There's A Solution To People Abusing Their Wealth: Super-High Taxes

Peter Thiel offers a case study in the way America's top tax rate is much, much too low.

This week, we learned that Thiel -- a Silicon Valley techno-libertarian billionaire who co-founded PayPal, sits on the board of Facebook and is estimated to be worth $2.7 billion -- is trying to sue Gawker Media out of existence by financially backing plaintiffs who want to bring lawsuits against the company. 

What does it mean that Thiel has amassed enough wealth -- and thus enough power -- to make a credible attempt to cripple a major media company by throwing money at the legal system?

It doesn't necessarily tell us that individuals shouldn't be able to fund litigation. It tells us that some people in this country have too much money.

Thiel funding a lawsuit he wasn't involved in, a practice known as champerty, was once illegal in the U.S. But as Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law, points out in The Washington Post this week, anti-champerty laws eventually underwent a gradual attrition -- particularly because of civil rights litigation, which often involves a third party funding the lawsuits. 

"They were gradually eroded by numerous developments, most saliently public interest litigation and the private provision of legal aid to indigents," Kontorovich writes. Progressives are generally in favor of those last couple of things, so changing these laws would be complicated.

Yet here is Thiel, using the power afforded by his vast wealth to make serious trouble for Gawker. The media company has certainly shown questionable editorial judgment sometimes, but more often than not it speaks truth to power -- a crucial function of the press in a democracy. Gawker's now-inactive Silicon Valley blog, Valleywag, wrote unflattering things about the stars of the tech world, Thiel included -- something to which most of them were, and still are, unaccustomed. In response, Thiel used his money to try to destroy Gawker. There are countries whose governments use their power to control what the media says about them. We generally refer to these as autocracies. 

Thiel is a private citizen, of course, not a public servant. But that doesn't make it much better. Imagine if other private citizens, like Bill Gates or the Koch brothers, tried to destroy every media outlet that wrote something nasty about them. The public's access to information would suffer. Not immediately, maybe, but certainly after the eighth or ninth crippling lawsuit.

But there's another way to prevent this kind of abuse of power: taxes. What this country really needs isn't a law to keep incredibly wealthy people from funding litigation in an attempt to destroy the First Amendment. We just need fewer incredibly wealthy people. 

Economists agree. Back in 2014, my colleague Ben Walsh wrote about a report by Fabian Kindermann from the University of Bonn and Dirk Krueger from the University of Pennsylvania that found the ideal top marginal tax rate on the highest 1 percent of earners -- the tax rate that makes everyone in society the most well-off overall -- is between 85 and 90 percent. That's more than twice the current U.S. top rate of just under 40 percent, which is paid on income above $415,050 for individuals and above $466,950 for couples.

Marginal tax rates don't mean that all income is taxed at that rate -- just the income above a certain level. So if the marginal tax rate for individuals making $1 million a year was, say, 99 percent, only the money they made after the first $1 million would be taxed at that rate. That first million bucks would be taxed at a lower rate, leaving the person plenty to live off of. But a robust top marginal tax rate would prevent people who make, say, $100 million per year from becoming exponentially wealthier than everybody else, and getting to more or less make up their own laws as a result.

Having several million dollars in the bank is a way to live comfortably, have some influence and generally be considered a rich person. Having several billion dollars in the bank is different. A billion dollars is power -- power to grind down your enemies through endless litigation; power to throw off an entire state's budget because you moved to a new house. A billion dollars is plutocracy. 

Of course, if we take away the plutocrats' power by taxing them at higher rates, that money -- and the power that goes along with it -- will go to the government instead. And governments, to state the obvious, abuse their power all the time, including here in the U.S. But elected officials are still accountable to the public, and bound by the Constitution, in ways that individual billionaires are not. Do we want the power of regulating the press to be in the hands of the many or the hands of the few?

It's important to remember that there are different kinds of rich. There's the kind of rich where you can live comfortably without worrying about money, and there's the kind of rich where you can manipulate democracy or fund a never-ending series of lawsuits in pursuit of a personal grudge. Taxes are the way to keep the first kind of rich from metastasizing into the second. The higher we set the top marginal tax rate, the harder it becomes for anyone to make that jump.

