Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality

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Dedicated to the notion that our world would be considerably more caring, prosperous, and democratic if we narrowed the vast gap that divides our wealthy from everyone else.

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2009

June 22, 2009: Difficult days for grand fortune's apologists . . . How the top executive rush for windfall rewards is rotting out our enterprises . . . The states that lay the heaviest tax burden on the wealthy.
June 15, 2009: The Geithner bailout pay plan: making Wall Street safe again for windfalls . . . How private equity is warping the economy . . . CEO pay in the United States: a 20-year perspective.
June 8, 2009: From the UK and Australia, a new drumbeat for a “maximum wage.” . . . Democracy, inheritance, and the dangers of “perpetual trusts.” . . . The United States and Germany: a stark diference in income distribution.
June 1, 2009: Getting healthy: a tax-the-rich prescription . . . Can a book about derivatives be delightful? A look at an impressive new book on the global economic meltdown . . . A proposal for shareholder “say on pay” with teeth.
May 25, 2009: How Wall Street is rushing to restore an unequal status quo . . . What do Americans really think about inequality? The surprising answer from two top political scientists . . . Who pays the most taxes?
May 18, 2009: Remembering when Citigroup 'cared' about inequality . . . Norway, an icy egalitarian oasis from the Great Meltdown . . . New stats on the cascade of income to America's tippy top.
May 11, 2009: Jack Kemp and the great tax irony of our times . . . A leading World Bank economist puts his finger on the basic cause of the global economic meltdown: inequality . . . Comparing tax rates on the rich in the world's top developed nations.
May 4, 2009: The scoop on “risk-taking” CEOs and Americans who really take risks . . . A victory of sorts for the drive to save the federal estate tax . . . A deep-pocketed architect of the infamously slimy 2004 Swift Boat attack on John Kerry gets even slimier.
April 27, 2009: The distinctly unequal slices of America's wealth pie . . . A serial job killer is stalking the nation, and Congress has the wrong suspect . . . A practical alternative to state budget cutbacks: taxing the rich.
April 20, 2009: Solving the mystery of America's most puzzling inequality stat . . . PayWatch 2009: eye-opening numbers on over-the-top CEO pay packages and their consequences . . . The games Goldman Sachs plays — at our expense.
April 13, 2009: An amazingly rich and valuable transatlantic debate on taxing the wealthy . . . Tax Day 2009: the case for Populist rage . . . A poor state's United States senator goes to bat for America's richest family.
April 6, 2009: What the latest CEO pay surveys have to tell us . . . A strange right-wing attack, from the left, on the egalitarian perspective of Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman . . . The hottest new asset class for wealthy investors.
March 30, 2009: The staggering paychecks hedge fund managers are still taking home, despite the global financial meltdown . . . Just how generous to charity are the super rich? . . . The most expensive accupied residence in the entire United States.
March 23, 2009: Is Congress now finally ready to tax the rich? . . . The latest incendiary data on America's top-heavy distribution of income from the IRS . . . After golden parachutes, what could possibly come next? Introducing the “golden coffin.”
March 16, 2009: Hard times on billionaire boulevard: a look at the latest Forbes take on the world's super rich . . . Is inequality driving us crazy? Here's what top mental health experts are now saying . . . Switzerland pulls back the welcome mat for rich tax cheats.
March 9, 2009: Is trying to tax the super rich a waste of time? . . . The wheeler-dealer who's trying to derail health care reform . . . The rules that shape the U.S. economy and the deep pockets who make them.
March 2, 2009: Finally, a federal budget proposal that targets the great divide between America's wealthy and everyone else . . . Are entrepreneurs America's new oppressed? . . . Tackling the menace of reverse affluenza.

February 23, 2009: A just-released .Federal Reserve survey, conducted every three years, offers our most detailed snapshot of who has what in America . . . A new guidebook for progressive change in the Obama era . . . A counterattack against CEO pay limits.
February 16, 2009: A-Rod and inequality: a lesson worth learning . . . Is inequality bad for the health of the wealthy? New evidence from a comparative analysis of the comfortable in the United States and Europe . . . CEO pay and the bailout.

February 9, 2009: The audacity of hope meets the enormity of inequality, as measured by the incomes of America's 400 highest incomes . . . Unequal nations, unhealthy kids . . . The steep entry fee into the world's most luxurious shopping mall.

February 2, 2009: The global wealthy, at their annual gathering in Switzerland's Davos ski resort, pledge to come to our rescue . . . Why do Wall Street analysts make so much more than engineers? They didn't in the past . . . Energy and inequality.

January 26, 2009: In Corporate America, greed's still living large far beyond Wall Street. The Hewlett-Packard story . . . CEOs, tax evasion, and the charms of the Caymans . . . Capitol games with capital gains.
January 19, 2009: In the UK, an innovative new attempt to legislate inequality away . . . Can a White House make a real difference in the gap between rich and poor? . . .Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's strange sense of public service.
January 12, 2009: Is the new wave of CEO pay cuts a noble self-sacrifice — or a scam? . . . A must-read comic book on inequality and the global economic meltdown . . . A celebrity CEO and the upcoming California gubernatorial campaign.
January 5, 2009: A final report card on the Reagan years, of sorts, from a new Congressional Budget Office report on the incomes of America's super rich . . . A savvy — and even entertaining — new comic book on our economic meltdown. .

