Fighting Feudal Taxes

The United States is the most inequitable advanced nation in the world. Every year since 1996 the top 1 percent has garnered more income than bottom 100 million Americans taken together. Wealth ownership is even more concentrated than income. Indeed, it is literally feudal: The top one percent of wealth holders owns roughly half of all financial and business wealth. The top 5 percent owns almost 70 percent of such wealth. In 2003 the top 1 percent alone received 57.5 percent of all capital gains, rent, interest and dividend income—up from 37.6 percent two decades earlier. A recent analysis by The New York Times and Citizens for Tax Justice found that 43 percent of the Bush dividend tax cuts went to taxpayers with incomes greater than $1 million, who make up a mere 1/10th of 1 percent of all taxpayers.

This extraordinary situation is bad not only for those at the bottom of the economic pyramid, but for the nation as a whole. You don’t have to be a radical to recognize that, historically, huge political power regularly follows huge wealth, with disastrous implications for democracy.

A movement has spread to many states to reverse the tax advantages for the very rich with new high wealth, high income taxes coupled with reducing the tax burden on the middle-class.

Tags: democracy, taxes, inequality,