kind of power looks like.

The post Chicago Teachers Are Making This May Day Count appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

At the same time, the Mexican government is moving toward reopening the country to hydraulic fracturing (fracking), claiming that this would help achieve “energy sovereignty” by reducing reliance on natural gas imports from the United States. President Claudia Sheinbaum’s plans to exploit “unconventional” gas reserves marks a significant shift from the previous administration’s critical position on fracking.

Mexican civil society organizations have voiced strong opposition to Sheinbaum’s plan, led by the Mexican Alliance Against Fracking, a coalition of over 40 organizations. Beyond the environmental risks, there is an obvious contradiction between national sovereignty goals and the opening of fracking to public-private projects that use “new technologies” from foreign companies.

The USMCA allows U.S. corporations to sue the government of Mexico over disputes related to the hydrocarbons sector (oil and gas) in international tribunals. If the government strikes fracking-related deals with U.S. firms, it would be vulnerable to even more potential lawsuits, in addition to the more than 20 pending cases worth billions of dollars Mexico already faces.

The fossil fuel industry has filed more of these “investor-state” lawsuits globally than any other sector. So far, oil and gas extraction companies have filed 93 lawsuits against governments in supranational courts, mostly at the World Bank’s International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.

Industry groups claim that their “new technologies” reduce the adverse impacts of fracking. But scientists, health experts, and environmental organizations argue that these innovations are often a form of “greenwashing” that does not address fundamental risks.

“New technology is making fracking more dangerous, more profitable, and more attractive to fossil companies, but no less damaging to the environment and human health,” Greenpeace states.

Experts from the Yale School of Public Health point out that there is a lack of data on the toxicity of 65 percent of the chemicals used in the fracking process, meaning that claims of being “greener” may result from insufficient research.

The Yale experts also warn that fracking has been associated with negative health impacts for local residents, including increased adverse pregnancy outcomes and higher cancer, hospitalization, and asthma rates. They also note that some fracking-related operations have been located near low-income communities, “worsening their cumulative burden of environmental and social injustices.”

As Earthworks and others have concluded, the injection of oil and gas wastewater can also trigger earthquakes. Fracking even causes earthquakes. In Oklahoma, for instance, the number of earthquakes of magnitude greater than 3.0 has increased from an average of fewer than five per year (before fracking) to about 40 per year.

These types of serious problems could lead the Mexican government to eventually take protective actions that could, in turn, provoke expensive investor-state lawsuits. Other governments have already experienced this fate.

The U.S. company Lone Pine Resources sued Canada for $108 million under the North American Free Trade Agreement after the province of Quebec revoked permits for fracking in the St. Lawrence River. In the end, the tribunal ruled in favor of the government, but the case contributed to Canada’s withdrawal from supranational arbitration in the USMCA (see Amicus Curiae submitted by Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center).

The Energy Charter Treaty, which has more than 50 member countries, is also in crisis, as investors have resorted to its dispute settlement mechanisms to challenge fracking regulations. Many European countries have withdrawn or announced their withdrawal from the treaty.

Large corporations engaged in fracking, including SLB (formerly Schlumberger), Baker Hughes, and Halliburton, already maintain operations in Mexico. While Sheinbaum denies that her plan would involve “handing over resources” to these or other transnational companies, inviting them to be part of the business in Mexico raises serious concerns. The pursuit of “energy sovereignty” should not come at the expense of true national sovereignty or the sacrifice of the search for alternative energy sources.

As long as the Mexican government remains part of the investor-state regime, it will be inviting predatory companies to come into the country and threaten the environment and public welfare.

The post Re-Opening Mexico to Fracking Could Lead to More Corporate Lawsuits appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

That vegetation, of course, has ended up as Russia’s reserves of oil, natural gas, and coal. About one-quarter of the country’s government revenues comes from fossil fuel sales. Those revenues ensure that Russia’s superpower status can’t be boiled down simply to its possession of nuclear weapons. Russia is not “Upper Volta with nukes” as the Soviet Union was famously dismissed. Petrodollars give it considerable geopolitical leverage as well as the means to wage war, most recently in Ukraine.