2008

December 22, 2008: Our year-end special Too Much edition: America's ten greediest of 2008, a hall of shame that features both the year's famously avaricious and the greedy who've been grasping in the shadows . . .
December 15, 2008: Can the Wall Street bailout be restructured to give CEOs an incentive to protect the middle class? . . . The hidden — and unequal world — of tax expenditures . . . Insurance giant AIG pulls another fast one.
December 8, 2008: The deep, dark secret of Nelson Rockefeller — and the progressive tax lesson we can draw from it . . . Welcome wisdom from a giant of the mutual fund industry . . . Why private jet companies are still smiling.
December 1, 2008: How did Detroit's Big Three CEOs become so clueless? . . . Comparing U.S. and Japanese CEO paychecks . . . The gross-out of “gross-ups,” the hidden scam in America's executive suites . . . The latest hedge fund manager frustration.

November 24, 2008: Rough times for the really smart really rich . . . The Lee Iacocca myth that will not die . . . A great new book on “the quiet revolution in our understanding of how wealth is created.”
November 17, 2008: Congress gently grills the titans of Hedge Fund America . . . A respected London eonomics think tank calls for a maximum wage . . . Comparing U.S. and European executive pay.
November 10, 2008: A post-election take: Governing for the middle — and against the top . . . Reaganism's historic rise and resiliency . . . Swiss trade unionists are leading a call for a maximum wage.
November 3, 2008: How CEOs are gaming the bailout . . . A new sober look at the evolution of American economic inequality from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities . . . Hypocrisy, thy name is Sandy Weill, the retired CEO of Citibank.

October 27, 2008: “Spreading the wealth” in Sarah Palin's Alaska . . . What income-level of taxpayers cheat the most? Now we know . . . A new global comparison of income distribution in 30 of the world's top democracies.
October 20, 2008: The hedge fund meltdown: another reason why wealth needs spreading . . . Comparing the impact on the rich from the Obama and McCain tax plans . . . Joe the Plumber, meet Alf Landon's butcher.
October 13, 2008: A new take, from the environmental movement, on “clawing back” excess pay from bailed-out executives . . . An important new book on the rise of inequality in the USA and the UK . . . AIG's good gala deal.
October 6, 2008: Untruth in advertising: How the Wall Street bailout actually safeguards executive pay excess . . . Economist Robert Kuttner's powerful new book on the epochal challenge a President Obama will face . . . A ritzy welcome for four-leggeds.

September 29, 2008: Why the rich haven't won yet on the bailout . . . Who can best afford to pay the bailout bill? . . . The numbers in a nutshell: Are Americans better off than they were eight years ago?
September 22, 2008: The Wall Street meltdown: How the U.S. economy caught speculative fever . . . The latest Forbes list of America's 400 richest . . . A legacy of Enron that has today's CEOs mightily displeased.
September 15, 2008: How excessive rewards for executive “success” fueled the meltdown at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac . . . A new statistical accounting of America's supply-side years . . . America's cushiest corporate perch.
September 8, 2008: Two political scientists reveal America's silent egalitarian majority . . . In the UK, a new labor movement offensive against concentrated wealth . . . New stats on the wealth of the world's richest 0.001 percent.
September 1, 2008: Should Uncle Sam be in the business of helping CEOs get richer? . . . The reeling State of Working America: a look at the latest data factbook from the Economic Policy Institute . . . The latest word on inequality from the U.S. Census Bureau.

August 18, 2008: A sadly missing plank — on inequality — in the 2008 Democratic Party platform . . . From Britain, a new book gives an up-close-and-personal look at the undeserving rich . . . The games the wealthy play to extract wealth from corporations.
August 11, 2008: New Yorkers, by an overwhelming margin, want a millionaire's tax . . . Asia's children: the biggest losers from inequality in the 2008 Olympic year . . . Which state boasts America's richest rich?
August 4, 2008: In the UK, conservatives discover inequality. Why aren't U.S. conservatives following suit? . . . What's generating more poverty, an explosion of single-parent famiies or an increasingly top-heavy concentration of America's income?
July 28, 2008: McCain and Obama surrogates go mano a mano on taxes . . . An economist looks at the crime of the century . . . Congress misses a chance to send a real message on CEO pay excess.
July 21, 2008: The banking meltdown and excessive executive pay incentives . . . Keeping America's pension promise — but only to CEOs . . . The very rich in France and the United States: rushing in different directions.
July 14, 2008: America's top political scientists issue a warning against grand concentrations of private wealth . . . Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch's new mission in life: justifying executive excess . . . The world's biggest yachts.
July 7, 2008: The American Axle story: Super-sized CEO incentives and the late great American middle class . . . Engineers, software testers, and America's new class conflict . . . An antidote to the excessive pay packages of future Richard Grassos?

June 30, 2008: Merrill Lynch counts and courts the world's wealthy . . . How private jets for the deep-pocket set make their world smaller — and your world worse . . . CNBC gets up close and personal with the super-rich.
June 23, 2008: Down from Filene's basement: the progressive businessman whose legacy the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now staining . . . A top economist links our current economic woes to our concentration of income and wealth.
June 16, 2008: An independent analysis on how America's most affluent 0.1 percent would fare under the McCain and Obama tax plans . . . The top progressive journal in the United States zeroes in on inequality . . . Mega-mansions in L.A.
June 9, 2008: The super-rich, hedge fund speculation, and prices at the gas pump . . . From two noted British business journalists: a set of principles for creating a world that recognizes “the undesirability of a semi-detached super-rich class.”
June 2, 2008: The grand Bush administration deception that Scott McClellan is still ignoring: the White House flim-flam on estate taesx . . . Hard times for yacht owners who want to move up . . . Why sometimes even investment bankers have to say they're sorry.