Without high tax rates, huge amounts of wealth simply beget more huge amounts of wealth. In this chart, compiled by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, you can see the massive amounts of wealth created for the top 0.1 percent by capital gains (that's returns on investment) in the 1920s, and again in the 2000s. 

Piketty and Saez

Not coincidentally, U.S. inequality reached historic heights in the 1920s, and it's happening again now. As capital gains soar, real median incomes in the U.S. have fallen since 2000. What's good for the extremely rich is not necessarily good for average Americans. When top marginal tax rates decline, income inequality balloons:

CEPR/Piketty

What happens when income inequality grows too extreme? It's not just about Gawker, or any corporation a billionaire might dislike. Inequality can be a threat to both politics and the economy. The more money is concentrated at the top, the more political power accrues to that same small group of people. If power becomes too concentrated among the rich, and they are no longer exercising that power in a way that benefits everyone, you get violence. Ask Marie Antoinette.

And then there's the less obvious consequence: sluggish economic growth. Recent research has shown that as wealth concentrates at the top, everyone who's not at the top stops producing as much. As a result, the economy cools off and stagnates. Even when there is some growth, who benefits from it? An OECD report from 2015 shows that not only does growth slow and inequality increase under such conditions, but "when such a large group in the population gains so little from economic growth, the social fabric frays and trust in social institutions is weakened." And once again we're back to the lessons of the French Revolution. Any way you look at it, neglecting to tax the rich is bad for democracy.

Sure, perhaps you dislike Gawker and are unfazed by Thiel's meddling. But what if it were The New York Times? What if it were The Huffington Post? What if it were Breitbart?  

If we tax the rich properly, we never have to find out.

Why Eating Better Starts With Changing Our Work Habits

What would you say are the defining characteristics of the American eater?

If you look at our obesity rates, they'd suggest we’re mostly overeaters. But beyond that, the question is tougher.

It’s not so much that we lack a U.S. food personality — if anything, we have multiple, conflicting ones. At the same time, more consumers are demanding that their food be “natural,” organic and GMO-free, even as Taco Bell sells record numbers of Doritos Locos tacos. We seem more interested in celebrity chefs, cooking shows and recipe videos than ever before, and yet we’re also spending a record amount of money eating out and ordering in.

To address our nation’s diet-related concerns, it would seem necessary first to better understand what we eat, how we eat it and, of course, why.

In her new book, Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies — How What We Eat Defines Who We Are, Culinary Institute of America program director and food writer Sophie Egan digs into these questions.

It turns out previous attempts to dissect our dietary schizophrenia have ignored some important pieces. Principal among those, Egan argues, are the ways in which Americans working longer hours than the rest of the industrialized world has impacted both their motivation — and ability — to make healthier food choices daily.

So how do we go about resetting our workplaces, cafeterias and the norms they help instill to a healthier default? The Huffington Post recently spoke with Egan about the challenges ahead and the reasons for hope.

What prompted you to explore this question of how we wound up with the food culture we have today?

I’ve been working in food professionally for a number of years and was thinking about how powerful a mirror food is for who we are at a much deeper level. I was tired of hearing that in the U.S. we’re so diverse and are such a huge country that we don’t have anything we could identify as a national food culture. I felt like, well, what can be said? I dug into that question of who we are as eaters, these core values we have as Americans -- these are things we don’t even see sometimes because they’re so deeply ingrained in how we think.

And that led you to this discussion of how the way we work impacts the way we eat. It almost seems so obvious now that I’m asking you about it, but we don’t really talk about that relationship. Why is that?

It really comes down to a reframing of how we look at the root causes of our eating choices. We typically center those conversations around individual willpower or these character accusations, if you will: That Americans don’t cook because they’re lazy or we just follow whatever we saw on TV. But I would say work is a root cause. In addition to a lack of financial resources [being a factor for many people], another important root cause of some eating behaviors that maybe aren’t as healthy as people would like is lack of time. If we’re working more than we used to, something is falling by the wayside.

