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| wealth_gap_17c_optimized.pdf |
Rock Concerts and Wealth Gaps
1,131 Words 3/14/25
By David Demers
Ticket prices were only $5 when the folk-rock band Eagles performed July 7, 1974, at Memorial Coliseum in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Nearly fifty years later, when the band played in late January 2024 in Phoenix, a seat in front of the stage was $7,000. Prices decreased in denominations of $1,000 as seats receded from there. The cheapest seat I could find was $300 in the nose-bleed section.
That $7,000 ticket price was 1,400 times higher than the $5 ticket.
To reach the $7K threshold, that $5 ticket would have to had grown at a compounded rate of 15.6 percent per year. That's five times faster than average inflation rate and twice as fast as the average annualized return in the S&P 500 Index, which is 7.5 percent. ...
The concert-ticket incident faded in my memory for a couple of weeks, until I saw a pie chart ... . The wealthiest 1 percentile of families own nearly a third of the nation's wealth (30.3%) — almost as much as the bottom 90th percentile — while the bottom 50th percentile collectively own only 2.5 percent. The top 10th percentile own two-thirds of the wealth (30.3% + 36.6%), and the remaining 40 percent of Americans (the 50th-to-90th percentile category) own 30.6 percent.
So what does concentrated wealth have to do with the price of concert tickets? ...
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Wealthy Pay 63% Less in Federal Taxes Today than in 1980
‘America Is Mortgaging its Future to Make the Wealthy Wealthier’
930 words 3/6/25
By David Demers
As President Donald Trump prepares to lower taxes on the wealthy again, a new study shows that the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans are paying an average of 63 percent less in federal income taxes today than they did in 1980.
This explains in large part why America’s national debt is soaring ($36+ trillion as of this writing). In fact, America is mortgaging its future to make the wealthy wealthier. [1]
These are the key findings and conclusions from a comparative analysis of tax rates for married taxpayers filing in 1980 and 2023.
In 1980, taxpayers in the wealthiest 10 percentile reported a total income of income of ...
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Would the Reagans Pay More Income Taxes Today?
668 words 2/28/25
By David Demers
Former President Ronald Reagan and his spouse Nancy saved $91,619 on their 1982 taxes after he signed bills that substantially cut federal income taxes for wealthy taxpayers during his first term.
The First Couple paid $292,616 in taxes on an income of $741,253. Their effective tax rate was 39 percent (see column 4 in the Table below).
Without the tax cuts, they would have paid $384,235 (52%; see column 3).
They saved 24 percent ...
But are these tax benefits still around today? ...
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Where Is the Tipping Point for Wealth Gaps?
1,042 Words 2/13/25
David Demers
I was a visiting professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota when New York Times newspaper reporter William Glaberson called me in February 1996. [1]
“Dr. Demers, I am working on a story about the loss of family-owned newspapers, and I see you have just published a book about corporate newspaper ownership. May I ask you some questions?”
“Hell yeah!” I wanted to shout but instead responded, “I’d be delighted to help you, Mr. Glaberson.”
It was, to me, one of those tipping-point moments that Malcolm Gladwell talked about a decade later in his popular book. ...
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Wharton School’s Elephant-in-the-Room Report
How Could Economists Overlook the Single Biggest Cause of the National Debt?
1,019 words 1/29/25
By David Demers
The most bewildering aspect of the Wharton School’s new special report — “Lowering Debt & Growing the Economy” — isn’t what it says, but what it ignores.
Not one word about the massive federal tax cuts doled out to the wealthy since 1980, which is the primary reason the national debt has become so large ($36 trillion). ...
The Wharton report assumes, as do many conservative analyses, that government spending is the main cause of the growing national debt.
That’s just not true. ...
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Are You Mad about Rapidly Expanding Wealth Gaps?
Here’s Another Social Institution You Can Blame
(Hint: It Embraces the Ethic of Objectivity)
1,046 words 1/17/25
By David Demers
National polls from the Pew Center and other groups show that a majority of Americans are angry about rapidly expanding wealth and income gaps and believe the wealthy aren’t paying enough in taxes.