Consider how crudely Russia uses its crude. For some time, the dependency of certain European countries on Russian fuel imports—notably Hungary and Slovakia—has made it challenging for the European Union to forge consensus on anything related to Russia or Ukraine. Leadership change in Hungary has reduced, though not eliminated, this problem. The election of Peter Magyar has simultaneously gotten money flowing again from Brussels to Kyiv and oil flowing again, via the Druzhba pipeline, from Russia to Hungary.

It’s not just Eastern Europe. Although Europe as a whole has radically reduced imports over the last five years—from 45 percent of its gas imports to 19 percent and 27 percent of its oil to 3 percent—France, the Netherlands, and Belgium are still importing considerable amounts. Last year, the prime minister of Belgium blocked the use of Russian funds frozen in Brussels to help Ukraine. When money is blocked, follow the oil (also, don’t discount outright intimidation).

Russia, in other words, has used its energy exports to drive wedges between countries that might otherwise be allies.

These energy exports, subjected to sanctions and price caps, have also strengthened Russian ties with China and India, with those two countries combining to purchase 80 percent of Russian oil. Especially now, with the war in Iran and the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Russian energy beckons as a lifeline for many countries. Ukrainian attacks on Russian energy infrastructure have cut into the profits, but sales are still up.

Russia’s chief asset is also its chief weakness. Even before it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia depended a little too much on its own natural resources. Instead of investing in greater value-added production, Russia took the easier route of selling what it could extract from the ground, in the form of minerals and fossil fuels and timber. Like other countries caught in a “resource curse,” Russia lazily failed to diversity.

Windfall profits have also fueled corruption, from the Black Sea palaces of Gazprom officials to the money-launderingassociated with Russia’s ghost fleet of aging tankers. Like Norway, a country that has singularly avoided the resource curse, Russia has a national wealth fund. But much of it has gone to pay for the war in Ukraine, as well as serving to “launder money, evade sanctions, and secure resources for both influence campaigns and military needs.” Russia ranks 157 out of 182 countries in the Transparency International index of corruption perceptions, lower than Iran and Congo.

It’s tempting to conclude that Russian politics is to blame for this lack of diversification. Vladimir Putin has cultivated a set of friendly oligarchs who have subordinated their economic decisions to the needs of the state. Diversification could disrupt this cozy relationship. The Russian economy has not been performing spectacularly—booming when commodity prices are up, plummeting when those prices drop—but it is good enough to sustain public support for the current government.

Let’s push this argument further.

Between the middle of the eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries, a succession of tsars continued to maintain serfdom in the face of rising protests and thwarted revolution. The Russian royals considered this unpaid labor to be integral to the Russian economy of the time. But as Marshall Berman argued in his pioneering study of modernism, All That Is Solid Melts into Air, keeping the serfs in bondage also ensured that Russian landlords and other wealthy individuals would not invest in the kind of modernization taking place in Western Europe and the United States. The tsars understood that such modernization would create pressures for political reform that might dislodge the tsars themselves. It wouldn’t be until 1861 that Tsar Alexander II freed the millions and millions of serfs in Russia.

Likewise, Vladimir Putin may well understand that modernizing the Russian economy away from reliance on natural resources would create other potential centers of power. Imagine a Russian Silicon Valley, for instance, wealthy enough to support rival political candidates and finance a wave of disruptive entrepreneurs. Despite his claims to the contrary, Putin is content with his country’s underdevelopment. Better that entrepreneurs like Pavel Durov of Telegram fame has relocated to Dubai—that’s one less independent-minded oligarch who could cause trouble at home.

Russia produces enough wealth to maintain a rickety social welfare system and sustain the war in Ukraine. Anything more might upend the pyramid of power. Underdevelopment keeps Putin in control.

Russian Economy Today

In the first two months of 2026, the Russian economy shrank compared to its performance last year. These figures prompted Putin to scold his underlings, demanding that they give him “detailed reports today on the current economic situation and on why the trajectory of macroeconomic indicators is currently falling short of expectations.” The lack of growth is a symptom of structural problems as are high interest rates and endemic inflation. Throw in a serious budget deficit and the Russian economy is on the precipice—or, at least, in the fast lane going in that direction.

Okay, these figures come from before the start of the Iran War, which has functioned like a Hail Mary pass from the Trump administration to Putin in the end zone. The increase in energy and commodity prices will inevitably restore growth to the Russian economy—but also forestall any serious changes that could address the underlying structural weaknesses.

