IPS Blog

This week in OtherWords, Jill Richardson makes the case for raising chickens in your backyard and Sam Pizzigati discusses Ford's worker-financed bailout.

Donald Kaul is taking a spring break this week and will be back on April 3, when we'll run a Tax Day special edition.

Here's a clickable summary of our latest commentaries and a link to our new cartoon. If you haven't already subscribed to our weekly newsletter, please do.

1. A Plateful of Justice / Javier Rojo
   The people that wash your dishes and the folks who cook and serve your food deserve better.
2. Ditching ‘Rape Culture’ for Good / Alana Baum
   From HBO's "Girls" to CNN's coverage of the Steubenville case, it's time for people to start talking about rape in a more productive way.
3. A Dubious Honor / Wenonah Hauter
   How can Smithfield rank so high on Fortune's list of most-admired companies?
4. Don’t Cheat Your Grandma / Martha Burk
   One idea for cutting Social Security that's gaining popularity in Washington would hurt the elderly, especially older women.
5. When Workers Foot the Bill for Bailouts / Sam Pizzigati
   U.S. executives, including Ford CEO Alan Mulally, are personally profiting off their employees' pain.
6. Why I’m a Chick with Chicks / Jill Richardson
   As a visit to my Cluckingham Palace coop proves, small-scale chicken raising is compatible with modern city life.
7. Obama’s Unethical End Run / Jim Hightower
   Obama's transparent deception on special-interest money.
8. A Tortured History / William A. Collins
   Could you or I be kidnapped and waterboarded and still have no right to sue?
9. Invisible Hand University / Khalil Bendib cartoon

The Institute for Policy Studies invites you to IPS's 50th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion highlighting bold and progressive social movements over the last 5 decades. From October 11th-13th, 2013, we will host a weekend of events in Washington, D.C. honoring progressive activists and activism and envisioning a plan for the future.

We will begin with an opening "reunion" reception to celebrate IPSers from the past, present and future on Friday, October 11, 2013. This will be a great opportunity for old friends to reconnect and for the extended IPS family to come together. On Saturday and Sunday, we will hold an “Ideas into Action” Festival featuring workshops, forums, and artistic expressions as well as a bazaar for our progressive partners and allies to feature their work. The celebration will culminate with a VIP dinner at Busboys and Poets and an interactive gala at the historic Union Station on Sunday evening with over 600 people, including notable progressives from major social movements in the past 50 years and rising young public scholars and activists of today.

The Theme of the 50th Anniversary Celebration and Reunion is "The Next 50 Years" and all events will be intergenerational with an emphasis on the next generation of public scholars and a bold, progressive future.

Event Dates:

October 11th, 2013
IPS Reunion Reception

October 12th-13th, 2013
Ideas into Action Festival

October 13th, 2013
IPS Sustainable Dinner

October 13th, 2013
50th Anniversary Gala
Purchase Tickets (early-bird rates going fast!) 

Together, we can bring together the IPS community for a truly amazing weekend! Please also stay abreast by joining our IPS Community: Celebrating 50 Years on Facebook.

If you would like to help with planning and preparation or know of IPSers we should be contacting, please email Joy Zarembka, Associate Director, at joy@ips-dc.org or call 202-787-5244.

Cross-posted from the Yes! Magazine blog.

You are celebrating your birthday at your favorite restaurant and you’ve just ordered a tasty, locally grown organic meal. You savor the food, while feeling good that you are contributing to a better world.  What could be better?

Well, for starters: the conditions of the people serving and busing your table.

Most don’t make a living wage.  Indeed, most of your servers work for the same minimum wage they’ve gotten for 22 years: $2.13 an hour. That’s right: no increase for a generation. Therefore, most workers have no choice but to work if they’re sick because nine out of ten don’t receive paid sick leave. Yes, if you are reading this now because you’re sick at home, you may well have caught your disease from a sick restaurant employee who had no choice but to work.

There is a new chilling-yet-ultimately-hopeful book that tells the story of the millions who toil to serve us in restaurants: Behind the Kitchen Door. It is hopeful because its dynamo author, Saru Jayaraman, and dozens of courageous restaurant workers created a group that is fighting for their rights: the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC).