Some analysts, including me, even argue that financial insecurity was the main reason Donald Trump won a second term ... . Many of his working-class supporters believe he can solve their financial problems, even though he never talks about economic inequality and has an affinity for billionaires.
Although journalists often sympathize with the working and middle classes, they have written or broadcast few news stories and commentaries about the growing gaps in wealth and income over the last couple years. ...
So why aren’t journalists covering one of the biggest social problems of our time?
Because of the ... .
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'Runaway Government Spending' Is a Myth
Only One Thing Can Reduce the National Debt
(1,965 words) 1/7/25
By David Demers
Government spending is out of control.
In fact, it’s “runaway.”
Just ask any conservative.
“Runaway government spending drove skyrocketing prices, draining household savings, eroding purchasing power, and stretching family budgets to their breaking point,” writes U.S. Representative Jodey Arrington.
“As a Main Street businessman, I believe we need to reduce runaway federal spending and address our national debt,” says Senator Mike Braun.
“Runaway government spending is already turning us into a nation of debt slaves,” according to two Heritage Foundation fellows.
So what does “runaway” mean to a conservative?
Fifty percent increase in spending from year to year? Ten? Five?
There is, of course, a growing gap between federal outlays and revenues (nearly $2 trillion in 2023; see Figure 1). But you won’t find an answer to the runaway question, because conservatives haven’t done the math. So I did it for them.
And the results even shocked me. ...
From 1980 to 2023, the average annualized inflation-adjusted increase in federal outlays was only ...
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NY Times, WaPo Giving Scant Attention to Economic Inequality
But Coverage Will Increase if Trump Enacts More Tax Cuts that Favor the Wealthy
803 Words 12/10/24
By David Demers
Wealth gaps are increasing rapidly in the United States, but the two most powerful and respected print news media organizations are giving very little attention to the social problem.
This is the key finding from a content analysis I conducted of news stories in the archives of the Washington Post and New York Times over the last 25 years. ...
To read more, click here
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I’m a Serf and There’s Nothing I Can Do about it
Two-Thirds of the Profits from the Money We Spend Goes to the Top 10%
1,052 words 12/3/24
By David Demers
When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them, “I’m a serf.”
“You’re a Smurf?” some ask, smirking.
“No, not the cartoon character,” I politely correct. “A serf — s-e-r-f — like the peasants who toiled the land in medieval England or France. I don’t farm, but like my serfer friends of old, most of the money I earn and spend on food, clothing, shelter, transportation and pleasure — two-thirds of it in fact — ends up in the pockets of the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans. They are my lords, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Oh, lordy, lordy,” some respond, shaking their heads. “Another wacky Bernie Sanders.” ...
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Why Sales of Pitchforks Will Soar
Trump’s Victory Is a Bad Sign for Liberals, but Even Worse for the Wealthy
978 words 11/19/24
By David Demers
A lot of journalists and political pundits have been talking about the adverse effects of Trump’s victory for the Democrats and progressives.
But the really big losers will be the wealthy.
This election revealed, for the first time in modern American history, that the working and middle classes have developed “class consciousness” — a term that Karl Marx defined as a state of mind where ordinary people (the proletariat) become aware of how the wealthy are exploiting them. Marx argued that class consciousness was a precursor to revolution.
The current source of this consciousness is perceived financial insecurity (PFI), which is the individual’s perception of their ability to pay their bills and get ahead. A 2024 True Cost of Living Coalition poll found that two-thirds of Americans struggle to pay their bills. Nearly half don't have $500 saved for a rainy day, and 40 percent are unable to plan beyond their next paycheck.
PFI helped elect Trump. ...