What was stunning to me was seeing how technology has really blurred the lines between work and home for many people. This mindset of, well, if you can work, why wouldn’t you? Whether it’s on vacation, in the evenings or on weekends, all of it. So with the increase in the numbers of hours we’re spending working, we’re not focusing on food. We look at food as fuel. You squeeze in a sandwich if you have three minutes in between meetings, or grab a Kind bar when you’re racing to catch the subway in the morning. Eating is a secondary need as opposed to something people used to design their days around.

And this starts in childhood. Kids in K-12 schools usually don’t have enough time to eat, so they’re scarfing down pizza or hot dogs or whatever is being served in their cafeteria in 10 minutes. By the time you’re in college, it’s a grab-and-go, grazing mentality. So you’re trained from an early age to see food as secondary. This is a huge cultural norm that’s very difficult to reverse.

Credit: Seth Perlman/Associated Press

Students at many schools are rushed to eat their lunches quickly. The Culinary Institute of America's Sophie Egan argues this helps instill a mindset that food is principally fuel, rather than something to be savored or celebrated.

I’ve noticed that the “food as fuel” mindset is behind a lot of the marketing of Soylent and similar products. I tried one last year and thought it tasted just as joyless as you would think. Why is this sort of message at the heart of a lot of so-called “foods of the future” today?

Culturally speaking, Soylent is a huge step backward. There’s this sense that we can take food and improve on it, to take what nature gave us and say there’s got to be a better way. A life-hacking approach. A Silicon Valley approach. But [AOL co-founder] Steve Case has this great quote that food is not something disrupting the disrupting you have to do.

Soylent is an extreme, but I would say it represents a larger idea of reducing food to its nutrients. Food is so much more than that. It does nourish us and we need certain things to survive, but I hope that people are starting to realize that flavor and taste and joy are some of the greatest pleasures of life. I think in the U.S., we have a very related discomfort with leisure and with pleasure. It’s sort of unspoken that if you sit around and do nothing, you’re lazy and you’re lesser. I think similarly there’s this sense of taboo around pure enjoyment of taste and of eating food with other people. 

There’s also an element of purity to utilitarian foods like that. In the book, you make a strong case for food — whether it be a particular diet or the practice of going to brunch — as a sort of "secular church." Is that a hypothesis you held going into this, or did it develop along the way?

I started with this question about the contradiction of why we’re willing to spend basically the whole day seeking out brunch when our typical mindset is to go to extreme lengths to minimize the time we spend obtaining, eating and cleaning up after food. So it was more of this question of what is so different about that. Very quickly, my research led me to this discovery about how different our weekday eating habits are from our weekend eating habits. We spend the least amount of time of any major developed country preparing and eating food. We’re hardwired in terms of that idea of efficiency.

But looking back, it’s very clear weekends are about indulgence and treating yourself after a long, hard week. These are also some of the only times we aren’t as scheduled, though many families have soccer games and a million other activities too. 

Your book also discusses how Americans are so used to getting our food exactly the way we want it, and points out how companies are always pushing new flavors and innovations or “stunt foods” like Doritos Locos. How do you balance these trends with ideas that could push us in a healthier direction? The answer can’t be to go back to the “good ol' days,” right?

This is a really tough question. It’s not just that we all should return to the old ways, because there’s clearly some innovation or new ways forward that should be welcomed. But what kinds of pieces from our past do we really want to resurrect?

Everyone talks today about how people are paying more attention to food than ever before, but from a policy standpoint, a number of things are still missing. One is the amount of time in schools for lunch. I think, at a broad level, going forward what I’m hoping for is for us to collectively find ways to focus on food more. And what I mean by that is, if more employers could make the American lunch break the norm in office settings. I’ve heard of a handful of companies where they ring a cowbell and everyone knows to take a break. You can’t expect individual change in the midst of the same larger environment, not only the physical marketing environment, but the cultural environment. I’m calling for cultural change, and it has to come from the top down.

I think the piece most worth resurrecting from the past would be teaching people to cook. You don’t have to call it home economics. But it should be painted as essential life skills. What if, in order to graduate from college you had to demonstrate that you knew how to cook an omelette so that you could feed yourself? If it was considered the same way as learning a language or riding a bike?

