It’s true. A picture is often worth a thousand words.
In Neil Irwin’s New York Times story he cites two charts from Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century that bring home the outrageous nature of our increasing unequal society. In the 1940s, 50s and 60s, most of the income gains accrued to the majority of people and the bottom 90 percent of earners captured at least a majority of the rise in income.
By the time we reach the period from 2009 to 2012, 116% of income growth goes to the top 10% with everyone else loosing ground.
When we drill down even deeper to the top 1%, we find that 98% of the 116% that went to the top 10% actually only goes to the top 1% with only 5% going to everyone else.
It’s time to stop this madness.
We must increase taxes on the top 1% and put in place a wealth tax as Thomas Piketty advocates in Capital in the Twenty-First Century. A wealth tax would annually place a 1 – 2% tax on the assets of everyone whose wealth is over $10 million. In addition, we need to eliminate the second home mortgage deduction and use the funds generated from all these taxes to raise the minimum wage to $15. Furthermore, increase our investment in infrastructure to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, which will require an investment in vocational training to equip our unemployed workers to handle these new jobs. None of this will work unless we invest in young children to ensure the have the nutrition, education and mentoring that will keep them in school.