Inequality · Practice

Keep it going.

The useful work here is seasonal: tax season, hiring season, the January when Oxfam publishes and everyone argues. The practice is a year with dates on it, and knowing the honest answer to the six things people say. Tick things here; the ticks stay on your device.

What’s true Do the thing

The year

November and December

Sign up for free tax-prep volunteering. The last NYC info session is 3 December 2026; the IRS form has no deadline. Training is 8 to 10 hours, in person or online.¹
Set the monthly gift to GiveDirectly, or raise it, in the season you’re deciding everything else.

January

Oxfam publishes its count the week of Davos. Read the methodology note, not the headline, and update the number you quote.²
New York’s minimum wage has risen each 1 January since 2024, but on 1 January 2027 it stays at $17.00 downstate and $16.00 upstate; a rise to $17.60 from 1 March 2027 needs the Legislature. If someone works in your home, check their rate against the current floor.³

February to April

Your tax-prep shifts. Each return you finish is a family’s refund filed free and right.¹
Household employer? Schedule H goes in with your own return by 15 April.³

Any time

A bill you care about moves: one personal message to your own state legislator, in your words, under 150 words. Staff rank it far above a form letter.⁴
You hire anyone for your home: a written agreement first. Templates.

One reminder on the first of each month that opens this page. It holds no dates or figures, so it never goes out of date.

The drill: things people say at dinner

Decide your answer, then open it.

“Five people own more than half the world.”

Out of date, and fragile

Twelve, by Oxfam’s January 2026 count, about ten on today’s stock prices. The head count moves with markets and method. The unarguable version: the richest 10% own about three-quarters of the world’s wealth.²

“Give poor people cash and they just spend it.”

Spending is the point

In rural Kenya, each dollar given raised local output by about $2.40, with little inflation, and neighbours’ incomes rose too. The US trials are more sobering: small or no effects. Where people have least, cash does most.⁵

“Inequality is the price of growth.”

Probably the reverse, modestly

Opening jobs to women and Black Americans accounts for 20 to 40% of US growth from 1960 to 2010 in one study. IMF staff find lower inequality goes with longer growth spells. Other studies find the opposite in the short run. Mostly correlation; the direction leans against the claim.⁶

“I moved to a credit union, so I’m doing my part.”

Good for you, weak as a lever

Lower loan rates and a vote, yes. No study shows one person’s deposit changes anyone’s fortune. Do it for the deal; count the tax-prep shifts as your part.⁷

“People who qualify for the tax credit get it anyway.”

One in five don’t

EITC participation is about 78% to 81%, by the IRS’s two estimates. The IRS says the missing fifth is why its yearly awareness day matters. That gap is what free tax prep closes, one return at a time.¹

“Alaska proves a universal income works.”

Partly

Forty-plus years, no drop in employment, lower poverty. But it’s been $1,000 to $1,200 a year the last two years ($3,284 in 2022), set by the Legislature, from an oil windfall most places don’t have, and it raises measured inequality in the state. A proof of concept, not a model.⁸

With others

Get your workplace to match. moderate In a field experiment, offering a match raised response 22% and revenue 19%; two-to-one and three-to-one matches did no better than one-to-one. Whether matches raise giving in the long run is contested.⁹
Be seen afterwards, not before. moderate Telling donors that larger givers are named in a newsletter raised average gift size 14%; advance pledges are often broken. Set the gift and book the shifts; skip the pledge.⁹
Bring a friend to the tax site. Volunteer tax sites have a long track record. In the 2026 filing season, more than 84,500 volunteers prepared and filed over 2.9 million federal returns.¹⁰
Giving circles and congregations: real, but the evidence that they raise giving is members’ own reports.⁹

Say it in thirty seconds

The richest tenth own about three-quarters of everything; the famous "N people own more than half the world" number is real but it jumps around with the stock market. I can't change that from my kitchen. What I can do: about one in five working families never claims the tax credit they're owed, and volunteers file those returns for free. I do a shift a week in tax season. No experience needed. Want the link?

Your checklist

Signed up for tax-prep volunteering.
Finished the training and certification.
Worked my first shift.
Monthly gift to GiveDirectly set.
If I employ someone at home: written agreement, correct rate, paid leave, Schedule H.
Sent one personal message to a state legislator on a named bill.
Read what’s true.
Sent this page to one person.

Sources

IRS, EITC participation rate by state (80.8% in its table for tax year 2022; 78% is the page’s “reported national estimate”); NYC DCWP, Become a volunteer; IRS volunteer sign-up, read 5 Nov 2026. The “few thousand dollars” is the IRS’s average EITC for tax year 2024: $2,894 nationally and $2,753 in New York on its statistics page, $2,916 in its January 2026 release. primary
Oxfam, Davos 2026 methodology note, January 2026 primary; World Inequality Lab, World Inequality Report 2026 research.
New York Department of Labor, Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights and minimum wage (“On January 1, 2027, New York’s minimum wage will stay the same”); Governor’s office, minimum wage 2027 ($17.60 / $16.55 from 1 March 2027 if the Legislature approves); IRS, Publication 926, 2026. primary
Congressional Management Foundation, Citizen-Centric Advocacy, 2017 (personal email 92% vs form email 56%). primary
Egger et al., General equilibrium effects of cash transfers, Econometrica 2022; Vivalt et al., guaranteed income trial, NBER 2024. research
Hsieh, Hurst, Jones and Klenow, The Allocation of Talent and U.S. Economic Growth, 2019; Ostry, Berg and Tsangarides, IMF staff discussion note, 2014; Forbes, AER, 2000. research
NCUA, Credit union and bank rates, Q4 2025. primary
Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend Division, September 2026; Jones and Marinescu, NBER 24312; ISER, 2019 review primary research; Anchorage Daily News, 19 September 2026 (lawmakers set the amount in the state budget) news.
Karlan and List, Does price matter in charitable giving?, American Economic Review, 2007, which also reports Meier’s finding that people whose gifts were matched later gave less research; Karlan and McConnell, Hey look at me: the effect of giving circles on giving, 2013 (its giving circles are donor tiers named in a newsletter) research; on pledges, Meyer and Tripodi, Journal of Economic Psychology, 2021 (giving blood), and Capra, Jiang and Su, Economic Inquiry, 2022 (volunteering) research; on giving circles, the Collective Giving Research Group, 2017, and Loson-Ceballos and Layton, In Abundance, 2024 research; on congregations, Pew Research Center, Religion in Everyday Life, 2016 primary. The giving-circle and congregation evidence is surveys of what people say they give or do.
IRS, Publication 5347, September 2026. primary

The 3 December date, the New York wage floor and the bills’ status all change on a schedule. A higher wage floor could start on 1 March 2027, if the Legislature approves.

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