The dividends from the Iran War might not even be enough to treat the symptoms. According to Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service, oil prices would have to rise above $100 a barrel for more than a year to erase Russia’s budget deficit. Nilsson argues, moreover, that Russia is inflating its economic statistics to mask the damage that corruption, mismanagement, and wrong-headed policies have inflicted. There might be an element of wishful thinking here, since the Swedes are urging a more forceful policy of aiding Ukraine in the hopes that a tanking Russian economy will force a peace deal favorable to Kyiv.

Still, the war in Ukraine is certainly not making matters any easier for the Kremlin. In addition to the sheer cost of the campaign and the repairs to the infrastructure Ukraine has destroyed, the need for soldiers and the out-migration of the disgruntled have put serious pressure on the labor market. Even if the state pushed for diversification, it would be hard-pressed to find a workforce to train for the new jobs.

Last week, worried about the lack of growth, the central bank cut interest rates to 14.5 percent. Even in the face of high inflation, the money managers are desperate to pump money into the economy. The bankers acknowledge that the Iran War won’t save Russia. “A significant risk from external conditions is the situation in the Middle East,” the governor of the central, Elvira Nabiullina, said. “If the conflict drags on, the negative effects on the Russian economy will grow.” Veteran politician Gennady Zyuganov, the reliably nationalist head of the Communist Party, even warned the Duma of the risks of a 1917-type revolution if the government doesn’t improve the economy, and soon.

In other words, Putin’s reliance on the troika of fossil fuels, corruption, and autocracy to prevent a political challenge to his authority may end up producing the very revolt from below he fears the most.

Color Revolutions

To avoid the scenarios that produced political change in Russia’s neighbors—Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova—Putin has ruthlessly suppressed all potential political challenges. He has jailed opponents, had them assassinated, or forced them into exile. He closed down independent media. He passed a foreign agent law that effectively criminalized NGOs.

Opposition to the government is now expressed elliptically, much like the Soviet Union of old. Influencers complain about the shuttering of the Telegram messaging app and eroding living standards, but they also opine, to avoid charges of anti-Putinism, that maybe the supreme leader has been fed misinformation (a ludicrous notion that nevertheless has deep roots in Russian history).

Although his popularity has dipped to 65 percent, Putin is probably not worried about critical Instagram content. Economic discontent is another matter. Rising prices triggered the first Arab Spring protests in Tunisia. Anger over the cost of living and corruption led to the downfall of the Bulgarian government in December.

In the end, Russians can’t eat oil or gas or coal. The country has to provide jobs other than cannon fodder and coal miner. Underdevelopment suppresses the political demands associated with modernization—until it doesn’t. Perhaps Putin thinks that he can push the envelope long enough to capture the rest of the Donbas and deliver a “win” to the Russian people to offset all of their sacrifices. Ukraine—assisted by the rest of the anti-autocratic world—is betting everything that he can’t. War, even in this era of rapid-fire AI targeting, remains a waiting game.

The post Why Russia’s Backwardness Benefits Putin appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Background on the ballot initiative

A coalition of 35 labor, small business, and community groups are promoting the measure (Proposition D on the June 2 ballot) to help fill gaping budget holes that are already leading to painful layoffs among city employees. The proposal is expected to generate as much as $300 million per year through a small surcharge on the city’s existing local “gross receipts” (sales) tax. The surcharge would apply to corporations with at least 1,000 total employees, more than $1 billion in annual revenue, and CEO pay greater than 100 times their median worker pay (the middle wage, with half of workers making more and half less).

Under the proposal, companies whose highest-paid executive makes less than 100 times the firm’s median worker pay would not owe an extra dime. For those with wider gaps, the ballot measure would raise the Overpaid Executive Tax rates that went into effect in 2022 and then were deeply slashed in a 2024 business tax reform package. For firms with pay ratios between 100 to 1 and 200 to 1, the surcharge would amount to 0.183 percent of gross receipts. The top rate of 1.121 percent would apply to companies with pay ratios of more than 600 to 1. Los Angeles advocates are gathering signatures to place a similar proposal on their November ballot.

The San Francisco ballot measure would also increase existing surcharges on firms operating “administrative offices” in the city. These are companies that have over 1,000 U.S. employees, over $1 billion in gross receipts, and more than 50 percent of their local payroll tied to administrative services. The tax is imposed on the firm’s total payroll expenses attributable to San Francisco, with rates ranging from 0.75 percent to 4.47 percent, depending on the size of their CEO-worker pay gap. For more detail, see the legal text of Proposition D.

