How to make America fairer? From pre-distribution to redistribution — Class 7
Today we turn to policies where widening inequality is directly implicated. The first and most obvious (and most politically contentious) involves taxing higher-income people and redistributing to lower-income people. My goal today is to get students to reexamine their assumptions, both about how the system of taxing and redistributing actually works (or doesn’t) and about the practical consequences.
Here’s the class (just double click the red “play” button):
The questions I’ll be focusing on are: Should the top marginal tax rate be raised? Should wealth be taxed? In what ways is income now redistributed? To what extent is it redistributed upward, from the poor or the lower middle to the upper middle and the rich? What’s the difference between redistribution policies that focus on taxes and those that focus on the beneficiaries of government programs financed by taxes?
Recommended readings (just click on the link):
Jesse Eisinger et al., “The Secret IRS Files,” ProPublica, June 8, 2021
Anu Partanen, “What Americans Don’t Get About Nordic Countries,” The Atlantic, March 16, 2016
Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the 21st Century,” Chapters 14-15
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If you’ve missed any of these classes, no worries. Here are the links for all that I’ve already posted: Class 1, Class 2, Class 3, Class 4, Class 5, and Class 6. There will be 14 in all.
Please share!
What boomer wealth are you talking about that is going to disappear and go untaxed? Many of us managed to eventually pay off a 30 year home loan at high interest that we pay increasing amounts of property taxes on every year. My fear is that we will outlive our ability to pay the property taxes and lose our modest home. We boomers are, and always have been, divided into classes as is the total population. Please don't teach young people that we, as a whole, are a wealth source to be cannibalized for the greater good. I don't think that is what you meant, but it could be interpreted that way. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to learn more about how the world works. I'm looking forward to next week's class. I wish I would have had an opportunity to learn from you when I was young. But then you were also still learning.
I'm curious why the structure of the work environment itself isn't discussed more. Why must an autocratic top down arrangement be the standard? The worker co-op system is well illustrated by the Mondragon Corp. of Spain. In existence since the late 50's. If the workplace itself is arranged more democratically. The distribution of wealth derived from it would be more fairly parceled out. But then, it must resemble a socialistic notion, and we can't go that route.
That notion seems to resemble the current geopolitical ramifications of our relationship with China. As the western, particularly US neoliberal free market rhetoric claims there is a democratic vs autocratic war of will with that country. Which is a rather ironic take in that China with its autocratic, (socialistic) structure has made its economy and citizens middle class consumers in record time never before accomplished. Whereas the US has undermined its citizens from that status with its democratic, (oligarchic autocracy) during the same period and longer.
And what if the free marketers and their unearned income were taxed at a rate obliging them to put their money into R&D and manufacturing capabilities in their own countries? Instead of their stocks, and private equity ventures and all the other parasitic practices they employ for easy quick turnaround. Maybe they need to know what the working class knows so well. Making an honest living.