Progressive proposals are always met with affordability questions. Those same questions must be put to conservatives, starting with Trump’s 2021 budget.
Read more
Economic Justice
Combating inequality means both lifting up and building power at the bottom, and breaking up concentration of wealth and power at the top. That’s why we work at the intersection of economic and racial justice through projects designed to build leadership and self-empowerment of black workers, immigrant workers, and low-wage workers, youth and families affected by incarceration, along with projects aiming to reverse the rules that criminalize poor people of color, and projects fighting to ensure that the wealthy and Wall Street corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
Latest Work
Trump’s 2021 Budget Gives 55 Percent to the Military
Congress won’t pass the president’s 2021 budget proposal as is, but it’s clear Trump wants to boost military spending while divesting from everything else.
Read more
Taxing Wealth Emperors in the Empire State
The Strong For All coalition is pressing for higher taxes on the very rich rather than austerity budget cuts that hit the non-wealthy.
Read more
Understanding Socialism and Democratic Socialism Today
James Early and E. Ethelbert Miller explore the historical context and development of socialism and democratic socialism.
Read more
Living in Inequality, Dying in Despair
U.S. life expectancy is up, but we still lag behind other developed countries. As the world’s most unequal developed nation, we shouldn’t be surprised.
Read more
Impeachment Couldn’t Depose Trump. Working Class Politics Can.
As impeachment fades to a footnote, Trump’s most effective critics won’t be rehashing Ukraine. They’ll be organizing workers.
Read more
Goodbye to All That: The UK after Brexit
Brexit could see the UK eventually lose Scotland, Northern Ireland, and a great deal of its prosperity.
Read more
There’s No ‘Great American Comeback’
Trump is counting on the working class he’s betraying most aggressively. Can the left get out of affluent suburbia and back to its roots?
Read more
In Blow to Privatizers, House Passes Postal Financial Relief
The bipartisan bill would ease financial challenges critics use to justify postal worker wage cuts and selling parts of USPS to for-profit corporations.
Read more
Progressive Experts Rebut Trump’s False Claims About Shared Prosperity
In his State of the Union address, the president made a poor attempt to conceal the continued rise in economic inequality under his administration.
Read moreIPS Projects
Reports
REPORT: The Warfare State: How Funding for Militarism Compromises Our Welfare
Nearly two-thirds of the federal discretionary budget goes to militarized federal programs, leaving just over a third for our communities — a sliver some lawmakers want to cut even further.
REPORT: A Tale of Two Retirements 2023
Our tax code helps CEOs retire in luxury while ordinary workers struggle. Here’s how to fix it.
Report: High Flyers 2023: How Ultra-Rich Private Jet Travel Costs the Rest of Us and Burns Up the Planet
In this report, we assess the environmental, economic, and security risks of private jet travel — and lay out tax reforms to offset them.
Tax Day 2023: Where Your 2022 Tax Dollars Went
IPS’s National Priorities Project takes a look at where American taxpayers’ money went in 2022, and how skewed our national priorities are.
Wall Street Bonuses Decline But Still Dwarf Worker Pay Increases Since 2008 Crash
Since 2008, the average Wall Street bonus has climbed by more than 75 percent, compared to just a 54 percent increase in average earnings of all private sector workers and a 42 percent rise in manufacturing wages. If the minimum wage had increased as much as Wall Street bonuses since 1985, it would be worth $42.37 today.