The deep-pocketed opponents of Proposition D

Our analysis of city records reveals that the campaign to defeat Prop D has received individual donations from five billionaires, in addition to contributions from companies with billionaire leaders (Amazon and Google) and other firms with massive CEO-worker pay gaps. Through the “Protect San Francisco’s Small Businesses and Economic Recovery Committee,” these deep-pocketed donors are both opposing Proposition D and supporting Proposition C, an alternate measure that would cut taxes for smaller businesses.

Sources: Forbes billionaires list for 2025. San Francisco Ethics Commission Campaigns Dashboard, accessed April 28, 2026.

As of April 28, the anti-Prop D campaign had raised nearly $3.6 million from 28 donors. With his $700,000 in total contributions, billionaire crypto CEO Chris Larsen is the largest donor so far. Compensation data for Larsen and typical workers at Larsen’s privately held firm, Ripple Labs, is not public information. The firm declined to answer a Bloomberg reporter’s query about whether Ripple would be affected by the tax.

Heavyweight corporate lobby groups have also ponied up sizeable sums. While some of these outfits might claim to represent small businesses, they are doing the bidding of large corporations in this debate. As noted above, small businesses are exempt from this tax. Even if they weren’t, they likely wouldn’t be affected because of their far narrower pay gaps.

While the Overpaid Executive Tax applies to both publicly held and private corporations, only publicly held firms are currently required to disclose their CEO compensation, median pay, and pay ratio data to the SEC. Below is analysis of the nine publicly held companies that have donated to the anti-Proposition D campaign.

*donation through Uber Innovation Ballot Measures Committee.

Sources: Compensation and pay ratio data are based on company proxy statements filed with the SEC. Median worker pay is based on the company’s total workforce. All data are for 2025, except Williams-Sonoma. That company’s most recently reported compensation data is for 2024.

DoorDash

DoorDash has contributed to the anti-Prop D campaign both directly, with a $25,000 contribution, as well as through their CEO, Tony Xu, who made a donation of $250,000. Xu was one of three co-founders who became billionaires after the DoorDash IPO in December 2020. Forbes estimates his 2025 net worth at $1.7 billion. As is common among founder CEOs, he receives a relatively modest annual salary. His 2025 compensation came to $431,864, just 12 times as much as the company’s $36,373 median pay.

The Overpaid Executive Tax is based on the highest-earning executive, whether or not that individual is the CEO. In 2025, that was DoorDash Chief Operating Officer and President Prabir Adarkar, who raked in compensation worth $15.7 million, 431 times the DoorDash median pay.

Even that ratio downplays the true extent of DoorDash pay disparities. The company’s reported median pay figure does not take into account “Dashers,” the frontline drivers who carry out the hectic and often dangerous task of takeout food delivery.

About nine million people “dashed” in 2025. Those workers combined earned a total of over $20 billion that year, a figure that works out to just $2,222 per employee. Gridwise Analytics estimates DoorDash driver hourly average gross earnings, including tips, at $12.43. Out of those meager earnings, DoorDash drivers had to pay their own vehicle maintenance.

Uber

The rideshare giant has donated $100,000 to the anti-Prop D campaign through their Uber Innovation Ballot Measures Committee. In 2025, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi took in $35.6 million in total compensation – 360 times as much as the company’s reported median pay of $98,826. As with DoorDash, this reported ratio downplays the true extent of Uber’s pay disparities. Gridwise Analytics estimates Uber driver weekly average gross earnings at just $522, or $27,144 per year — not including the cost of vehicle fuel and maintenance.

The Gap, Inc.

The Gap has directly contributed $100,000 to the anti-Proposition D campaign while billionaire brothers Robert and William Fisher, the sons of Gap co-founders Donald and Doris Fisher, have each donated $50,000. Robert currently serves as company Chairman.

In 2024, The Gap had the nation’s 7th-widest CEO-worker pay gap. The company’s recently filed proxy statement shows that this gap stood at 1,690 to 1 in 2025. CEO Richard Dickson made $17.2 million, compared to median employee pay of just $10,170, which was likely for a part-time store employee. The proposed Overpaid Executive Tax would allow companies to convert part-time earnings into full-time equivalencies. But even after this adjustment, The Gap would likely still fall into the highest surtax bracket, set at 1.121 percent of taxable gross receipts for companies with pay gaps of 600 to 1 or more.

