The Trayvon Martin case illustrates that we still have a hard time dealing with issues of race in this country. The issue of racial injustice, coupled with economic injustice, is not likely to fade away.

The Census Bureau estimates that by 2042, the population will no longer be majority white. Many believe that this demographic shift will automatically bring with it a qualitative improvement in the situation for people of color.

At the other end of the spectrum, there is a segment of white America that deeply fears the demographic changes and sees in them a threat to its status. Such fears lead some of these people to gravitate toward right-wing populism.

But the demographic changes are not expected to bring about any significant improvements for most people of color, particularly blacks and Latinos, according to a new study, State of the Dream 2012: The Emerging Majority, by the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy.

If current trends continue, we will witness widening gaps in income and wealth, as well as in education and incarceration rates. The study predicts, for instance, that blacks will make 61 cents and Latinos will make 45 cents for every dollar whites make in terms of median family income.

Contrary to right-wing populists' "dystopia for whites," the report paints a picture of a reconfigured Jim Crow — almost an apartheid situation of haves and have-nots.

Most whites won't be benefiting, either. The overall living standard of most of this country, which began to decline in the mid-1970s, will continue to decline. The fates of poor and middle-class whites will be much more connected to those of people of color than to the very rich and largely white ruling elite.

The implications of this report are sobering — even frightening.

We need concerted political and economic action in the days and months and years ahead if we are to conquer our racial and economic disparities. That means not just continuing affirmative action. It also means launching policies of redistributive justice.

Let's face it: Those at the top have been redistributing income and wealth their way over the past three decades. If we don't implement policies that redistribute income and wealth to the vast majority of Americans who need it, our country will become increasingly — and dangerously — divided.

--

Bill Fletcher Jr. is a scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and the co-author of "Solidarity Divided." He wrote this for Progressive Media Project.

"I have attended many workshops and conferences over the years and I cannot remember one that was as meaningful as this one.  I came home filled with great ideas, new techniques, renewed enthusiasm and many warm feelings about you three and the entire group. My heart was touched, my mind challenged and my body energized. Hard to beat this experience."

—Mark McDermott, Minnesota Training of Trainers participant

The U.S. economy is sputtering along, creating new jobs at a rate that won’t get us back to pre-recession levels for at least another decade. An austerity program is shrinking the public sector, tearing apart the remaining social safety net and widening the racial economic divide. Meanwhile, the top 1% are riding higher than ever. The influence of big money in politics continues to grow and the 2012 elections will push such spending to obscene heights. Global trade agreements continue to spur a race to the bottom, economic dislocation and migration, and the inability to rein in too-big-to-fail financial institutions adds up to a frighteningly unstable and potentially catastrophic economic outlook.

Last fall, however, this doom and gloom scenario was pierced by the Occupy movement. The encampments, an increase in street heat activism and the brilliant reframing of the debate on the economy, from a focus on deficits and government spending to the 1% vs the 99%, has provided us an extraordinary moment in history. Although the persistence of extreme inequality, the opportunity for broad-based movement and significant social change has dramatically increased.

The role of education — not sound bites, but thoughtful reflection, analysis, and strategizing — is crucial to the success of the rejuvenated organizing and mobilizing that is taking place. We need to make sense of what's happening and further challenge the dominant narrative that ignores the structures that systemically drive inequality. We need to create and unite behind a vision of an equitable, sustainable, and democratic economy. We need to establish the conditions for a democratic, multi-racial, multi-class progressive social change movement that can alter the established relations of power.

UFE's Popular Economics Education Training of Trainers Institute explores these questions and gives participants tools for analysis that will inform and inspire action.

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Updated April 17, 2012

Tax Day is here! This Tax Day, we at United for a Fair Economy urge you to work with us for Tax Solutions for the 99%.

Our tax code is rigged to benefit the richest 1% among us.
We need Tax Solutions for the 99%.

2012 is a pivotal year. Not only do all of the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year, but the outcome of the November elections could very well determine the future of our tax system.

We must tell Congress that Tax Solutions for the 99% will raise enough revenue to fully fund the vital government services that we all count on. The richest 1% and big corporations have gained the most from our economic system and can afford to fund the government that helped to enable their success.

Here are five actions you can take on Tax Day to help advance Tax Solutions for the 99%:

1. Tell Congress and President Obama to support Tax Solutions for the 99%.
Sign on to our letter that outlines a comprehensive plan of tax changes that will lead to a tax system where wealthy people and big corporations join the rest of us in paying their fair share.

2. Put your money where your values are!
Take UFE’s Responsible Wealth Tax Fairness Pledge today! Calculate your tax savings from the Bush tax cuts and redirect those savings to tax fairness organizing efforts around the country.

