Corporate America

Reagan Era Wage Stagnation: Real Wages Decline as Inequality Accelerates

| Importance: 9/10

Real wages for American workers begin a prolonged period of stagnation and decline during the Reagan era, with median hourly wages falling nearly a dollar from $16.90 to $16.00 between 1980-1990. Average real hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers—representing the vast majority of …

Ronald Reagan American workers Labor unions Corporate America wage-stagnation inequality reaganomics workers labor +1 more
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Corporate Tax Avoidance Explosion: Reagan Loopholes Slash Corporate Revenue

| Importance: 8/10

Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts create massive corporate tax loopholes through permissive depreciation rules and reduced rates, causing corporate tax revenue to plummet from 25% of federal revenue in the 1950s to just 6.2% by 1983. The tax law allows corporations to slash or erase tax obligations …

Ronald Reagan Corporate America Internal Revenue Service Congress corporate-taxes tax-avoidance loopholes reaganomics tax-policy
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Corporate PAC Explosion: 433 New Corporate PACs Formed in Post-Buckley Era

| Importance: 8/10

Following the Buckley v. Valeo decision, corporations rapidly established Political Action Committees to influence elections. The number of corporate PACs grew from 89 in 1974 to 1,206 by 1980 - a 1,254% increase. This represented a systematic corporate mobilization to capture political influence, …

Corporate America Business Roundtable Chamber of Commerce FEC corporate-pacs campaign-finance systematic-corruption institutional-capture supreme-court +1 more
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Corporate PAC Explosion: 433 New Corporate PACs Formed in Post-Buckley Era

| Importance: 8/10

Following the Buckley v. Valeo decision, corporations rapidly established Political Action Committees to influence elections. The number of corporate PACs grew from 89 in 1974 to 1,206 by 1980 - a 1,254% increase. This represented a systematic corporate mobilization to capture political influence, …

Corporate America Business Roundtable Chamber of Commerce FEC corporate-pacs campaign-finance systematic-corruption institutional-capture
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