May 26, 2008: Why CEOs aren't smiling these days in the Netherlands . . . Kevin Phillips on the financialization of the global economy . . . Can progressives win justice for the poor without challenging concentrated wealth at the top?
May 19, 2008: Billionaire Mark Cuban shares some unsavory secrets of CEO success . . . Luxury helicopters: a sure sign that a nation'selites have arrived . . . A shocking new report on global poverty and excessive global wealth.
May 12, 2008: How the mega rich are killing horse racing — and horses, too . . . Wars and taxes: How much have the wealthy paid in the past? . . . Move over subprime, we now have superprimes.
May 5, 2008: A look at shareholders so angry over CEO pay that they're booing . . . How academic “knowledge factories” manufacture multimillionaires . . . The UK's 1,000 richest — and the Queen.

April 28, 2008: Why political consultants never whisper egalitarian sweet-nothings into their candidates' ears . . . A holiday only really rich people can love . . . The public tells Gallup: share the wealth!
April 21, 2008: The record-breaking compensation haul of the world's top hedge fund managers . . . A look back at a banker who took on plutocracy . . . ABC news anchor Charles Gibson and capital gains taxation.
April 14, 2008: How concentrating wealth at the top has turned America's poor and middle class into soulmates of stagnation . . . The first round of CEO pay surveys for 2007 . . . The recession hits Beverly Hills, and hardly anyone notices.
April 7, 2008: Inequality and John McCain's celebrity CEO economic adviser . . . How would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. see our current economy? A new report on our current economic divides suggests an answer . . . Risk taking and rewards.

March 31, 2008: The latest data on America's incredibly rapid concentration of income . . .The unsung story of the New Deal's greatest egalitarian triumph . . . Plutocrats at the new Yankee Stadium.
March 24, 2008: How excessive rewards at the top have helped Wall Street go so flamingly wrong . . . A new book takes on the tax myths of our times . . . Champagne and DNA for the world's richest.
March 17, 2008: A fresh look from Forbes of the world's billionaires . . . On PBS: must-see egalitarian TV . . . A Vatican leader names the “excessive accumulation of wealth”to a new list of seven deadly sins.
March 10, 2008: A nation of butlers, with a 21st century twist . . . CEOs and the mortgage mess: The lesson Congress needs to learn . . . Egalitarian corporate lawyers, reinventing the spirit of Louis Brandeis.
March 3, 2008: Barack Obama's top economic adviser: no fan of fantastic fortunes . . . U.S. history from an IRS perspective . . . Blackwater, Pentagon procurement, and chief executive compensation.

February 25, 2008: Why supermarkets are disappearing in America's most unequal county . . . Australia's new prime minister asks his country's CEOs to go without a pay hike this year . . . The tax surcharge on the rich: an alternative to budget cuts.
February 18, 2008: Wisconsin's tax-the-rich lesson for America's progressives . . . Do the rest of us owe the wealthy a vote of thanks for their patronage of the arts? . . . A promising new inequality study center at Stanford University.
February 11, 2008: The rich and George W. Bush's fiscal swan song . . . The origins of the speculative economy . . . Aspen's Russian invasion . . . The world's luxury bargain mecca . . . The hedge fund industry mints a millionaire — in Congress.
February 4, 2008: The endowments of elite universities are overflowing. Is that good nes or bad? . . . The United States and the UK: the world's twin plutocracies . . . Space, the new frontier for the world's awesomely affluent.

January 28, 2008: A landmark new report on the private equity industry is complicating life for our global greedy . . . Double-dipping at Delphi . . . Executives, incentives, and innovation: the links that aren't.
January 21, 2008: The subprime mortgage crisis color line and the evolution of inequality in the United States . . . Why not a TV drama on IRS agents and wealthy tax cheats? . . . The $50 lottery ticket.
January 14, 2008: A prescription for plutocracy: how taxpayers are helping pharmaceutical execs get rich . . . Retelling a classic tale of avarice in a cineplex near you . . . The latest cemetery accessory for the deep-pocket set.
January 7, 2008: Mitt Romney's CEO dad and his more equal America . . . Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the dangers of concentrated income and wealth . . . Should top corporate executives get paid for dying?

2007

December 17, 2007: The Too Much 2007 Petulant Plutocrat of the Year . . . The “debunker” of CEO pay critics who needs debunking . . . Highlights from the new Congressional Budget Office annual report on America's after-tax incomes.
December 10, 2007: A victory for the sickest loophole in the U.S. tax code . . .The astoundingly unequal rungs on the U.S. economic ladder . . . A secret to CEO success: the corporate CEO pay consultant . . . A review of economist Paul Krugman's latest.
December 3, 2007: How Wall Street high-flyers are having it their way at Burger King . . . Understanding the “reproduction” of inequality in everyday life . . . In Israel, two proposals for a “maximum wage.” . . . Mega millionaires in Moscow.
November 26, 2007: The latest investment bank bonus numbers: how Wall Street justifies the unjustifiable . . . Inequality and Gospel economics . . . Tax havens of the world square off.
November 19, 2007: A mega-millionaire with a dirty secret to share about the philanthropy of mega-millionaires . . . Do we who live in the second Gilded Age have lessons to learn from the first? . . . A little touch of down-home Dubai in midtown Manhattan.
November 12, 2007: In North Carolina, academics and activists gather to reflect on concentrated wealth as a distinctly unnatural disaster . . . The world's largest private residence . . . How rich people-friendly public policies have squandered away the American dream.
November 5 , 2007: Merrill Lynch and Corporate America's wealth creation myth . . . The world's most compelling epidemiologist offers new evidence on the powerful link between inequality and the ills that ail us . . . Rebutting the inequality deniers.