Pacific Gas and Electric

PG&E has funneled $250,000 to the anti-Prop D campaign. The utility company’s commitment to obstructing this tax proposal is perplexing. As is typical among heavily unionized utilities, PG&E median pay is high – at $198,261 in 2025. Even though CEO Patricia Poppe made $19.8 million, that high worker median kept the company’s nationwide pay ratio to 100 to 1, the lowest level that would be subject to the Overpaid Executive Tax proposal. For companies with pay ratios between 100 to 1 and 200 to 1, the surtax rate on gross receipts would be 0.183 percent.

To avoid that modest tax altogether, PG&E would simply have to raise their median pay or lower their CEO pay ever so slightly. And yet the San Francisco Examiner reported on April 22 that a “PG&E spokesperson predicted the tax would ‘directly’ increase customer energy bills after approval as a business cost by regulators.” Even if this is an empty threat, it is remarkable that a public utility would admit a preference for raising families’ energy bills rather than slightly narrowing their pay gap. As of April 24, that PG&E statement no longer appears in the Examiner article. The reporter did not respond to an IPS request for clarification.

Williams-Sonoma

The houseware company has donated $300,000 to block a tax incentive for companies like theirs to narrow their pay gaps to a reasonable level. In 2024, CEO Laura Alber raked in $27.7 million, a staggering 1,062 times as much as the company’s median pay of $26,078.

It would be hard for Williams-Sonoma executives to argue that they lack resources to raise worker wages. Over the past five years, the company has spent $3.7 billion on stock buybacks, a financial maneuver that siphons resources from worker pay and long-term investments while artificially inflating executive stock-based compensation. With the $854 million Williams-Sonoma spent on buybacks last year alone, they could’ve given each of their 19,800 U.S. employees a $43,000 bonus.

Amazon

Amazon has donated $50,000 — on top of the ecommerce giant’s hefty name — to the anti-Prop D campaign.

Among the publicly held corporations that have donated, Amazon reported the narrowest pay gap in 2025. But this is misleading. In typical years, the highest-paid Amazon executive’s compensation runs several hundred times larger than the firm’s median pay. In 2024, for instance, the highest-paid Amazon executive, Amazon Web Services head Adam Selipsky, received $34.3 million, 922 times as much as the company’s $37,181 median pay.

Last year, Amazon’s pay gaps were far narrower because the Amazon board awards long-term stock-based mega-grants only periodically and 2025 was an off year. Because this is not an uncommon practice, city officials should consider basing the pay ratio on a five-year rolling average.

Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy last received an equity grant in 2021 that was valued at $212 billion at the time and is worth much more today. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, just like many corporate founders with enormous stock holdings, pocketed only nominal annual compensation during his years as Amazon’s chief executive. As Amazon’s executive chair, he is still collecting only nominal compensation. In 2025, his reported compensation came to $1,681,840, with all but $81,840 of that representing payment for his personal security expenses. His estimated net worth in 2025: $224 billion.

Conclusion

The big money behind the Prop D campaign makes little sense from a business perspective. The proposed strengthened Overpaid Executive Tax would still be a modest surcharge that could be avoided altogether if companies are willing to narrow their pay gaps to reasonable levels. Extensive research has shown that extreme pay divides are bad for business because they lower employee morale and productivity and increase turnover costs. If companies choose instead to maintain huge pay gaps, they would then contribute a bit more to public investments that will strengthen the overall business climate in San Francisco. See the Institute for Policy Studies CEO-Worker Pay Resource Guide for extensive information on existing CEO-worker pay ratio taxes, federal proposed legislation, academic research on the business benefits of narrow pay ratios, and related research.

A PDF version of this report is available here.

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To the Government of Colombia and President Gustavo Petro Urrego:

The below signed Latin American grassroots environmental organizations and international allies gathered in Bogotá, Colombia from April 21 to 22, 2026 where we shared experiences regarding the serious threats posed by claims that transnational corporations have filed with supranational arbitration tribunals, such as the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). The investor protection system undermines and threatens protections for human rights, nature, and state sovereignty through rulings over water, the environment and affected territories, as well as public finances that could better serve through public investment to improve peoples’ quality of life. As a result, the government is obligated under the constitution to withdraw from these international agreements, which threaten territories such as Santurbán, which encompasses high altitude wetlands known as páramo, as well as forests and rivers that make up a regional water source and essential carbon sink for climate regulation in the Andean and Amazonian regions of Colombia.