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Please distribute to interested individuals • References for statistics cited in this commentary are available in Falling Behind: Why Wealth Gaps Prevent You from Getting Ahead, a draft of which is available above
For Immediate Release 10/21/24
U.S. Must Increase Taxes on Wealthy to Avoid Economic ‘Catastrophe,’ Sociologist Warns
‘America Is Going into Debt to Make the Wealthy Wealthier’
The United States will undergo a major economic crisis within 10 years if it doesn’t increase taxes on the wealthy, a mass media sociologist warns in a new book about wealth gaps. ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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Commentary
Nobel Prize Puts Global Inequality Center Stage
But Failure to Focus on Power and Greed Spoils the Performance
By David Demers (708 words, 10/18/24)
I was delighted but nonplussed when three economists who conduct research on global inequality were chosen to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Delighted because this award turns the spotlight onto the dire problem of rapidly growing wealth and income gaps between and within nations — gaps that threaten democratic processes and people’s health.
I was nonplussed because the focus of the award and the research itself is on the effects of institutions rather than on how political and economic elites use those institutions to promote their own financial interests.
Nobel Prize winners Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James Robinson cogently argue in their research that political and economic institutions — not climate, culture or geography — are primarily responsible for a nation’s wealth or poverty. Nations that have or create inclusive institutions that promote rule of law, equality, and democracy tend to be wealthier than those with extractive institutions, which are controlled by powerful elites who enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else. Inclusive institutions are expected to keep inequality and greed in check.
Although this greed-checking proposition seems to hold when comparing across nations, it often doesn’t apply within nations. In fact, inclusive institutions, like Congress, often create and promote wealth and income gaps.
In the United States, wealth and income gaps stem in large part from federal tax breaks that the wealthy and corporations have orchestrated over the last four decades during the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.
To justify the tax cuts, proponents initially argued that the cuts would stimulate the economy and generate more tax revenues. Economists quickly debunked this supply-side economics theory during Reagan’s presidency, yet the tax cuts kept coming.
Why? .....
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Commentary
Excuse Me, Wealth Gaps Are Not a Sign of Prosperity
Libertarian Institute Known for Spreading Misinformation Is at It Again
(659 words, 10/5/24)
By David Demers
A conservative libertarian institute known for spreading misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic has a new deceptive crusade: promoting the idea that increasing wealth inequality is good because it’s a sign of prosperity.
“[W]ealth inequality is largely a result of general prosperity,” asserts Jason Sorens, a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, in a September 25, 2024, posting on the organization’s website. “Wealth has risen across the generations and across the economic spectrum ... But there’s little evidence the American economic system is fundamentally ‘rigged’ against those without wealth.”
Excuse me, but the claim that inequality leads to prosperity is akin to telling people violent crime is good because it’s a sign of economic progress.
Let there be no mistake: Crime and inequality are both bad, and neither should be normalized.
In fact, social scientific research (click the link to my book above) shows ...
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An Open Letter to Kamala Harris
How Robin Hood Can Help You Win This Election
Dear “Robin” Harris: Total Words: 1,109, 9/20/24
Or would you prefer Kamala “Hood”?
In either case, I’ll explain shortly how Robin Hood can help you win this election.
First, though, I have to say that you rocked at the debate with the Sheriff of Mar-a-Lago (SML). It reminded me of the time that Robin beat the Sheriff of Nottingham in an archery contest. The sheriff threatened to jail Robin. Things don’t change much when it comes to villains, do they?
I especially liked it when you pointed out that SML’s proposed tariffs would cost middle-class families $4,000. My own research shows that Republican tax cuts since 1980, including SML’s $1.7 trillion tax cut in 2017, are largely responsible for today’s massive wealth gaps as well as the skyrocketing national debt.
The debate boosted your numbers in national polls. But you are still running neck-and-neck with SML in all of the swing states, and you can’t win the election if you lose all of those states.
The fact that you have no clear lead in those states is baffling; after all, you beat the tights off SML. Yet his less-than-merry band of followers still think he’s a winner. They obviously have been drinking too much ale, wine, and Kool-Aid.
As a sociologist and former newspaper reporter, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how a convicted felon so far out of step with America’s dominant values, norms and mores could become so popular. Mainstream political elites and the news media historically have pushed extremists like him to the margins. But not this time.