October 29, 2007: In Congress, a key committee chair advances legislation that takes on America's most richest . . . The Ivies and hedge funds . . . The most valuable perk, by far, in CEO pay land.
October 22, 2007: The scoop on new congressional legislation that penalizes corporations that pay their top execs over 25 times what their lowest-paid workers earn . . . A novel for our deeply unequal times . . . Exposing Corporate America's stock option scam.
October 15, 2007: The considerable public power of America's private equity kingpins . . . The United States sets still another modern income inequality record . . . What can you give a billionaire who has everything?
October 8, 2007: A status report on global trickle-up . . . Blackwater runs deep — and enormously profitably . . . The Donald makes an offer the Scots can't refuse . . . Hedge fund kingpins and art collecting.
October 1, 2007: The inequality fault-line behind the national General Motors walkout . . . America's new high-growth industry: protecting the wealth of the wealthy . . . From flip-flops to Gucci: the story of contemporary Vietnam?

September 24, 2007: The latest on just how rich U.S. defense contractors are becoming . . . The new Forbes 400 list in a bit of historical perspective . . . A high-end retail emporium where high heels never touch marble floors.
September 17, 2007: “Pay for performance”: a recipe for executive pay bloat . . . British labor takes on the super-rich . . . The automobile — and plane — passions of Silicon Valley's awesomely affluent.
September 10, 2007: The private equity tax battle: Why the wealthy find themselves in an unprecedented political bind . . . A most inane rationalization for rich people-friendly tax code preferences . . . Move over oligarchs, meet the minigarchs.
September 3, 2007: The 14th annual Executive Excess report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy explores America's leadership pay gap . . . The latest U.S. Census data on income equality . . . Rich people TV.

August 27, 2007: America's incomes: why averages can deceive . . . How private equity fund movers and shakers go about sharing their wealth . . . How people with money to burn actually burn it.
August 20, 2007: Lifespans and inequality: some eye-opening new research on the gaps between the rich and average seniors . . . Why we're living at a great time to be rich . . . Down on the farm: a big-city income divide.
August 13, 2007: Squeezed millionaires in Silicon Valley . . . The ultimate private equity irony: the fix-it myth . . . Are the architects of the Reagan Revolution having second thoughts? . . . Plutocracy and air traffic control.
August 6 , 2007: A billionaire bond trader talks sense about inequality in the United States today . . . A private equity executive breaks with his industry's conventional wisdom on taxes . . . . In an unequal world, the world's tallest tower.

July 30, 2007: The secret of Silicon Valley mega-millionaire success . . . The shrinking global middle class . . . The growing public support — in Europe — for capping executive pay . . . How Americans feel about upping taxes on the nation's very richest.
July 23, 2007: Narcissism in America's executive suites: an academic appraisal . . . Inequality and the great mystery of international height comparisons . . . A private equity tour of New York's Times Square . . . The world's most expensive house.
July 16, 2007: A new snapshot of inequality in the United States from noted wealth researcher Edward Wolff . . . The apologists for private equity fortunes go over the edge . . . The trial of media mogul Conrad Black: Was justice done?
July 9, 2007: Does innovation require inequality as an incentive? . . . Fortunes and foreclosures: an update . . . What will the super-rich start collecting next? . . . The proof that Moscow has finally arrived.
July 2, 2007: The world's rich: a new accounting from Merrill Lynch . . . U.S. billionaires press a lobbying offensive to keep their preferential tax treatment . . . A look back at piracy — and inequality — along the Atlantic coast.
June 25, 2007: A class war over private equity? . . . The developed world's most effective tax evaders . . . A big-time CEO who's ashamed by the compensation of contemporary chief executives.
June 18, 2007: Private equity: a rare inside look . . . The Bentley boom . . . The ultimate island enclave of concentrated wealth . . . In Connecticut, a governor just says no to progressive taxation.
June 11, 2007: How concentrations of wealth at the top squeeze the middle class: a Too Much review of a great new book by Cornell economist Bob Frank . . . The tax magic of executive stock options . . . The Web's best portal to the inequality world.
June 4, 2007: Understanding how dangerous games at the top help Wall Street set stock market records . . . Do higher taxes on the rich backfire on jurisdictions that try to put them in place? Some new evidence from a state-by-state study . . . America's most well-rewarded professional athletes: How does their pay stack up?
May 28, 2007: What worries the wealthy? . . . At one of America's biggest telecom giants, a “Qwest” for pay justice . . . A cure for yacht boredom . . . Gordon Gekko makes a comeback: Will greed still be good?
May 21, 2007: The 2008 Presidential primary field: America's richest ever . . . The deadly environmental link between inequality and extinctions . . . The growing global luxury market in private islands.
May 14, 2007: Tony Blair's legacy: a distinctly more unequal nation . . . The rising entry fee to join the ranks of the affluent . . . A fabled punk rocker, Jello Biafra, calls for a maximum wage.
May 7, 2007: A call for income caps from one of the world's most widely acclaimed public intellectuals . . . Should our highway tolls go to private equity billionaires? . . . The out-of-this-world household budgets of hedge fund managers.

April 30, 2007: The ultimate place to call home for the world's wealthy . . . On Wall Street, hedge hogs on parade . . . The pollsters from Gallup get a message from the American public: Tax the rich!
April 23, 2007: Inequality and tax cheating . . . Students and Sallie Mae's suitors . . . The race to put the rich in orbit . . . Where do pro athletes stand on the U.S. rich list?
April 16, 2007: The New York Times and Wall Street Journal weigh in on executive pay in 2006 . . . Why Swiss watchmakers couldn't be happier . . . An honest-to-goodness pay hero in an executive suite.
April 9, 2007: The year's first national CEO pay annual rundown . . . The ultimate Fifth Avenue shopping experience . . . Why some “rich” nations do more to help the world's poor than others.
April 2, 2007: The income gap in the United States nears an all-time record . . . Indicted: a supply-side con artist . . . In America's corporate suitesm is it dumb and dumber or greedier and greedier?