Read the rest of this book review on Yes! Magazine's website.

This week in OtherWords, Jo Comerford likens the imminent across-the-board budget cuts to a truck careening toward a brick wall and Jill Richardson explains what’s wrong with an ingredient found in most liquid soaps that Americans use.

Below you’ll find links to our latest work. If you haven’t already subscribed to our weekly newsletter, please do.

1. A Global Spotlight on Voter Suppression / Ron Carver
   Heinous schemes to limit the right to vote keep appearing in state legislatures.
2. We’ve Got to Get Out of That Place / Usha Sahay and John Isaacs
   Rather than prolonging the quagmire in Afghanistan, Obama should take this opportunity to finally to honor his commitment to bring our troops home.
3. Why Use a Bludgeon When a Calculator Will Do? / Jo Comerford
   Some lawmakers have an almost-mythical resistance to raising revenue at a moment when affluent individuals and big corporations have the lowest tax burden in more than half a century.
4. Give the Post Office a Break / Donald Kaul
   If the Postal Service were run like Congress, postal workers would only show up on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays — except when they were on vacation, which would be a lot.
5. A Triumph of Sewage and Stench / Sam Pizzigati
   It takes more than a nice cruise ship buffet to make a billionaire.
6. We’re All Guinea Pigs / Jill Richardson
   I don’t want to expose the most precious people in my life to an endocrine disruptor.
7. The Organized Sports Racket / Jim Hightower
   Big sports teams toss unwise investments to taxpayers and let them fumble.
8. What Post-Racial America? / Emily Schwartz Greco and William A. Collins
   It will take more than President Barack Obama’s tenure to vanquish American prejudice and racial injustice.
9. Declaring Victory in Afghanistan / Khalil Bendib cartoon

Cross-posted from The American Prospect's website.

In February 1913, exactly a century ago, the Sixteenth Amendment gave Congress a constitutional green light to levy a federal tax on income. Later that same year, lawmakers made good on that opportunity. An income tax has been part of the federal tax code ever since.

So what can we learn, as progressives, from this first century of income taxation?

Lesson One

Steeply graduated income tax rates can help societies do big things.

A half-century ago, America’s federal income tax rates rose steadily—and quite steeply—by income level, with 24 tax brackets in all. On income roughly between $32,000 and $64,000, in today’s dollars, couples in the 1950s faced a 22 percent tax rate. On income that today would equal between $500,000 and $600,000, affluent Americans faced a tax rate of 65 percent. The highest 1950s tax rate, 91 percent, fell on annual income that would today exceed $3.2 million.

Today, our federal tax rates rise much less steeply. The current top rate? The “fiscal-cliff battle” earlier this winter raised the top federal rate on individual income over $400,000 from 35 to 39.6 percent, less than half the 91 percent top rate in effect through the Eisenhower years.

Those high tax rates in the middle of the 20th century made a huge difference. The revenue these tax rates generated funded new government programs like the justly celebrated G.I. Bill. Within a single generation, the United States went from a nation two-thirds poor to a nation two-thirds middle class. Americans saw the difference that government can make—and felt that difference personally.

Most Americans today, by contrast, don’t expect much from their government. And for good reason. Most of us around today haven’t seen our government undertake any major new initiative improving the quality of the lives we lead. In this low-expectations political environment, conservative lawmakers demand endlessly lower income taxes for everybody, at every opportunity, and mainstream liberals dare not even hint at raising taxes on “middle class” incomes under $250,000.

But back in our steeply graduated tax-rate past, politicians did dare talk about higher taxes, and middle class Americans didn’t much mind paying those taxes—for two reasons. They saw big results from the tax dollars they paid. They also knew that America’s wealthiest were sacrificing at tax time, too. 

We don’t do big things in America anymore. But we could, if we made paying taxes politically palatable again. Steeply graduated income tax rates helped work that magic a half-century ago. They could work that magic again.

Read the rest of this article on The American Prospect's website.