3. Attend a Tax Day event.
UFE is working with many organizations tax day events that will highlight the need for Tax Solutions for the 99%, including:

If you missed the Tax Fairness All Star Panel on April 11th in Washington, DC you can click the link to watch the C-SPAN recording of it. The Panel Discussion: Should the Rich Pay Higher Taxes?, presented on April 12th by the Tax Policy Center. You can watch Reponsible Wealth supporter David A. Levine make excellent points on the recorded broadcast here. April 17th Tax Day Rally in Washington, DC.

4. Attend a training or local tax day event.
Be a part of the goal to train 100,000 people in non-violent direct action. Participate in the free online training to be a part of the 99% Spring. And you can find a local Tax Day event through MoveOn.org or WeAreOne.

5. Spread the word.
Be an ambassador for the 99%. Check out Lee's Links for some of the best tax day actions and info. Share infographics on your Facebook wall. Tweet about inequality via @ufe and #fairshare. Download and print a rally sign. Make noise; create change.

What if there was a way to bring in substantial new revenue to pay for vital public services? What if we could generate that revenue exclusively from those who can best afford it, the estates of millionaires and billionaires, and at the same time reduce economic inequality? We'd be crazy to not do it, right? Well, the good news is that a strong estate tax will do exactly that.

At a time when so many essential government programs are facing painful cuts or even elimination as a result of low federal revenues, restoring a strong estate tax can be a big step toward solving some of the problems facing our federal budget and addressing the growing epidemic of persistent economic inequality. There is a bill currently in congress, The Sensible Estate Tax Act (H.R. 3467), that would be an excellent estate tax reform.

The American's for a Fair Estate Tax (AFET) coalition, which is made up of more than seventy national and state groups including membership organizations, advocacy groups and labor unitions, just sent a letter urging congress to pass H.R. 3467 (PDF). Among the reasons AFET supports H.R. 3467:

• The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that federal estate and gift taxes will generate $516 billion in revenue from 2013 through 2022, assuming that the 2010 estate and gift tax cut expires as scheduled at the end of 2012.

• Other policy options would be fiscally irresponsible. CBO found that extending the estate tax reduction in effect for 2011 and 2012, which increased the estate tax exemption to $5 million per spouse and reduces the top estate tax rate to 35 percent, would cost $432 billion over the following decade.

• Existing tax breaks would continue to protect small businesses and farms under either the pre-2001 rules or the Sensible Estate Tax Act. A CBO analysis (PDF) found that only 0.3 percent of taxable estates were either family held-business estates or estates of farmers and lacked sufficient liquid assets (like cash, stocks, and bonds) to pay the estate tax. That’s why opponents of the estate tax have not been able to find a single farm that had to be sold to pay the tax.

The Sensible Estate Tax Act would also make important reforms that reunify the gift and estate tax exclusions; make permanent the portability of the exemption for spouses; restore the state credit to provide critical revenue for states without increasing taxes; close loopholes in the asset valuation and minority discount rules; among a number of other reforms.

It's a great bill. Unfortunately, every Republican tax proposal includes eliminating the estate tax, and President Obama supports extending the estate tax at its lowest level from the Bush tax cuts. Neither of these options is nearly good enough. That's why AFET is pressuring congress and building support for the Sensible Estate Tax Act.

For more on AFET's support of H.R. 3467, read our press release.

A Better Life star Demián Bichir discusses his role as an undocumented day laborer

We like a movie with a call for justice, and A Better Life is the newest on our must-watch list. This critically acclaimed film has the potential to better shape our views on immigration policy or, rather, the issues that lead to immigration into the US.

The story, set in East L.A., follows Carlos Galindo, an undocumented single father who struggles as a day laborer to make a future of peace, opportunity and economic stability possible for his US-born son.

The movie struck a chord with UFE's Jeannette Huezo:

"People watching A Better Life can see the immigration debate through a human lens. This film can help people to see the social costs of policies that attack immigrants and tear their families apart. Thousands of people face the same challenges and devastations as the Galindos everyday. Anti-immigrant laws like those passed in Alabama, Arizona, California, and other states make those stories all the more frequent."

Immigration policy and immigrant-related issues continue to be a political third rail. A lot of that has to do with the complexity of the issue(s). It's not just an immigration problem. It's about cheap labor. It's about international trade and foreign policy. It's about national security. It's about human rights. It's about a lot of things, and despite what you might hear from mainstream media, it can't boiled down to a soundbite because it's connected to a lot of rarely connected issues.

George Lakoff points out the difficulty of the framing of the immigration issue in our environment of political polarization:

"[The immigration issue] is a complex melange of social, economic, cultural and security concerns — with conservatives and progressives split in different ways with different positions. Framing the recent problem as an 'immigration problem' pre-empts many of these considerations from entering the debate. As a consequence, any reform that 'solves' the immigration problem is bound to be a patchwork solution addressing bits and pieces of much larger concerns."