March 26, 2007: A fine new book on the quarter century that made the United States the developed world's most colossally unequal nation . . . Is George W. Bush a closet tax progressive? . . . Why the rich in Bangladesh are ditching luxury cars.
March 19, 2007: Is New York's mayor as serious about inequality as he says he is? One test . . . Income gaps and child mortality in the world's wealthiest nations . . . What the soon-to-be-released new national executive pay surveys won't tell us.
March 12, 2007: In Congress, a revealing hearing on a most modest CEO pay reform . . . The new Forbes magazine list of the world's awesomely affluent. . . Could you spend $30 million a week and keep getting richer?
March 5, 2007: Can shareholders effectively monitor CEO pay? . . . A budget-balancing solution from the good old days: tax the rich . . . Inequality and why flying the friendly skies so often leaves you feeling like a sardine.

February 26, 2007: The wasting of talent and time on comforting the already comfortable . . . Why not everyone in Silicon Valley is smiling . . . Health, health care, and the healthy profits of corporate health industry giants.
February 19, 2007: War, taxes, and the wealthy: a conflict comparison . . . A CEO perk threatened, Congress to the rescue . . . Ethics and evictions.
February 12, 2007: Should we place all our anti-inequality eggs in an education basket? . . . How the new White House budget comforts the comfortable . . . A top academic asks America to give CEOs a break.
February 5, 2007: Inequality and the fading union presence in America's workplaces . . . George W. Bush, closet egalitarian? . . . A new online resource that can help you actually see the global gap in income and wealth.

January 29, 2007: The 2008 Presidential race: big money's first triumph . . . Steve Jobs, a true CEO genius? . . . The wealthy and the “tax gap”: a Senate takes a long-overdue look at the problem — and the easy solutions.
January 22, 2007: A U.S. Senate panel makes a surprise strike against a pillar of executive pay privilege . . . Must state governments chase after corporations — with tax cuts — to get their economies growing? . . . Why Russians are invading Aspen.
January 15, 2007: The latest stats on income distribution in the United States from the Congressional Budget Office . . . A new resource for righteously celebrating Dr. King's birthday . . . Spend it like Beckham — or Anschutz.
January 8, 2007: Bob Nardelli's home sweet Home Depot . . . Pay equity progress for women: Why the big stall? . . . $4 million a year and counting for Alabama's new football coach . . . Are you really welcome at Bloomingdale'?
January 1, 2007: A record year for Wall Street's bonus boys . . . The SEC rush to make 2007 safe for executive excess . . . Inequality and football, on both sides of the Atlantic . . . Pinochet, happiness, and Chile's about-face on income distribution.

2006

December 18, 2006: The annual Too Much inequality year in review issue.
December 11, 2006: Inside the stock buy back boondoggle . . . A new portrait of our shockingly unequal globe . . . A super-rich holiday shopping report.
December 4, 2006: New numbers on America's tilt to the top from a team of IRS researchers . . . How overpaid professions are poisoning workplaces, today's and tomorrow's . . . Should excessive CEO compensation be a crime? One answer from Germany.

November 27, 2006: What would happen if the IRS really audited the rich? . . . Higher education: America's new engine of inequality . . . Counting the CEOs who've had their stock options backdated.
November 20, 2006: Power-suited bonus babies . . . Why some people never celebrate National Philanthropy Day . . . Free radio and Milton Friedman's free market . . . Private islands for the super-rich.
November 13, 2006: The new Congress: why America's deep pockets can relax . . . How wheeling and dealing on Wall Street can make even top executive paychecks seem lame . . . CEOs and golf clubs anonymous.
November 6, 2006: A cross-Atlantic perspective on income at the top . . . The prototypical “big giver” in the 2006 election cycle . . . The world's most expensive canvas.

October 30, 2006: A revolt of the fairly rich? . . . Election 2006 and the gratitude of the greedy . . . London's Big Bang anniversary: contemplating the social cost of inequality.
October 23, 2006: Behind the White House budget deficit happy talk, a staggering concentration of wealth and income . . . A modern medical miracle: The fortune of UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire . . . First the Bling, now the Grill.
October 16, 2006: China slams the brakes on rising inequality, maybe . . . A short and sorry history of attempts to reform CEO pay . . . Football and fortune in South Bend . . . The world's foremost wealth island.
October 9, 2006: Wal-Mart and the emerging world debate on the notion of a maximum wage . . . Kickbacks, health insurance, and America's growing economic divide . . . How much do mass layoffs contribute to CEO pay windfalls?
October 2, 2006: A mutual fund guru explodes on executive pay . . . Behind the spying scandal at Hewlett-Packard . . . What's more important to education's future, insuring opportunity or equality?

