The US Financial Transactions Tax: A Primer
What do Bill Gates, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, have in common? All of these prominent figures support some type of Financial Transactions Tax, a progressive tax on financial speculation.
The proposed U.S. Financial Transactions Tax (FTT), commonly known as the “Robin Hood Tax,” seeks to raise billions of dollars in federal revenue by levying a small excise tax on certain transactions in the financial sector. This study explores at how a Financial Transactions Tax will work, precedents for the tax, and current arguments for and against the tax.
Read moreBillionaire Bonanza
This is one of the many eye-popping findings of a new report, Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us, released by the Institute for Policy Studies.
Read moreThe Growing Divide
The Growing Divide is UFE's highly acclaimed workshop that over 100,000 people have participated in nationwide. We review recent trends in income and wealth distribution through participatory “human graph” activities, demystify the hype on the national deficit and debt, and examine the rule changes that fuel inequality. The workshop also offers a range of strategies and steps we can take to reverse the growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and set us on a path of broadly shared economic recovery.
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The Racial Wealth Divide
UFE's Racial Wealth Divide workshop helps explore how our current economic inequality has been and continues to be shaped by racialized policies and behavior from the past to the contemporary. The workshop focuses on the role of government policies and reveals how critically important it is for us to abolish racial wealth inequality and the society that creates and maintains it. Thus the workshop is a critical education tool that helps workshops participants understand why things are the way they are. The workshop also helps participants develop strategies, campaigns and actions that will help create greater economic equality and racial economic justice.
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State of the Dream 2015: Underbanked and Overcharged
This Martin Luther King, Jr. day, UFE is excited to release it's annual State of the Dream Report, titled "Underbanked and Overcharged." This report finds that access to banks in communities of color cost each unbanked household $3,029 per year, taking $103 billion out of the communities that need it most.
State of the Dream 2014: Healthcare for Whom?
Healthcare for Whom explores the racial economic implications of one of the most important human rights issues and public policy debates of the day: healthcare.
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