No one wins with policies that attack immigrants and cause the forced abandonment of children by undocumented parents. Still, there are a lot of xenophobic politicians and pundits out there who zealously support those policies. Ironically, those are often the same talking heads that endlessly beat their "family values" drums, especially during campaign season.

Help to move the public conversation in a better direction by sharing the film with your network. Stop the scapegoating of immigrants by encouraging a more robust dialogue about the many factors that contribute to our "immigration problem." As more people see the bigger picture and take action for immigrant rights, we'll build more power for a rational policy response.

More:

• Official movie trailer
• Get involved with the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)

Thumbnail graphic h/t NDLON

The iconic "self-made" businessman is a tired and false cliche; it's time for a more honest national dialogue about what makes wealth and success possible. And a new book by two UFE staffers aims to do just that. 

The Self-Made Myth—And the Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed, released this month by UFE executive director Brian Miller and Responsible Wealth project director Mike Lapham, exposes the false claim that business success is solely the result of the heroic effort of a single individual. The book contend that, among other supports, businesses are built atop public structures and services established and maintained by taxpayers’ collective investments made through government. As such, they owe something back to society.

“Debunking the self-made myth is critical, particularly during an election year where taxes and the role of government are center-stage,” says Brian Miller in a press statement released today. “We wrote this book because how we view wealth creation and individual success shapes our choices on policies, including taxes, regulations, public investments in schools and infrastructure, CEO pay, and more.”
             
Since the Reagan presidency, those involved in the broader conservative movement have based their anti-tax efforts on the notion that wealth is derived from the superior efforts of “job creators.” This frame fuels an anti-government and anti-tax narrative that the authors say is counter-productive to the kinds of investments we need to make to get our nation’s economy back on track.

“Members of Responsible Wealth, including some of the business owners profiled in our book, understand that there’s a lot more working in their favor than smarts, creativity or hard work,” says Mike Lapham. “They believe they owe a chunk of their good fortune to government investments in education, research, infrastructure and a regulatory system that have created a fertile business environment.”

The co-authors of The Self-Made Myth add that social relations can also provide an economic boost. “We hear these icons of business success, Donald Trump, Ross Perot, and the Koch brothers, for example, tout themselves as ‘self-made,’” said Miller. “But their failure to acknowledge the role of luck, privilege, and even government is misleading and dishonest.”

The Self-Made Myth book tour launched last week, fittingly at a public institution of learning, the Boston Public Library. The tour will continue around the country, with stops in New York City, Portland (Oregon), and Seattle.

Black History Month may have come to an end, but the fight against racial injustice is hardly over. In order to close the racial economic divide, we must first take an honest look at the policies and practices that created and perpetuate racial disparities.

Here are 11 ways federal government giveaways gave an economic headstart to white people while excluding people of color.

1. Free land
White Revolutionary War veterans were given nine million acres of Indian land.

2. Legalized squatting
In 1841, the U.S. government legalized squatting, allowing white settlers to take over Native American land.

3. Military-enforced squatting
The U.S. Government helped enforce squatting by employing the U.S. Army out west to beat back Native Americans from land coveted by white settlers.

4. More free land
In addition to conquering half of Mexico, the U.S. Government reclaimed Latino landowners’ land for minor infractions such as missing paperwork or back taxes, and then sold it to Anglo settlers at a minor cost.

5. Even more free land
The Homestead Act of 1862 provided free or very inexpensive land was provided by the government to 1.5 million white families.

6. Revoked promises to slaves
Following the Civil War, freed slaves were promised ‘40 acres and a mule.’ Following Lincoln's death, this promise was revoked and land was returned to its previous White owners.

7. Preferential treatment of white workers
Through the New Deal, the U.S. Government provided minimum wages, union rights, and social security to industrial workers, almost all of whom were white. These same benefits, however, were denied to agricultural and domestic workers, most of whom were people of color.

8. Government-sponsored aid
Government-sponsored aid was provided to struggling white farmers while denying it to most black farmers from the 1930’s right through the 1980s.

9. GI Bill benefits
Provided free college education, vocational training, and cheap mortgages to nearly two million white WWII vets via the GI Bill, while simultaneously blocking most veterans of color from accessing the same benefits.

10. Neighborhood investment through homeownership
Invested in infrastructure to expand suburban neighborhoods where white households were able to access government-subsidized mortgages while urban, inner-city neighborhoods were red-lined.

11. Tax breaks
Tax breaks on investment income (such as dividends, capital gains and inheritances), which are disproportionately owned by wealthy white people, have been cut and lowered much more than taxes on income from work.

How can tax fairness advocates and businesses effectively bond together to reclaim the myth that progressive taxation is anti-business? This free Tax Fairness Tune-Up webinar will provide insights and practical tips for grassroots organizers and business leaders alike. Register today!