We’ve outsourced the preparation of food to the professionals. Are we going to stop eating food that comes in packages? Of course not. But we would be wise to see for what it is the availability of real, whole foods and the power that comes with feeding yourself and preparing food yourself instead of being sort of over-reliant on new solutions.

Credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Many "Big Food" brands like Kraft have been altering some of their trademark packaged foods to contain fewer artificial ingredients and flavors in recent years.

Are you optimistic that we're moving in the right direction, toward getting back into the kitchen and eating more “real” food? Or are we too set in our ways at this point?

I am optimistic. I think our appreciation for novelty and innovation is a double-edged sword. We’re eating more foods from around the world than five years ago, which is a silver lining to how much more we’re eating out. But it’s really brought a world of flavors to the masses. It has tremendous potential for healthier eating habits, because some of those other cuisines taste amazing and happen to be good for you without being positioned as good for you. That’s the best way to go.

I’m also optimistic about how much consumer awareness can change Big Food, and we’re seeing that in food companies removing artificial flavors and colorings, or antibiotics. Consumers’ collective demands are really starting to make change happen faster. I think in some ways we’re more empowered than ever before.

It is only with this greater awareness that we can we collectively take more control over our food choices. And with that, we can celebrate the aspects of our food culture that we sometimes overlook, and change those aspects of our food culture that are hurting us so that we can end up with healthier, happier relationships with the food we eat.

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Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. In addition, Erbentraut explores the evolving ways Americans are identifying and defining themselves. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

Domino's Accused Of Fraud And 'Systemic Wage Theft' By New York State

The attorney general of New York filed a lawsuit against Domino's on Tuesday, accusing the pizza giant of systematically shorting workers' pay.

Fast-food restaurants are sued all the time for alleged wage theft. What makes this suit different is who's included among the defendants: Domino's itself, as opposed to just the franchisees who run Domino's shops.

"At some point, a company has to take responsibility for its actions and for its workers’ well-being," Eric Schneiderman, New York's attorney general, said in a statement.

The lawsuit claims workers at 10 Domino's shops in New York were underpaid by a total of at least $565,000. Schneiderman said that his office's investigation revealed "intensive involvement by Domino’s headquarters" in the alleged labor violations, and that Domino's should therefore be considered a joint employer alongside the franchisees.

“New York law -- as well as basic human decency -- holds Domino’s responsible for the alleged mistreatment of the workers who make and deliver the company’s pizzas, and it is incumbent upon Domino’s to fix the problems," Schneiderman said.

The fast-food industry is predicated on a franchise system, with the owners of individual outlets -- franchisees -- paying fees to the company in exchange for an established name and business model. The franchisees sign workers' paychecks and are typically considered the employers in this equation. When workplace laws get broken, they're usually the ones on the hook for the violation.

But in this case, New York alleges that Domino's really controls the work inside the pizza shops, and therefore should be held accountable for any violations of the law. The lawsuit claims that Domino's headquarters directed franchisees to discipline certain employees, dictated staffing levels and hours at the shops, and even tried to scuttle a union campaign by workers.

In a statement, Domino's said the lawsuit "disregards the nature of franchising and demeans the role of small business owners." The company said it worked with Schneiderman's office for three years to help franchisees understand and comply with the different wage and hour laws. 

"It’s unfortunate that these steps were not enough, and that the Attorney General now wants the company to take steps that would not only deprive our independent business owners of the opportunity to make their own employment decisions, but could impact the viability of the franchise model, the many opportunities it offers to those looking to start their own businesses, and the millions of jobs those franchised businesses create," the company said.

According to its most recent annual report, Domino's has more than 4,800 franchised locations in the U.S., owned by 841 franchisees who each have an average of six locations. Domino's itself only owns 384 stores.

According to Schneiderman's office, Domino's required franchisees to purchase an online software system called PULSE, and encouraged them to use it for payroll reports. The lawsuit alleges that PULSE routinely miscalculated workers' gross wages, and that these mistakes led to workers being shorted on their paychecks. Domino's headquarters, the suit claims, was aware of the problems, but deemed the miscalculations a "low priority."