September 25, 2006: The new 2006 Forbes list of America's richest . . . Taxes on the top then, taxes on the top now . . . Armani takes on the tailors: the battle of the customized power suits.
September 18, 2006: John D. Rockefeller reborn? The latest IRS stats on the incomes of America's awesomely affluent . . . The mega-millionaires at the Federal Reserve who set our nation's basic economic policy . . . Entertaining investment bankers.
September 11, 2006: The post-9/11 world's forgotten debts . . . Turning the backdating scandal into still another CEO windfall opportunity . . . Phoenix, the new luxury hotspot.
September 4, 2006: What the Census Bureau figures about who's making what don't tell us — about America's most wealthy . . . Still failing: the latest biennial report card on the U.S. economy from the Economic Policy Institute . . . The year's most enlightening CEO pay report.
August 28, 2006: The struggle for freedom and luxury brand awareness . . . The wealth of our nation: rising to the top . . . Beware the world's latest social pathology, serial remodeling.
August 21, 2006: Remembering Ronald Reagan's ultimate triumph: the 1981 tax cut . . . The list of long yachts gets a little longer . . . Pepsi and the strange paradox of CEO surplus.
August 14, 2006: Is $200 million in pay for four years work reasonable? . . . Comparing the U.S. and European economic models . . . Why the wealthy make lousy investors.
August 7, 2006: Plutocracy in the New York Senate primary . . . A corporate CEO who believes in sharing the wealth . . . Exorcising the inequality-inviting dark side of the New Frontier domestic legacy.
July 31, 2006: The Bush administration's backdoor to estate tax repeal . . . Your vacation too short? Blame inequality . . . The SEC speaks: No more CEO pay secrets!
July 24, 2006: South Africa, the world's most unequal nation . . . Slicing America's income pie, every more unequally . . . The incredible 9/11 executive pay grab.
July 17, 2006: A war-profiteering poster-boy takes a fall . . . The Business Roundtable's mission impossible: making America feel good about CEO pay . . . Why do egalitarian societies win at war?
July 10, 2006: The fiscal recklessness of borrow and spend — on the rich . . . The ritziest seat in the skies . . . In Mexico's presidential election, UN economists spot a real losing proposition.
July 3, 2006: Warren Buffet's grand gesture: How much should America be cheering? . . . A new all-time record pay gap in America's workplaces . . . Wall Street's competition shoves London in the fast lane.
June 26, 2006: Executive pensions: the hidden burden . . . A new census of the world's richest 1 percent . . . The House of Representatives blesses a deeply dangerous and unnecessary Aristocracy Assistance Act . . .
June 19, 2006: The flat tax falls flat in Eastern Europe . . . The sky-high cost of keeping CEOs free . . . The incredible inequality gap, as revealed by a business journal.
June 12, 2006: A maximum wage at a big-time architectural firm . . . Hedge fund management: America's most overpaid occupation . . . The Senate vote on estate tax repeal.
June 5, 2006: The bonus — and stock option backdating — games that chief executives just love to play . . . From Ireland, a new approach to collecting taxes from deep-pockets . . . In the UK, a world-class chemist issues a call for a “maximum wage.”
May 29, 2006: Saving Rolls-Royce . . . Finally, a meaningful congressional hearing on executive pay excess . . . Risk and reward, from the cubicles of Google to the mines of West Virginia.
May 22, 2006: Inequality and gang violence in Brazil . . . Getting rich in America: an ever-longer long shot . . . Is George W. Bush underpaid?
May 15, 2006: The next Sam Walton . . . In Congress, another class war offensive on taxes . . . Corporate America's favorite magic tricks with executive dividend income.
May 8, 2006: Enron's Ken Lay plucks at jurors' heart-strings . . . Forbes on the latest CEO pay stats . . . New evidence on the connection between top-heavy distributions of wealth and poor health.
May 1, 2006: Pfizer CEO beats back shareholder activists . . . The estate tax and America's shyest billionaires . . . How the wealthy kidnapped tax sunshine..
April 24, 2006: Cable networks refuse ads challenging CEO pay excess . . . Tallying a true count of how much wealth America's wealthy really hold . . . Income segregation in the United States: what a difference zip code makes.
April 17, 2006: Exxon Mobil's over-the-top package of going-away goodies for retiring CEO Lee Raymond . . . Labor's declining share of America's income . . . A look at the first major reports on executive pay in 2005.
April 10, 2006: The latest trend in mega-yachting . . . Why CEOs don't worry about their taxes . . . The numbers are in: For the ultra-rich, a $1 million tax savings from the Bush tax cuts.
April 3, 2006: Who really pays estate taxes? . . . How the mutual fund industry enables executive pay excess . . . In Vermont's Senate race, a plutocrat takes on an outspoken plutocracy foe.
March 27, 2006: Summer in the Hamptons . . . Should inequality worry immigrants? . . . The Library of Congress confronts plutocracy . . . Banking the loot and short-changing the tellers.
March 20, 2006: Inequality and workaholism . . . Elite private schools and the parents who pay tuition for them . . . The bill for electricity deregulation comes due.
March 13, 2006: The fight over Carly Fiorina's severance from HP . . . The latest rankings of global billionaires . . . The striking workers at Sikorsky Aircraft and their 32-second United Technologies CEO.
March 6, 2006: Corporate raider Carl Icahn and America's hotel workers . . . John McCain cozies up to the deep pockets . . . Kerala, a look at the most equal — and amazing — state in India.
February 27, 2006: A luxury cruise liner in the sky . . . The Federal Reserve's just-released data on income and wealth concentration in the United States . . . Katrina's biggest beneficiary?
February 20, 2006: “Personal revival trusts” and wealth after death . . . Happiness and inequality . . . Who's benefiting the most from gains in America's economic productivity?
February 13, 2006: Private jets and first-year salaries at elite law firms . . . What if we taxed the rich at Eisenhower-era rates? . . . Inequality and press freedom.
February 6, 2006: Exxon Mobil's finely tuned wealth concentration machine . . . At United Airlines, turning bankruptcy into an executive boondoggle . . . Has William McDonough gone over the Dark Side?
January 30, 2006: A new Society for the Study of Economic Inequality . . . A state-by-state analysis of America's growing economic divide . . . Down under, thinking maximum wage thoughts.
January 23, 2006: Economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty on the evolution of our plutocracy . . . The SEC's new CEO pay disclosure rules . . . The glitzy pay picture for corporate directors.
January 16, 2006: The star witness against Enron's Ken Lay . . . Delphi's day in court . . . A Palm Beach palace for George W.
January 9, 2006: Power suits and “risk” in the American mining industry . . . How wealthy taxpayers are stiffing Uncle Sam . . . Dissing our plutocrat past.
January 2, 2006: Wall Street bonuses . . . Inequality Matters: a review of an important new anthology . . . How inequality impacts — for the worse — the number of hours we work.

