Unsubscribe
View in your browser

Hi ,

As we come to the end of parliament's summer recess and look towards the autumn, it's clear: this is going to be a crisis point for the UK.

Inequality has strained our society to the limit. The chancellor's dedication to unequal economics has limited spending options to the point that they now need to either impose enormous spending cuts or raise large sums through taxes. Something has got to give, and that's why lobbyists for the richest are working incredibly hard to spread thousands of media stories with disinformation about taxing the rich. We need to make sure those lobbyists fail and this budget is a historic break with inequality.

Meanwhile, strikes from refuse workers in Birmingham, resident doctors, academics, transport workers, and hospitality workers show how close to the edge so many of us are. Continuing the status quo is unsustainable – far from worrying about the richest leaving, we need to be worrying about our doctors emigrating to somewhere that pays them enough to live on. We need to win investment in people and planet.

But instead of fighting for us, our politicians took a summer holiday while the far right led the news day after day after day with demands to scrap the European Convention on Human Rights, the Human Rights Act, the 1951 Refugee Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture. Protestors targeting migrants – often calling for violence – have become common and a wave of nationalist graffiti is, for some reason, targeting roundabouts. We need to build a more equal society where we recognise the real villains.

So, this autumn is crucial. No pressure. It's fine.

We have three things we're asking you to do to help us fight for equality:
First, sign the petition
 

Together with the High Pay Centre, we're calling for a maximum wage. Their research shows that the median FTSE 100 CEO is now paid 122 times more than their average employee. In last week's poll, nearly 3 in 4 of you told us the limit should be 10 times the salary or less; 93% of you said that there should be CEO pay caps. If you support the caps, now's the time to sign the petition! If you can, please share it on social media or with friends.
 
SIGN THE PETITION
Second, join the protest 
 

On Saturday 20th September, we're joining dozens of other campaign groups to lead the Make Them Pay protest in London. We need to show the government and our politicians that the only popular, effective, and fair option is to tax the rich and invest in people and planet. Not only that, but this will be part of a global day of action ahead of COP30 to show the need and support for taxing polluters to tackle the climate crisis.

That's why this protest has three key demands:

  • Tax the super-rich
  • Protect workers, not billionaires
  • Make polluters pay

Coaches will be bussing supporters in from Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Nottingham, Leicester, Leeds, Manchester, and Sheffield. You can book your place on one here.
 
COME TO THE PROTEST
Third, support our work
 

We're doing this work entirely based on donations from supporters like you. That independence means we can expose the wealth lobby, organise protests like this, and call for policies like pay caps that billionaire funders don't like. 

And right now, we need to be louder than ever. A regular donation of one hour's wage a month could help us enormously, or whatever you can chip in now will help us make them pay. 
 
CHIP IN TO SUPPORT US
How do you start talking about economics?

As part of our ongoing community economist project, the Equality Trust's Participation and Engagement Manager Caroline Tosal-Suprun has written about her experience with our first group of community economists as they decide how they want to talk to people about the economy. Our communities are filled with incredible people, she writes, working in big and small ways to resist inequality – so why are they left out of discussions about the economy? And how do we best bring them in?
Read more
 

We're aware that when clicking links in our newsletters, some users are being warned that the link is unsafe. This is due to a problem between Microsoft and our email provider, SendGrid. The links are safe to open.
 
Weekly Poll: Scrapping council tax and effective activism
 

The government are reportedly considering replacing council tax with a proportional property tax. Would you support this? Plus: Protests or talking to MPs – what kinds of activism do you think are most effective?

Thanks to everyone who votes! The results will be reported next week.

 
VOTE NOW

Are monopolies and economic concentration getting worse? Have you noticed any effects? You said:

  • "It's difficult to know who really owns things and to make informed choices about where to spend your money. Things you think are independent turn out to be owned by huge corporations."

  • "The monopolies controlling the retail energy industry and the network supply behind them are having a very negative impact on the move to Net Zero. We have friends living in the next village and their solar panel system has been limited to 2kW maximum output because the Network Operator cannot cope with more. Why not? Simple: because the Spanish vampire capitalists who own the company are after profit, not energy security and net zero. One could go on with the Water Companies, but so much has been written about their exploitation of monopoly supply that I cannot add any new slant."

  • "Certainly the concentration of wealth is escalating and, as ever, the rich get richer - and consequently the rest get poorer. Money makes money and these large, and sometimes monopolistic, corporations need breaking up and genuine competition allowed to flourish.."

  • "Yes things like the employers NI hike, compliance requirements and the costs of effectively implementing AI, means that there is a serious barrier to entry for most smaller companies that means it's not economically viable to try and compete with the big companies."
  • "Yes; I have experienced it directly over the past three and a half years, living in social housing owned by a growing and increasingly inefficient conglomerate."

Thank you to the people who gave very kind feedback on newsletter length and their enjoyment of it! Also on my occasional poor grammar. 
Inequality in Numbers
In The News
Institute for Policy Studies: Executive Excess

Our American friends at the Institute for Policy Studies, whom we like even though they took the inequality.org url before we could, have published their annual report on CEO pay in the USA. Looking at 100 "low wage" corporate giants, it shows how much we need the maximum wage for CEOs here in the UK before inequality deepens: the American CEO-worker wage gap widened to a staggering 632 to 1 this year. This is a massive growth and well above inflation – but inflation, of course, rose faster than worker pay. Incredibly, there were 22 companies where average worker pay fell in real AND nominal terms while CEO pay grew. Starbucks remains the worst offender, with a pay gap of 6,666 to 1; equivalent to CEO pay of $95.8 million while median pay was $14,674. 
Read more
NEF: Scrap the Office for Budget Responsibility

The Office for Budget Responsibility, the public body created by the coalition government to provide analysis of government finances and forecasts, should be scrapped according to the New Economics Foundation. They argue the OBR has consistently pushed a view of economics that promotes cuts and book-balancing over investment with no democratic scrutiny. Instead, a new body and the Treasury should both produce forecasts, while a panel of economists could provide scrutiny of both. This would stop the austerity and debt doom loop that NEF says the OBR has enforced over the last 15 years, as well as get rid of the logic that says investing in health or welfare would have no economic benefits.
Read more (paywall)

The Equality Trust
Square Root Business Centre
Windmill Road
Croydon CR0 2XQ

+44 (0)20 3637 0324

info@equalitytrust.org.uk