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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
These millionaires want to tax the rich, and they're lobbying working-class voters
Late last year, people in tiny Whiteville, N.C., were recruited to weekly meetings with a group they'd never heard of. They got cold calls, flyers in the mail and in-person pitches at the local Pecan Harvest Festival. Did they want to come talk about the economy with Patriotic2 Millionaires?
That was intriguing3 enough to some.
"My first thought of it was, really? They care about Columbus County? Cause nobody cares about Columbus County like that," says April Thomas, who has three children and works at a vape and tobacco shop.
Others showed up for the freebies: door prizes, dinner and $50.
Over a month of meetings, dozens of residents got a crash course on inequality and learned why this group of rich people wants to pay higher taxes and raise the minimum wage.
The nonprofit Patriotic Millionaires has lobbied Congress to make changes for more than a decade. Its members see inequality as a danger — they worry big money is corrupting4 politics and driving civil unrest. But they haven't had much success. President Donald Trump5's 2017 tax cuts largely benefited the wealthy, and even when Democrats6 controlled the Senate in 2021, they failed to pass a bill to raise the minimum wage.
"We hit a wall," says Erica Payne, the group's founder7. "We have hammered them on both sides of the aisle8 for 12 years, OK. It's time to go to the people who hand them their power."
Enter Whiteville, population less than 5,000. It's in a swing state where the minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour, the same as the federal rate, which hasn't been raised since 2009. The state has even barred cities from boosting their own minimums.
Payne notes that low-wage workers make up more than 40% of the labor9 force. "They are the most powerful people in the United States of America, if only they realized it," she says.
Meetings in Whiteville started up again this spring. It's the pilot for an expanding push to attract more people to the cause. Patriotic Millionaires will hold gatherings10 soon in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and recently offered some online.
Free dinner with a crash course on widening inequality
One afternoon in May, nearly 60 Whiteville residents trickle11 in to a conference room gussied up in red, white and blue. At the door there are introductions for newcomers and hugs for some regulars. This county voted overwhelmingly for President Trump in 2020, but those who show up are Republicans, Democrats and independents. They are Black and white, old and young, from seniors with walkers to people with toddlers on laps.
"Welcome everybody for coming. Will all the men remove their hats please," says local resident Thomas Young. Heads bow as he offers a blessing12, and then people line up for the buffet13 dinner.
Some people who attended meetings last year are back and want to use this latest round to strategize next moves. But for new recruits, once everyone's seated with a plate of chicken and green beans, Patriotic Millionaires founder Payne opens her PowerPoint to make her case.
"So 71% of Americans think the economy is rigged against them," she says, standing14 before a big screen. "We've got news for them, they're right."
Payne clicks through charts and graphs that she says explain the frustration15 many in this room are feeling. Upward mobility16? It's down. CEO pay? It's gone way up, from 20 times worker pay in the 1960s to, on average, hundreds times more today. And yet, in some years major corporations essentially17 paid no taxes.
In another graph, a squiggly line for worker productivity climbs and climbs over recent decades, while the line for wages looks almost flat.
"Where do you think all that extra productivity, the profits from all that productivity, is going?" Payne asks. There's a murmur18 of responses. "That's exactly right," she says. "It's going straight into the pockets of the rich."
Soon after, she introduces one of those rich people.
Pierre Hollis is a quiet man with a goatee, one of the millionaires who gives the group its name. He lives in Virginia and has driven down here for every one of these meetings.
Hollis says Whiteville reminds him of the "very poor town" in Arizona where he grew up. "But back then there was a chance of escaping the economic situation you were born into," he says. "These days, that chance of escaping ... is about zero."
In an interview before the meeting, Hollis says, "It's obscene what the very wealthy people in this country get away with," and cites himself as a prime example. He made his fortune in stocks, and taxes on that income are far lower than they are for wages earned by actually working. Hollis thinks few people know about such loopholes, "and if they knew they would be outraged19."
All these economic changes have played out so slowly that people who struggle "assign blame on some level to themselves," says Cat Hadley, who directs Patriotic Millionaires' state programs. She says it's important to step back and show the larger forces at work. "It doesn't matter who's in charge," she says. "The rich people keep on getting richer and everybody else stays the same."
"It opened up my eyes to ... things that I didn't know"
Over chips and salsa at a Mexican restaurant in town, several locals say they were cautious when these meetings began.
"I am fairly conservative, have been most of my life, and so I had some preconceived notions about what I thought was going on," says Jamie Insley, a retired20 nurse. "I've been shown quite a lot of difference."
For one thing, he'd never considered that higher wages might benefit some businesses, since customers would have more to spend. And he had no idea how large the U.S. wealth gap has grown in recent decades. Insley gets both Social Security and veterans benefits and says he's doing fine financially. But he worries for his children because it seems harder to make a good living than when he was young.
For April Thomas, what she found most striking was MIT's estimate for the local "living wage" for a single mother of three, like her: $53 an hour, which feels impossible.