The sale of PULSE, Schneiderman contends, amounted to "fraud" perpetrated on the franchisees by Domino's.

Domino's isn't the first fast-food company to be sued alongside some of its franchisees. In 2014, workers in three different states filed lawsuits against McDonald's, saying the company violated minimum wage and overtime laws. As in the Domino's complaint, the plaintiffs in that suit argued that McDonald's steered in-store work policy and was therefore liable for the alleged violations. The cases are pending.

Schneiderman's office has aggressively pursued criminal cases against fast-food operators, and Domino's stores have been in the attorney general's crosshairs in the past. In 2014, a group of Domino's franchisees agreed to pay workers nearly a half-million dollars to settle wage theft claims brought by the attorney general.

This story has been updated with comment from Domino's.

McDonald's Vows To Protect Fish In The Arctic

More than a dozen seafood industry giants, including McDonald's and British grocery retailer Tesco, have joined forces to protect a large swath of the Arctic from increased fishing. 

The voluntary agreement, signed Wednesday, commits the companies not to expand cod fishing into a previously ice-covered portion of the Northern Barents Sea.

Environmental organization Greenpeace, which brokered the agreement, said in an announcement that it "marks the first time the seafood industry has voluntarily imposed limitations to industrial fishing in the Arctic." 

"We are witnessing a truly important moment when global brands in the fishing industry start to say 'no' to Arctic destruction and agree to prevent fishing fleets from expanding their search for cod into sensitive and previously ice-covered areas in a region twice the size of France," Greenpeace campaigner Frida Bengtsson wrote in a blog post.

MARCEL MOCHET via Getty Images

Fishermen aboard the French trawler Grande Hermine, a French cod-fishing boat, handling a trawl in the Barents Sea.

The "precautionary measure," which takes effect immediately, halts bottom trawling -- a fishing practice that involves dragging nets along the ocean floor -- around the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, where regular fishing has not occurred before. 

It also means that participating companies — some of the world’s largest seafood processors and retailers — will not buy fish caught even farther north, a practice that's increasing.

A years-long Greenpeace investigation found "large numbers of fishing vessels from companies with a global reach have been advancing into areas previously covered by ice."

"Sea ice loss in the northern Barents Sea is turning it into a new hunting ground for industrial fishing," Greenpeace said in a report. "Fishing brings with it the threats of habitat degradation and bycatch, potentially wiping out marine life and putting this whole fragile ecosystem at risk."

Greenpeace

A map of the area of northern Barents Sea, including the waters around Svalbard, where some of the world's largest seafood and fishing companies have committed not to expand their search for cod.

McDonald's said it's strengthening its commitment to sustainable fishing.

“Specifically, because we require our fish suppliers to follow sustainable fishing practices, we will not serve fish caught in the areas of the Barents and Norwegian seas defined by this agreement," Keith Kenny, vice president of sustainability at McDonald’s, told German broadcaster Deutsche Welle. "This commitment, which is effective immediately, will continue until there is robust and independent scientific research that demonstrates fishing activities in the area will not cause serious harm to the marine environment."

Wednesday's agreement is a big step, but more could certainly be done. In 2016 alone, for example, Norway has licensed 189 trawler fishing outfits, half of them Russian, to harvest nearly a million tons of cod (or 859,000 tonnes) from the Barents Sea, according to Greenpeace's report. 

To put that in perspective, one of McDonald's main U.S. providers delivers delivers 12,500 tons (about 11,000 tonnes) of fish to the fast food chain each year.

Here's a full list of the companies that signed the agreement.

Why Monsanto Just Rejected A $62 Billion Mega-Merger Offer

Monsanto wants more green.

The seed and pesticide giant on Tuesday rejected a $62 billion bid from German conglomerate Bayer, but said it would be open to a bigger offer. In a statement, the company said its board of director's unanimously voted against the unsolicited proposal, which it deemed "incomplete and financially inadequate."