2005

December 19, 2005: The first annual listing of the Too Much Plutocrats of the Year . . . Larry Ellison . . . Michael Bloomberg . . . . Robert Miller . . . Richard Scrushy.
December 12, 2005: Making Afghanistan safe — for Neiman Marcus . . . Lewis Lapham, our most entertaining
December 5, 2005: A historic new ten-times limit on executive pay . . . Why corporations love to merge . . . A survey of America's ivory tower millionaires —.and the pushback against them.
November 28, 2005: A top-notch review of recent books on inequality . . . An update on the fiscal insanity of tax cuts that privilege the rich . . . Potholes and porsches.
November 21, 2005: Corruption: the inequality connection . . . The latest evidence on how inequality boosts mortality rates . . . An estate tax setback — in China.
November 14, 2005: Barney Frank's new bill to limit CEO pay excess . . . Oil executives on parade on Capitol Hill . . . Peter Drucker: going beyond the standard obituary.
November 7, 2005: Lexus lanes: the plutocratic solution to traffic congestion . . . A tax reform plan only our wealthiest can really love . . . A corporation that competes successfully — with an equitable compensation structure.
October 31, 2005: Alan Greenspan as egalitarian crusader . . . From Katrina with love: a king-size tax break for the rich . . . Art, museums, and plutocracy.
October 24, 2005: A middle class in free fall, an upper crust in clover . . . In Norway, the ultimate in tax transparency . . . A natural foods company admits excessive CEO pay may be unnatural.
October 17, 2005: The most expensive non-Presidential election campaign ever . . . The widening U.S. income gap: the latest stats . . . Do wider income gaps lead to wider waistbands?
October 10, 2005: Another landmark in the mansionization of America . . . Luxury RVs . . . Paying the people who pay CEOs: the latest on board of director compensation . . . Good times for Dick Cheney's CEO successor.
October 3, 2005: The latest Forbes 400 list of America's richest . . . Retirement security: alive and well in our executive suites . . . Ur and us: how inequality has shaped our human history.
September 26, 2005: Has the World Bank gone redistributionist? . . . The prospects for saving the estate tax after Katrina . . . The nation's most unequal urban political jurisdiction.
September 19, 2005: Some looters wear power suits: grabbing windfalls at Oracle . . . Ignoring a call for equality at the United Nations . . . Affirming the importance of equality in Norway.
September 12, 2005: Landmark new UN report calls for a new focus on redistributing the world's wealth . . . The Katrina chutzpah of the estate tax repeal crowd . . . Bringing home the Davis-Bacon.
September 5, 2005: The latest edition of Executive Excess from United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies . . . What ever happened to “trickle down”? The Census Bureau has an answer . . . KPMG and tax crime.
August 29, 2005: A remarkable trio of CEO greed all-stars . . . The Fair Tax: the right wing's next big thing? . . . Why workers in the United States have so little vacation.
August 22, 2005: Oil company executive windfalls and excess profits taxes . . . What's gaining in Iraq, democracy or inequality? . . . RIP, Jay Hammond, a Republican champion of equality.
August 15, 2005: Finland and the $204,000 speeding ticket . . . From Delaware, a Mickey Mouse ruling on executive pay abuse . . . A plutocrat plot in Japan.
August 8, 2005: How the 'Great American Job Scam' enriches the rich . . . Those poor underpaid German CEOs . . . Wealth management in Russia.
August 1, 2005: Rich people in poor countries . . . A Coors comeuppance . . . Mayor Bloomberg's multi-millions.
July 25, 2005: The new 'HP Way': 15,000 layoffs for Hewlett-Packard workers, $15 million for a former Wal-Mart executive . . . A ridiculously golden goodbye kiss . . . Our tax dollars as anti-greed insurance.
July 18, 2005: The easy life ends for Bernie Ebbers . . . The Income Equity Act: preventive medicine for corporate crime . . . The estate tax and family farms: a final word from the CBO?
July 11, 2005: Can we legislate against greed? . . . The American dream lives on — in Canada . . . Drinking while unequal.
July 4, 2005: Inequality and the generation of 1776 . . . The less-than-surprising verdict in the HealthSouth case . . . CEO pay in the nation's capital.
June 27, 2005: Washington's K Street lobbyist row . . . CEO pay and the collapse of America's private pension system . . . The Kansas Enron.
June 20, 2005: The scoop on the latest edition of the World Wealth Report . . . Millionaires in Congress . . . Millionaires on the Supreme Court . . . Millionaires in the White House . . . A pension fund war on greed.
June 13, 2005: A bill in Congress we can actually cheer . . . A model for anti-greed legislation . . . Could taxing the rich fix Social Security?
June 6, 2005: America's incredible concentration of wealth at the top . . . Can we beat poverty without taking on plutocracy? . . . Inequality and our vanishing ranks of character actors.
May 30, 2005: Inequality and social trust . . . Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, the new Lee Iacocca? . . . The Wall Street “hedge fund” wizards who make CEOs seem underpaid.
May 23, 2005: A mainstream media conspiracy to make the rich look bad? . . . Halliburton, the war, and greed . . . Where women do best.
May 16, 2005: Inequality and traffic congestion . . . The most expensive painting by an American ever . . . Time for a soak-the-rich comeback?
May 9, 2005: Enron, now in a theater near you . . . Neimann Marcus and the “to save the very rich from the wasting disease of boredom.” . . . Estonia, the new heart-throb for right-wing flat-taxers.
May 2, 2005: The least socially mobile countries in the developed world . . . Wal-Mart wages, from top to bottom . . . Our wage justice blindspot.