She was hired on at the vape shop at $7.25. "[Her boss] still tries to start people at that wage, but he has trouble because a lot of people are like, 'I can't work for that.' "
Thomas recently got a bump to $10 an hour and also found another job at $15 working overnights in a group home. But it's still a financial stretch, especially with child care when she can find it. Her car's on its last legs and she can't afford another one.
"Even though I'm starting this new job, I'm not letting my old job go," she says. "I'm still working it on the days that I can because this is hard. It really is."
Brittany McMillian is also a single mom and admits the main draw at first was the free dinner. But all the information about tax loopholes and pay gaps "opened up my eyes to a lot of things that I didn't know," she says. "I want to change it for my kids and future grandkids."
McMillian has been recruiting friends and family and says she would love to get a group big enough to take a bus to Washington, D.C. "I feel like that — that would be amazing," she says.
Even economists22 who admire the cause are skeptical23 about the odds24 for success
As a senior fellow with the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, Steve Rosenthal spends a lot of time dispelling25 misperceptions about the tax code. Compared with other rich nations, he says, U.S. spending is about average. But despite decades of rhetoric26 about how high taxes are, the U.S. brings in a significantly smaller share of tax revenue than those countries. And Rosenthal says a smaller part of it comes from wealthy people and corporations.
"I'm all for educating more people," he says about Patriotic Millionaires' grassroots push. Still, he's skeptical about the odds of success. "I have no idea what the payoff is here."
Rosenthal credits President Biden and many congressional Democrats for trying to raise taxes on the wealthy. Perhaps, he says, energized27 voters might elect more Democrats in swing states. But he's doubtful grassroots lobbying can get today's Republicans to break their "rigid28 ideology29" of no new taxes.
"The Republicans have become more and more doctrinaire," he says, "and there's an infrastructure30 to discipline Republicans that step out of line."
It means that fiscal31 conservatives in the party — like Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who both reversed themselves and raised taxes — "are largely extinct now," he says.
Economist21 Betsey Stevenson at the University of Michigan says Americans also tend to underestimate how much inequality there is in the U.S. But when it comes to lobbying on the minimum wage, there's a reason Congress hasn't raised it.
"Because the minimum wage has been raised all across the country at the state and local level," she says. "And so it's just not as much of a priority because it won't affect as many people as it would have 10 years ago." Even in the 20 states that have not raised the minimum, like North Carolina, the tight labor market has pushed wages up some.
Even so, Stevenson says there is strong public support for raising the minimum wage. But — another hurdle32 — lower-income Americans are far less likely to vote. She says they're hit disproportionately by voting restrictions33 and that casting a ballot34 can come at a cost.
"For some of us, giving up a day's worth of work to stand in a line to vote could mean not being able to pay your rent, or not eat," Stevenson says.
The idea is to convince people their voice matters
The last part of the Wednesday supper meeting is devoted35 to helping36 people prepare to speak out. At a prompt, attendees pair up and ask each other to talk about their lives. A few stand to share stories of hardship, to warm applause. Then there are several rounds of role-play on how to talk to a lawmaker.
In future meetings they'll get training for how to be an effective activist37, start a petition on raising wages and organize a lobby day to the state Capitol.
They also want to call on the U.S. congressman38 whose district includes Whiteville at some point.
In a wrap-up discussion, some first-time attendees say what they've learned has helped them see their own struggles differently. One man says there should be a high school class to teach kids about taxes. Darlene McCollum is one of several who say they'll be back for more sessions.
"I would love to do something so when my youngest child gets out there in the workforce," she says, "he won't have to struggle like I have."
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| n.抄本，誊本，副本，肄业证书 | |
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patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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intriguing
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| adj.有趣的；迷人的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的现在分词)；激起…的好奇心 | |
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corrupting
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的现在分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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trump
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| n.王牌，法宝；v.打出王牌，吹喇叭 | |
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democrats
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| n.民主主义者，民主人士( democrat的名词复数 ) | |
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Founder
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| n.创始者，缔造者 | |
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aisle
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| n.（教堂、教室、戏院等里的）过道，通道 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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trickle
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| vi.淌，滴，流出，慢慢移动，逐渐消散 | |
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blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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buffet
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| n.自助餐；饮食柜台；餐台 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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frustration
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| n.挫折，失败，失效，落空 | |
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mobility
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| n.可动性，变动性，情感不定 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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outraged
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| a.震惊的，义愤填膺的 | |
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retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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economist
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| n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人 | |
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economists
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| n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 ) | |
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skeptical
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| adj.怀疑的，多疑的 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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dispelling
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| v.驱散，赶跑( dispel的现在分词 ) | |
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rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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energized
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| v.给予…精力，能量( energize的过去式和过去分词 )；使通电 | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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ideology
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| n.意识形态，(政治或社会的)思想意识 | |
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infrastructure
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| n.下部构造，下部组织，基础结构，基础设施 | |
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fiscal
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| adj.财政的，会计的，国库的，国库岁入的 | |
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hurdle
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| n.跳栏，栏架；障碍，困难；vi.进行跨栏赛 | |
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restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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ballot
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| n.（不记名）投票，投票总数，投票权；vi.投票 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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activist
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| n.活动分子，积极分子 | |
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Congressman
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| n.（美）国会议员 | |
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