Global Economy

The Global Economy Program provides research, communications, and networking support to dynamic economic justice movements in the United States and around the world. Our goal is to speed the transition to an equitable and sustainable economy while reversing today’s extreme levels of economic and racial inequality and excessive corporate and Wall Street power. The program focuses its work on six inter-related areas:

Inequality and CEO Pay

The program collaborates with a broader IPS team to produce Inequality.org and a related weekly newsletter that highlights the latest data and the sharpest strategies to reverse extreme inequality in the United States and around the world. The program is also a leading resource on one key driver of inequality — runaway CEO pay. For more than two decades, our annual report series “Executive Excess” has drawn extensive media coverage to the issue of CEO pay and practical solutions. A newer report series, “A Tale of Two Retirements,” is the first to track the staggering gap in retirement benefits between wealthy CEOs and ordinary Americans.

Featured Resource

Toolkit: State and City Taxes on Extreme CEO-worker Pay Gaps

Recent Posts Related to CEO Pay

Trade, Investment, and Mining

The program works with grassroots activists around the world to advance alternative international trade and investment policies that elevate environmental, human, and labor rights above narrow corporate interests. In recent years program staff have played a lead role in supporting a successful campaign in El Salvador to defend against global mining corporations’ attempts to steamroll local resistance to harmful extractives projects.

Featured Article

How An International Grassroots Campaign Beat Metal Mining Corporations

Recent Posts Related to Trade, Investment, and Mining

Black Workers Initiative

The Black Worker Initiative aims to help expand opportunities for black worker organizing and thereby greatly contribute to the revitalization of the U.S. labor movement as a whole. This program is deeply committed to helping achieve both the historic and contemporary aims of the labor and civil rights movements.

Featured Report

“And Still I Rise”

Recent Posts Related to Black Worker Initiative

Wall Street and Global Finance

IPS staff play lead roles in coalitions working to restore the financial sector to its proper purpose of serving the real economy. We track the reckless Wall Street bonus culture, for example through our annual “Off the Deep End” report on the size of the financial industry bonus pool versus the cost of paying restaurant servers and domestic workers a living wage. We also advance innovative reforms such as a small tax on Wall Street speculation to curb short-term trading and generate massive revenue for urgent public needs, such as fixing our crumbling national infrastructure.

Featured Report

Republican Tax Plan Giveaways to Wall Street (co-published with Americans for Tax Fairness and the Take On Wall Street campaign

Recent Posts Related to Global Finance

Low-Wage Workers

Featured Report

Report: The Human Trafficking of Domestic Workers in the United States

Recent Posts Related to Low-Wage Workers

Inequality.org

Inequality.org and a related weekly newsletter are key resources for the public at large, journalists, teachers, students, academics, activists, and others seeking information and analysis on wealth and income inequality. Here, we collect the latest developments on inequality and keep readers abreast of relevant information concerning the widening wealth gap. We highlight stories from activists on the front lines of the fight against extreme inequality and share information that can be used for ongoing campaigns.

Latest Work

Sanders, Lee, and Tlaib Lead Effort to Tax Huge CEO-Worker Pay Gaps

Sarah Anderson | November 14, 2019

The House-Senate companion bill addresses corporate America's extreme disparities, giving firms an incentive to lift up the bottom and bring down the top of their pay scales.

It’s Not Just a ‘Coup’: Bolivia’s Democracy Is in Meltdown

Michael Paarlberg | November 13, 2019

The ‘Was it a coup?’ debate distracts from deeper issues plaguing the country — some of Morales’s making.

Student Athletes Are Workers — They Should Get Paid

Brian Wakamo | October 24, 2019

California's Fair Pay to Play Act, allowing NCAA athletes to profit off their name and likeness, marks the beginning of a new era in collegiate sports.

The NBA's China Fiasco Shows What Businesses Value

Brian Wakamo | October 23, 2019

Companies willingly censor or condemn free speech to retain market share in authoritarian countries. Just ask NBA General Manager Daryl Morey.

indigenous-Peruvians-protest-mining-pollution

Abusive North American Companies Pay Off Latin American Police to Harass Critics

Jen Moore | October 21, 2019

In countries like Peru, extractive industries contract police to suppress Indigenous protesters and detain international observers — including me.

Where Is 'Line Worker Barbie'?

Sarah Anderson | October 16, 2019

CEO-worker pay gaps are the clearest proof that corporations like Mattel and many others don't respect their employees.

California Takes On the NCAA and Allows College Athletes to Get Paid

Brian Wakamo | October 7, 2019

The NCAA brings in more than a billion dollars in revenue annually. Meanwhile, college athletes struggle to make ends meet. California wants to change that.

Paying the Boss 1,000 Times More Than a Worker Encourages Reckless Corporate Behavior

Sarah Anderson, Sam Pizzigati | October 3, 2019

Sentiment is building to tax excessive CEO pay at public companies

We’ve Waited Too Long for Corporations to Fix the CEO-Worker Pay Gap on Their Own

Sarah Anderson | October 1, 2019

A decade after bonus-chasing executives crashed the economy, we need tax incentives to push companies to narrow the CEO worker pay gap.

As CEO-Worker Pay Gap Soars, Sanders Unveils Plan

Sarah Anderson | September 30, 2019

At the 50 publicly traded companies with the widest CEO-worker pay gaps, an average worker needs to work 1,000 years to earn the CEO’s annual salary.

public-charge-face-of-the-statue-of-liberty-new-york

Trump’s Public Charge Rule Is an Attack on Legal Immigrants

Michael Paarlberg | August 15, 2019

After demonizing undocumented immigration, Trump’s new public charge rule targets legal immigrants on the basis of income and race.

Celebrate American Excellence — With Equal Pay

Brian Wakamo | July 31, 2019

In soccer and in everything else, we need to pay America’s millions of underpaid women what they’re worth.

Businessman with a briefcase full of money

3 Bills to Rein in Executive Pay

Sarah Anderson | July 25, 2019

Before heading home for summer recess, members of Congress are rushing to introduce proposals for cracking down on overpaid executives.

What Kind of Trade Policy Should Progressives Support?

Manuel Perez-Rocha, Ethan Earle, Scott Sinclair | July 25, 2019

NAFTA 2.0 simply locks in existing drives toward ecological collapse and social inequality. A better deal would put people — and nature — first.

‘The Squad’ Keeps the Focus on Bold, Inequality-Busting Policies

Sarah Anderson, Negin Owliaei | July 19, 2019

Representatives Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley fight hard for their constituents in the face of racist attacks.