April 25, 2005: How much do CEOs cost the American economy? . . . A new CEO gig for the CEO “talent” who frittered away $600 million . . . A yellow pages for equality.
April 18, 2005: Has “pay for performance” finally arrived in America's executive suites? . . . A CEO who shuns excess . . . An introduction to anti-greed rules.
April 11, 2005: America's happiest taxpayers . . . Our most responsible rich . . . Why Wal-Mart fears the turtle.
April 4, 2005: The world's wealthy stashing trillions offshore . . . Gambling on our future . . . A “golden hello” at Hewlett-Packard . . . The enduring wisdom of G.E.'s Jack Welch.

March 28, 2005: Crime and myopia in the suites . . . Inequality and the housing bubble . . . The latest on social mobility in the United States.
March 21, 2005: Inequality and obesity . . . The business community split on the estate tax . . . The “brilliance” of Bernie Ebbers.
March 14, 2005: The global billionaire boom continues . . . Bankruptcy and those who'll truly profit without it , , , The biggest tax cheat ever?
March 7, 2005: The latest on CEO bonuses . . . What do the rich read? . . . With so many wealthy people around, do we really need art teachers, too?

February 28, 2005: George W. Bush and Uncle Bucky . . . Can a society with a very rich be decent to the very poor? . . . Tax avoidance and stock option windfalls.
February 21, 2005: Glee and gloom at Google . . . Corporate America's Cisco kids . . . Inequality and the housing bubble.
February 14, 2005: CEO superstar Carly Fiorina bites the dust . . . The federal budget's biggest winners all have deep pockets . . . Social Security and the plutocrats.
February 7, 2005: Social Security and the Nanny State . . . The shriveling of the liberal imagination . . . Democratizing America's wealth.

January 31, 2005: Who's living the longest? . . . Remembering the egalitarian who helped create Social Security . . . What the Iraquis didn't vote on.
January 24, 2005: George W. Bush and the stretch Hummer limos . . . The world's most billionaire-friendly city . . . Why Enron's honchos are still sitting pretty.
January 17, 2004: A most fitting inaugural . . . The world's most expensive PC . . . The five best movies on inequality.
January 10, 2005: A Democrat the Right can really like . . . A Martin Luther King, Jr dream dishonored . . . South Africa's emerging new Bantustans.
January 3, 2005: China's fraying social fabric . . . Inequality and the tsunami . . . touchdowns and greed.

2004

December 20, 2004: The first annual Too Much Avarice and Arrogance Awards.
December 13, 2004: The rich as Social Security reformers . . . Why do the Swedes live so long? . . . Why do the Dutch grow so tall?
December 6, 2004: For Dow Chemical, Bhopal's no bother . . . Japan's big problem: too few rich . . . Italy's big problem: one rich too many.

November 29, 2004: Inequality and our beaches . . . The ugly side of Yahoo . . . A South African plea for redistribution.
November 22, 2004: Why the "death tax" just may live . . . An estate tax for China? . . . Argentina's present and the future of the United States.
November 15, 2004: The scoop on economic diversity in Congress . . . Greed and health insurers . . . Pushing back against executive excess in California.
November 8, 2004: The inequality outlook for George W.'s second term . . . Reading between the lines on tax "reform" . . . Social Security and our shrinking middle class.
November 1, 2004: What hath George wrought in his first term? . . . Why the wealthy did so much dialing for dollars in the 2004 elections . . . Helping the rich help themselves.

October 25, 2004: Our growing racial wealth gap . . . What do those rising home ownership stats really tell us? . . . The executive pay story — beyond the CEO level.
October 18, 2004: The best place in the world to live? . . . How the United States ranks: A view from Australia . . . Is Norway tops? . . . A British MP suggests "a maximum wage."
October 11, 2004: A tax cut "Christmas in October" for corporate America . . . George W.'s professors have something interesting to say . . . Is excessive CEO pay a crime?
October 4, 2004: The Forbes 400 Class of 2004 . . . How billionaires get birthed . . . Would philanthropy end without rich people?

September 27, 2004: Manufacturing millionaires in Iraq . . . A global tax on the rich? . . . Here's one middle class that seems to be shrinking out of existence.
September 20, 2004: George W. Bush as tax “progressive” . . . Plutocracy at the Federal Reserve . . . The psychic price we pay, as fans, for inequality in sports.
September 13, 2004: Disney's goofy CEO calls it quits . . . CEOs still cooking the corporate books . . . The Olympics, health, and inequality.
September 6, 2004: A Labor Day reflection: Does America need a maximum wage? . . . The state of working America . . . Should we start outsourcing CEOs?

August 30, 2004: Inequality: the latest Census numbers . . . George's generosity — to taxpayers at the top . . . A classic fine arts portrait of the great divide.
August 23, 2004: Why taxes on the rich supposedly “can't work” . . . The huge new fortunes at Google . . . Signs of a “greedy country.”
August 16, 2004: The shrinking tax burden of America's wealthiest . . . Back to Clintonism? . . . Corporate transparency fogs in Kansas City.
August 9, 2004: The tax-shift two-step . . . Mickey Mouse rewards for workers . . . Summer stock treasure.
August 2, 2004: Have Marxists conquered New Jersey? . . . Millionaires rally for millionaire's tax . . . A final word on CEO pay hikes in 2003.

July 26, 2004: Coming soon in Germany: a maximum wage? . . . U.S. CEO pay revolting, says a U.S. CEO . . . Charity and the rich: stoking the myth.
July 19, 2004: Who owns America's stocks . . . Galbraith at 95: still a twinkle in his prose . . . Why CEOs love to cut merger deals.

Too Much Print Quarterly Archive

Too Much first appeared as a print quarterly in 1995, then, after the spring 2004 edition, began publishing as a weekly online newsletter. Selected articles from the print Too Much are available for the editions listed below.