“We believe in the substantial benefits an integrated strategy could provide to growers and broader society, and we have long respected Bayer’s business,” Hugh Grant, Monsanto's chairman and chief executive, said in the statement. “However, the current proposal significantly undervalues our company and also does not adequately address or provide reassurance for some of the potential financing and regulatory execution risks related to the acquisition.”

Google Finance

Shares of Monsanto spiked by about 3 percent after its widely expected rejection of Bayer's initial bid.

The rejection comes as no surprise. The offer -- which would be the biggest takeover ever attempted by a German company -- comes amid rapid consolidation in the agricultural chemicals industry. And generous as it seems, it falls flat compared to other landmark deals.

Last December, Dow Chemical and DuPont agreed to a $130 billion merger, after which the companies are expected to split into three separate businesses, including one focused on seeds and crop sprays, according to the Financial Times. Then, in February, Swiss competitor Syngenta agreed to a $43 billion takeover by the China National Chemical Corp., or ChemChina. The deal came just months after Syngenta rejected for the fourth time a $47 billion bid from Monsanto. 

So in a reversal, the predator became prey. Monsanto is unlikely to go down for less than it offered its former target. 

Bayer's bid for Monsanto appears big, but as The Wall Street Journal's Helen Thomas pointed out on Monday, the offer isn't as juicy as the one that wooed Syngenta to its Chinese state-owned rival:

At 15.8 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, Bayer’s offer is hardly stingy. But it also falls short of the knock-out 17 times that ChemChina paid for Syngenta.

Bayer did not respond to a request for comment on the failed bid. 

The merger may be a hard sell to investors. Many of Bayer's shareholders are focused on the company's pharmaceutical business, and may view Monsanto's agrichemical empire with suspicion. The eye-popping offer also came less than one month into Werner Baumann's newly minted tenure as Bayer's chief executive.

“We have struggled to find investors who favour this transaction,” Alistair Campbell, an analyst at Berenberg, told the Financial Times in a profile of Baumann last week. “We think a bid for Monsanto will be expensive, [earnings] dilutive and destroy value.”

Still, Monsanto may be vulnerable to a hostile takeover if Bayer commits the resources to a higher offer.

The company, reviled by environmentalists for its aggressive pushing of genetically modified crops and toxic pesticides, has struggled over the past year, despite recent studies backing its claim that GMOs are safe to eat. A shortlist of those woes includes: 

• In January, the company laid off a total of 3,600 employees, or about 16 percent of its workforce.

• In February, Swiss competitor Syngenta agreed to the China National Chemical Corp.’s acquisition offer, just months after refusing for a fourth time to sell itself to Monsanto. 

• In March, the maker of RoundUp weed killer slashed its earnings forecast for the year amid economic headwinds from low commodity prices.

• Earlier this month, two of the largest U.S. grain traders refused to buy a new type of Monsanto’s genetically modified soybean because European Union regulators have yet to approve it.

• The firm is locked in ongoing disputes over seed royalties in Argentina and India.

• Its stock price has fallen by as much as 31 percent in the past 12 months, according to Bloomberg.

“It’s a relentless string of bad news,” Jonas Oxgaard, an analyst at the research firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., told Bloomberg News last week. “It’s almost like they forgot to sacrifice a goat to the gods.” 

This Big Law Firm Just Stepped Into The 21st Century

The Chicago-based international law firm Winston & Strawn LLP announced Wednesday that it is creating a gender-neutral parental leave policy, as well as a broader policy intended to help lawyers with the often hectic process of taking parental leave and then returning to work.

The policy includes 20 weeks of paid parental leave for associates and of counsel attorneys. It applies to parents of any gender and in any country, and the leave time can be taken in either one or two separate chunks within the first year of a child's life. Parents also aren't required to designate a "primary caregiver."

This is a pretty big deal in the legal industry, even if it falls somewhat short of the policies offered in other professions, according to Vivia Chen, a senior columnist at The American Lawyer. "Law firms are a bit behind other industries, especially the financial and other professional service industries, when it comes to more innovative family measures," she said. 