RECLAIMING THE PRO-BUSINESS NARRATIVE: Connecting Grassroots & Businesses Leaders for Progressive Tax Reform

Thursday, March 15 from 2:00-3:00pm EST

Register now!

Free and open to tax fairness advocates and allies.

This webinar will explore how to effectively integrate businesses into progressive tax campaigns. Presenters will explore commonly-held myths surrounding personal and business success and how tax fairness organizers can effectively reclaim this narrative by working in conjuction with business leaders.

This webinar is appropriate for tax fairness organizers looking to engage business leaders in progressive tax campaigns and business leaders who wish to partner in statewide coalitions for progressive tax reform.
 
Presented by:
Brian Miller, Executive Director of United for a Fair Economy and co-author of The Self-Made Myth: and The Truth about How Government Helps Businesses and Individual Succeed
Scott Klinger, Tax Policy Director from The American Small Business Coalition
Bob Fulkerson, Executive Director of Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN) and member of the Tax Fairness Organizing Collaborative

Register now!

Watch this video to see what people are saying!

The Self-Made Myth co-authors, Brian Miller and Mike Lapham, will be on tour in 2012 discussing the book as it relates to the national dialogue about inequality, taxes, the role of government, and other public policy questions before us. Some of the remarkable individuals profiled in the book will join Mike and Brian in select cities.

See details about book tour events and register below. Tour dates are still being scheduled, so join our mailing list in the right sidebar to stay in the loop as new tour cities are announced!

Date			Time			City			Venue
March 7, 2012			6:00 p.m.			Boston, MA			Boston Public Library (Register)
March 29, 2012			7:00 p.m.			New York, NY			New York Society for Ethical Culture (Register)
April 18, 2012			7:00 p.m.			Portland, OR			First Unitarian Church / Eliot Center (Register)
May 9, 2012			7:30 p.m.			Seattle, WA			Town Hall Seattle (Register)
May 23, 2012			7:00 p.m.			San Francisco, CA			The Bay Area Hub SoMa (Register)

In the past few months, we’ve heard more than ever about economic inequality. This increased awareness is a breath of fresh air, but it’s not enough by itself. We can’t just point out the existence of inequality. We must uproot the ideological underpinnings that support it. No matter how unequal wealth and income are, if people can rationalize it in their minds as the result of some working harder or being more virtuous than others, then our efforts to rein in inequality will fall flat.

>> ABOUT THE SELF-MADE MYTH >>

The "self-made man" is as American as a Norman Rockwell image. It is also just as overly romanticized and wholly separated from reality. Indeed, the notion that individual success is entirely autonomous has dangerous policy implications. It's time to do some myth bustin' and put the "self-made myth" to rest, once and for all.

UFE's new book, The Self-Made Myth, challenges the by-your-own-bootstraps myth by offering real stories of business and individual success. It also disproves the claims of several modern-day self-made business heros, including the familiar faces below. These silver-spooners have no qualms about bashing and starving government, even though Uncle Sam was (and continues to be) a key business partner in enabling their success.  

TAKE ACTION:
Take a look at the images below, save and share with your networks, and help us bust the self-made myth once and for all.

Debbie Bosanek in looks on as President Obama delivers his 2012 State of the Union address.

It's true. Warren Buffett's secretary is a real person. After so many years as a nameless, faceless talking point in support of higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires, the country's most famous secretary has emerged—in momentous fashion at that. 

Debbie Bosanek is her name, and she was revealed to the world during President Obama's third State of the Union address:

Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. 

Buffett's super-low tax rate became a hot topic in the early 2000s, but it took nearly a decade for that fact to shake its purely rhetorical quality. Obama gave the issue new life last year when he announced his intent to pursue the Buffett Rule, or a tax on millionaires to reduce the growing economic chasm between the top 1% and everybody else. In his SOTU address, he called for a minimum 30% tax rate for millionaires. 

Now, not only does the Buffett Rule have the name and face of, in Bosanek's words, "an average citizen who needs a voice," but it also has numbers to place it's impact in context. Our friends at Citizens for Tax Justice calculate that the Buffett Rule would raise $50 billion this year if implemented and would affect a mere 0.08% of taxpayers.

This week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) decided to ride the wave. In the wake of the SOTU, Whitehouse is introducing a version of the Buffett Rule for a vote in the Senate with his Paying A Fair Share Act. The bill offers a very straightfoward way to meet the President's 30% rate on millionaires without changing existing income tax rates or the preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends that chiefly benefits the very wealthy. While we'd love to see more holistic reform of the tax code, we applaud the Senator for getting the conversation started.

The bill is certain to meet rabid opposition from Congressional Republicans. But with polls showing overwhelming support for the Buffett Rule, the GOP may struggle to justify continued tax breaks for the people who really don't need them, especially in an election year.

See our related infographic, "How Do We Coddle the Super-Wealthy?"