Sonali Kolhatkar speaks with Chuck Collins about how billionaires pay millions to hide trillions.

The crisis of inequality in the United States is so serious now that even President Joe Biden is claiming that, “It’s time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out, not the top down.” In a recent speech promoting his American Jobs Plan Biden said, “I’m proposing a plan for the nation that rewards work, not just rewards wealth.” In admitting that our current system rewards wealth Biden revealed what American financial and political elites have known for decades: that we don’t live in a meritocracy, we live in a nation where you have to be rich to get richer. My next guest has written a book about these “wealth hoarders” as he calls them.

Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies where he directs the Program on Inequality and the Common Good. He has written a number of books including 99 to 1: How Wealth Inequality is Wrecking the World and What We Can Do About It, and Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good. He has written numerous reports about billionaire wealth during the pandemic and his latest book is called The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions.

Rising Up with Sonali is a radio and television show that brings progressive news coverage rooted in gender and racial justice to a wide audience. Rising Up With Sonali was built on the foundation of Sonali Kolhatkar's earlier show, Uprising, which became the longest-running drive-time radio show on KPFK in Los Angeles hosted by a woman. RUS airs on Free Speech TV every weekday.

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