Many tech firms, including Netflix, Facebook and Spotify, have introduced generous gender-neutral parental leave policies in recent months. Just a few weeks ago, the consulting firm EY announced a 16-week paid leave policy that will start in July. But Winston & Strawn is the first law firm to have a policy this expansive -- or at least the first to announce it publicly.

Getting women back to work after having kids -- and allowing men to take time off as well -- is a way for firms to help women ascend the career ladder. Currently, only 18 percent of equity partners in American law firms are women, even though women account for 47 percent of the country's J.D. degrees.

In addition to the 20 weeks of leave, the firm is also creating a few different ways to ease the transitions of taking leave and returning to work. There will be a "parental leave liaison" to assist people coming back to work, as well as career coaching services and lower billable-hour requirements for people who are just about to take leave or are just coming back to the firm.

"Traditionally for women, if you take a long leave, easing back in can be difficult. You might have hesitation about going back," Chen told The Huffington Post. Having someone act as a sort of coach, encouraging people to come back from leave, just might be the nudge new parents need to get back into the swing of things after having a baby. 

To be clear, Winston & Strawn isn't acting altruistically here: The firm's move is intended to attract and retain high-level attorneys. Practice attorneys, who are low-level attorneys usually brought on for specific projects and who are outside the traditional partner-track framework of the firm, won't get the same 20-week benefit. Neither will the firm's other staff members, such as paralegals and office assistants.

However, it's relatively common for benefits in big law firms to be stratified, according to Chen. Winston & Strawn says its U.S. employees in lower positions will get increased paid leave time and an extra two weeks of paid time off.

Robin Wright Explains Why She Fought For Equal Pay For 'House of Cards'

Claire Underwood certainly would not stand being paid less than a man for the same work -- and neither did her real-life counterpart, Robin Wright.

The actor, who plays the formidable first lady on Netflix's "House of Cards," opened up about demanding higher pay in an interview at The Rockefeller Foundation on Tuesday.

Until recently, Wright was paid less than her co-star Kevin Spacey, who was reportedly making $500,000 per episode on the show. The fourth season of the drama was just released on Netflix in March.

“I was looking at statistics and Claire Underwood’s character was more popular than [Frank’s] for a period of time. So I capitalized on that moment. I was like, ‘You better pay me or I’m going to go public,’” Wright said, flashing her trademark smile. “And they did.”

Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin had asked her about the barriers women face in getting ahead, and Wright mentioned the gender pay gap. In 2015, women still make just 79 cents for every dollar earned by a white man. The gap is worse for women of color.

Their conversation was part of a series called “Insight Dialogues,” discussions with thought leaders and activists hosted in New York. The Huffington Post is a media partner with The Rockefeller Foundation on the series.

The pay gap is so pernicious that women earn less than men in 439 major occupations, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. 

Watch Wright's interview here (she mentions her demands for equal pay around 7:15): 

Wright said that one of the things holding women back is the time out they take to raise children, mentioning that her career took a hit after she had her kids in the '90s -- just as she was gaining fame after starring roles in "The Princess Bride" and "Forrest Gump."

“Because I wasn’t working full time, I wasn’t building my salary bracket. If you don’t build salary bracket with notoriety and presence, then you’re not in the game anymore," Wright said. 

Her kids are apparently doing their part to help her catch up. Last year, Wright's daughter, Dylan Penn, told Marie Claire that it was "crazy" her mother wasn't making the same as her co-star: "They both equally grab the attention of the audience."

Women in Hollywood have been speaking up more about equal pay ever since Patricia Arquette called for equality in her acceptance speech at the Oscars last year. Arquette, who was accepting an award for her role in the film "Boyhood," has since lost out on a couple of roles for taking a stand, she said earlier this year at a dinner in Beverly Hills, California, that The Huffington Post attended.

Still, since she spoke up, others have followed, including Jennifer Lawrence and Gillian Jacobs. 

And judging from the Twittersphere, a lot of women are excited about this turn of events. Many were celebrating Wright's salary win on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

That's what I'm talking about Claire Underwood. https://t.co/6xZwOmwIMQ via @EmilyRPeck @HuffPostBiz pic.twitter.com/FS7UASSkst

— Meagan Phillips (@MeggieClaire) May 18, 2016