Furthermore, in the “First Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels” taking place in Santa Marta, Colombia and an existential crisis over the climate and public finance, a “just energy transition” cannot entail expansion in the energy sector to further greedy profiteering at the expense of the destruction of communities and the environment. Rather, we believe it is necessary to move toward a post-extractivist transition, and urge that the following steps be taken:

1. Terminate the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Colombia in order to dismantle the investment protection system that directly threatens water sources and Santurbán. [1]
2. Denounce existing Free Trade Agreements and Bilateral Investment Agreements, and refrain from signing new treaties and international agreements that include the investor protection system. In this regard, we urge Latin American governments to develop a regional response to these threats.
3. Establish an audit commission with popular and civil society participation to evaluate the impacts that treaties and investment protection agreements have had on protections for human rights and the environment, as well as their impact on the public purse.
4. Completely eliminate foreign direct investment in extractivist activities, including critical and strategic minerals, agribusiness and the green economy, and reorient the economy toward sovereignty and the protection of life, the commons and environmental justice.
5. Prioritize compliance with regulations and court rulings that guarantee human rights and the protection of Nature, over international arbitration awards that promote the economic interests of transnational corporations.

Sincerely,

Signatory organizations:

Comité para la defensa del Agua y el Páramo de Santurbán, Colombia

ATTAC Argentina

Asamblea Argentina mejor sin TLC

Colectivo SUBVERSIÓN, Argentina

Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ), Argentina

Centro de Ecología y Pueblos Andinos (CEPA), Bolivia 

TerraJusta, Bolivia

Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales (OLCA), Chile

Quito sin Minería, Ecuador

Cabildo Popular por el Agua de Cuenca, Ecuador

El Observador Gt – Guatemala 

Protection International Mesoamérica, Guatemala 

Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña (OFRANEH), Honduras

Movimiento Ambientalista Social del Sur por la Vida (MASSVida), Honduras

Movimiento indígena Maya Peninsular, México

Asociación Adopta El Bosque Panamá – ADOPTA, Panamá

Colectivo Bayanao, Panamá

Guerreros del Mar, Donoso, Colón, Panamá

Centro de Estudios Heñoi, Paraguay

Derechos Humanos y Medio Ambiente (DHUMA) – Puno, Perú

Red Peruana por una Globalización con Equidad (RedGE), Perú

Transnational Institute (TNI)

Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) – Global Economy Program, U.S.

Resource Note

[1] Three ISDS claims have already been brought against Colombia over measures to protect the páramo ecosystem from mining activities. These include claims from Eco Oro Minerals, Galway Gold (now Montauk Metals) and Red Eagle Mining.

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Read the PDF of the full letter.

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I’ve been organizing climate strikes since I was 12.

I began by protesting outside Brooklyn Borough Hall, not far from my house in Brooklyn, New York. Then I started attending meetings with Fridays For Future NYC, the New York City chapter of Greta Thunberg’s organization. I quickly became enraptured with the energy of the youth climate movement. Through it, I met some of my best friends, as we organized six strikes together in middle and high school.

In my senior year of high school, I was a core organizer for the March To End Fossil Fuels, a 70,000 person march in September 2023, that brought together a diverse cast of organizers—from the Center for Biological Diversity to the NAACP. I felt lucky to be a part of such a massive effort.

Actually phasing out fossil fuels, a topic older organizers told me had once been fringe, was now in the front and center of New York City streets and on the front page of The New York Times. By the end of 2023, I was Fridays For Future’s North American Delegate to COP28 in Dubai, an international climate conference that zeroed in on fossil fuels. It was all anyone was talking about, from grassroots organizers to the US negotiators.

Other fossil fuel phaseout activists and I were actually able to meet multiple times with the lead negotiators for the US, Trigg Talley and Sue Biniaz. The negotiators seemed receptive to adopting fossil fuel phaseout language in the COP28 Global Stocktake Text. We didn’t achieve that, but the phrase “transition away from fossil fuels” did appear in the final text. It was the first time the words “fossil fuels” had ever been included in the final text in the history of COPs.

