Over the last few decades, America has witnessed wealth funneling upward at such an extreme rate that a small group of billionaires now own more wealth than the entire bottom half of the country. Contrary to popular belief, this was not the inevitable result of “market forces” but rather deliberate policy choices made by both political parties.
In the mid-20th century, we had a tax code that actually asked the most from those able to pay the most, but today, thanks to several rounds of massive tax cuts for the rich, we’re miles away from that. Wealthy investors now pay far lower tax rates selling their stocks, bonds, and real estate holdings than most working people do on their biweekly paychecks. The estate tax has become so porous and watered down that it has essentially become an optional tax for most rich families to pay. And in some years, billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have actually managed to pay $0 in federal income tax.
The situation with wages in America is just as bad. The federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009 and is worth less today in real terms than at any time since 1949. Nearly half of full-time workers in America don’t make a “living wage,” i.e. a wage high enough to afford basic essentials. Two-thirds of Americans report living paycheck to paycheck. Meanwhile, CEOs and other C-suite executives like many of us receive pay packages worth hundreds, sometimes thousands, of times more than what their average employees make.
Money in politics is the last piece of America’s inequality puzzle. Over the years, elections have become so expensive that the donor class has come to have an outsized say in determining who runs for office and who wins elections. When the Supreme Court dropped its now infamous Citizens United decision in 2010, the situation became far, far worse, as it opened the doors to an avalanche of election spending from a tiny handful of ultra-wealthy donors. And what have Americans gotten out of this mess? A system of government where they exercise essentially no influence whatsoever on public policy outcomes. The sacred right to vote has long been under attack from lawmakers attempting to gerrymander voting districts and erect unnecessary voting restrictions, but money in politics is the real root to America’s democracy problem.
The good news is that the solutions here are not complicated. Three basic ideas – taxing the rich, paying the people, and spreading the power – hold the key to undoing the damage that half a century of failed “trickle-down” economic policies have wrought on our economy and ensuring equal political representation for all Americans.
Inequality is bad for everyone. It’s certainly bad for the millions of workers at the bottom struggling day in and day out to make ends meet, but contrary to what you might think, it’s also bad for millionaires like us. History has not been kind to societies – and particularly the wealthy people in those societies – that have let inequality spiral unchecked. We don’t want history to repeat itself.
We have to act before it’s too late.
Pay the People