When we got home from COP28, we were able to meet with John Podesta, who was then President Joe Biden’s top climate advisor. We urged him against allowing the construction of the CP2 liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal. Biden announced a pause on pending decisions for new LNG export projects, including CP2, on January 26, 2024. Finally, it felt like we were winning.

Looking at the news today, that era feels so far away.

Trump administration officials recently gathered in my hometown of Brooklyn to announce their plan to swiftly construct a $1 billion natural gas pipeline in New Jersey and New York Harbor. Construction on CP2 began this past June, and the Trump administration has pulled out of the Paris Agreement. While I still attended COP30 this past year in Belem, Brazil, the US federal government did not send a single negotiator, much less a delegation.

It is easy to lose hope for combating the climate crisis in times like these. But while the US government has relinquished its leadership, others are stepping forward.

In late April, Colombia and the Netherlands are convening the first-ever Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia. This will be the biggest step away from fossil fuels we’ve seen since the March to End Fossil Fuels.

The United States may not be there, but Canada, Australia, and Brazil, among other countries, will be. This is a crucial first step toward formal Fossil Fuel Treaty negotiations, and it is just the beginning of Fossil Fuel phaseout policy becoming the center of attention again.

We need a fast, fair, fossil fuel phaseout—and I have hope for it now, because of Santa Marta.

The post I’ve Been Organizing Climate Strikes Since I Was 12. Colombia’s Santa Marta Conference Is Giving Me Hope Again. appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The oil extracted here doesn’t stay here. It moves through pipelines, ports and trade routes — circulating through global markets and shaping conflict, instability and the terms of international power. Extraction at home and wars abroad are part of the same system.

As the world’s first-ever global diplomatic conference on phasing out fossil fuels gets underway in Santa Marta, Colombia, that connection is impossible to ignore.

While much of the Global South is stepping forward to confront fossil fuel dependence, the United States remains the world’s largest oil and gas producer, extracting roughly 13.6 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2025 — with nearly half of that growth driven by the Permian Basin that stretches across southeastern New Mexico and west Texas.

As New Mexicans, this is impossible to overlook. The same political leadership in New Mexico that claims climate leadership is also the one expanding extraction, fast-tracking infrastructure, and protecting corporate interests at all costs.

The Trump administration’s attacks on Iran and Venezuela cannot be understood outside of this context — control over oil continues to shape interventions, sanctions and war. The question is not whether energy influences geopolitics, but rather whose interests that system is designed to serve.

And in New Mexico, the costs of that system are visible on the ground.

The Permian Basin has become the engine of U.S. oil production, responsible for roughly 6.3 million barrels per day. Entire communities are being reorganized around extraction as the industry pushes against ecological limits and infrastructure strain.

Living in the Permian Basin means facing pollution on an unprecedented scale.

My friend Jozee Zuñiga is a frontline resident in the Permian Basin whose family has nine natural gas pipelines running through their property — their home is surrounded by flares and drilling sites. Families like these live under constant assault from bad smells and poor air quality.

In parts of the Permian and neighboring Delaware basin, the ground has begun to shake from frequent earthquakes caused by oil and gas operations. Many people in these areas are dealing with health issues that can be linked to pollution, and exposure to chemicals known to cause cancer is common.

At the same time, natural gas generating stations are being expanded to power AI-driven data centers. Private equity firms like Blackstone are moving to control electric utilities, turning essential infrastructure into profit-generating assets. Uranium mining is being revived, threatening Indigenous communities with yet another cycle of nuclear colonization.

All of this is tied together by a coordinated strategy: sacrifice land, water, labor, and public health — often in Nuevo Mexicano, Indigenous and working-class communities — to sustain a system of endless growth and geopolitical dominance.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

That’s why I’m traveling to Colombia to help represent New Mexico at the Santa Marta conference. The gathering, sponsored by the governments of Colombia and the Netherlands, offers a glimpse of what could happen when governments are willing to name fossil fuels as the root of the crisis.

This is no longer just about emissions targets or policy. It is about whether the systems shaping the future will continue to prioritize profit, extraction and militarization — or if our future will be transformed to center collective care, justice and survival.

That future will not be handed down through diplomatic language alone. It will have to be fought for — by frontline communities, by workers, by Indigenous nations asserting sovereignty over their lands and by movements refusing to accept business as usual.

In New Mexico and beyond, this fight is already underway in the demand for energy democracy — that is, taking control of energy away from corporations and placing it in the hands of our communities. It’s a call to shift power away from private equity and extractive industries and toward public, cooperative and community-owned models. And to treat communities who’ve been treated as sacrifice zones as leaders in building the solutions.

New Mexico sits at the center. What happens in the Permian Basin is not just a local issue. It is global. Santa Marta offers another path forward — and is a test of whether the world is finally willing to act accordingly.

The post New Mexico Deserves a Future Beyond Fossil Fuels appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

May Day began in the 19th century, when industrial workers came together to demand something we now take for granted: an eight-hour workday. At that time, even children worked twelve or more hours straight in factories, every day. We too easily forget how far we have come, and that victories like these were won by organized people.

In 1884, there was an extreme concentration of wealth in the United States, so labor organizers called for a general strike every year on May 1st until all workers achieved “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will.” It took many strikes and marches, advances and setbacks, but the eight-hour workday ultimately became the law of the land in 1940.

This year, the organizers of May Day Strong are calling for everyone to participate in a new version of a general strike — with no work, no school, and no shopping — wherever you are. There will be large, peaceful marches you can easily join in cities and towns in every state.

May Day Strong’s rallying cry is #WorkersOverBillionaires, at a time when the difference between rich and poor is even worse in this country than it was in the 19th century. The top one percent in this country controls more wealth than the bottom 93 percent, while one man – Elon Musk – controls more than 52 percent of American families.

Every four seconds, Musk and billionaires like him rake in more than the average person makes in a year. Extreme wealth is concentrating even more, fueled by the more than $1 trillion in tax cuts granted by the Trump administration to the ultra-rich and corporations last year. But there’s more at stake than income inequality. We all know that a basic right in a healthy democracy is to have free and fair elections: while this ideal has never really been true for many of us, it’s a hardfought right that guarantees us having a voice in how the country, and our daily lives, are run. That is precisely why it is under attack at this very moment.

That’s why the organization I lead, People’s Action, has joined May Day Strong and more than four hundred partner groups across the country to host democracy bootcamps and solidarity schools, so every community can be prepared to defend democracy. You can join a solidarity school where you live, or organize your own. The materials we have developed for these trainings are freely available to anyone who wishes to use them, in English and Spanish, at organizingfordemoracy.org.

May Day has long served as an inspiration for the immigrant rights movement. For two decades, it has called for May 1st to be a “Day Without Immigrants,” as a way to show solidarity and make the work and contributions of immigrants visible to everyone.

This year’s organizers also found inspiration in Minneapolis, where faith and union leaders called for schools and businesses to close for a “Day of Truth and Freedom” on January 23rd, to protest the violent treatment of immigrants and peaceful protesters by federal agents.

More than 75,000 people poured into the streets of Minneapolis to express their outrage, and thousands more did in other cities. It worked: in the face of this solidarity, clear evidence the people of Minneapolis would stand together and protect each other, federal agents left the city.

Who answered the call in Minnesota? Workers of all sorts, small business owners, neighbors, mothers with children, pastors with their faithful, doctors, nurses and teachers. That is, everyone who believes violence is never the answer, and that we all deserve better.

I am also inspired by the people of Hungary, who just ended the authoritarian rule of Viktor Orbán with their most effective tool: their votes. Despite all of Orbán’s efforts over sixteen years to restrict, silence and intimidate civil society, Hungarians united around a simple truth: they want to live in a future free from fear. Together, they won. And if they can do it, we can, too.

This year, I find inspiration in everyone who has marched before me, and in all those across the country who are finding their voices as we step into the streets in this dark moment. Because it truly is up to us. No one is coming to save us: we must rely on each other.

So I invite you to march with me this May Day, then let’s organize to win elections and protect our right to vote this November. Together, we can prove the power of organized people. I’ll be marching in Florida this year, and if you are nearby, you are welcome to join us. But wherever you are, I encourage you to do something. You will make new friends when you do.

It does not matter why, how or when you decide it is time for a change. It could be today. What matters right now is that we show up for one another, and we learn how to organize with new neighbors to create a democracy where every one of us has a voice, a vote, and the right to live with dignity. You can choose to do this now.

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