As I see it, this is a case of failing to see the Sherwood Forest for the trees. ...
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Demers is author of Falling Behind: How Wealth Gaps Are Preventing You and Half of America from Getting Ahead, a book that will be published in 2025. He worked as a newspaper reporter and college professor before retiring to spend more time writing. He can be reached at [email protected] or 623-363-4668
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An Open Letter to Wealthy Americans (the Top 10%) Did You Know the Bottom 90% Are Becoming Class Conscious?
Dear rich people: Total words: 908, 9/12/24
Are you having a good time?
Of course you are, and I’m happy for you.
There’s nothing like $3.6 million in assets [the average wealth of the top 10 percent] to brush aside the inconveniences of life, like having to go into debt to pay for food, daycare and medical bills.
And those incredible vacations you take.
Wish I could afford Disney World [which now costs $7,000 for a family of four].
As you probably guessed, I am a member of the bottom 90 percent. There are 225 million of us and about 28 million of you. We have an average of $70,000 in assets, which includes equity in our homes and money in our bank, stock, bond, and retirement accounts. Of course, many of us don’t own a home or have retirement accounts, especially those of us in the bottom 50 percent. Our jobs typically don’t pay enough to cover these luxuries.
Nevertheless, we’re proud of what little we have, because we worked hard for it. And we aren’t prone to complaining, even though 45,000 of us die every year because we can’t afford health care. As I’m sure you know, America is the only industrialized country in the world that fails to provide health care for all of its citizens.
That’s barbaric but not the problem I am writing about here. I want to talk about how you are getting wealthier at much faster rate than the rest of us. ...
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Commentary
Why Trump’s Newest Corporate Tax Cut Plan Is a Bad Idea
By David Demers* (7/2/24)
“I will cut taxes” is the safest promise a political candidate can make before an election.
After all, who doesn’t feel overtaxed?
All Americans, regardless of income, pay about 27 percent of their income in local, state and federal taxes, according to the book The Triumph of Injustice by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman.
The federal income tax is progressive, meaning that the more you make, the more you pay. But the American tax system overall is unprogressive for everyone except billionaires, who pay the lowest overall tax rate (23 percent).
Presidential candidate Donald Trump is now proposing another tax cut for corporations if billionaires contribute more money to his re-election campaign.
Remember his 2017 tax cut, which reduced corporate tax rates from about 35 percent to 21 percent?
That produced a windfall for corporations.
But instead of sharing the wealth with their employees or consumers (cutting prices on goods and services), many corporations bought back their own stock (about $1 trillion), which boosted the share price and, in turn, the value of the investment portfolios of their wealthy executives and stockholders.
Polls show that most Americans know wealth and income gaps are growing.
But they tend to underestimate the gaps and don’t understand what is happening.
The wealthiest 10 percent of Americans currently have an average of $3.5 million in assets. The bottom 50 percent have about $14,000, and the middle classes (the 50 to 90 percent group) have about $140,000.
Since 1950, taxes on the working and middle classes have increased 59 percent, from 17 percent to about 27 percent. Billionaires have seen their taxes decline 67 percent, and the top 10 percent most wealthy have seen their taxes decline 17 percent. In terms of federal taxes, the wealthy are paying about 50 percent less than they did before 1980, according to my estimate. Most of these tax cuts were enacted during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump.
So where is the money coming from to make the wealthy wealthier?
The national debt.
The debt increased from $900 billion in 1980 to $34 trillion today.
America is witnessing the biggest transfer of wealth to the wealthy in history.
And, to be clear, the debt is not coming from too much spending. When controlling for inflation, the average annualized (compounded) increase in federal expenditures since 1980 has been just 2.3 percent.
The problem isn’t spending — it’s revenues. The government isn’t collecting enough tax revenue (currently only about $4.4 trillion per year).
My projections over the next 15 years show that the wealthiest 1 percent will see their wealth double, from about $18 million to $34 million in 2037 (inflation-controlled increases). The 1 percent will have 1,533 times more wealth than the bottom 50 percent ($34 million vs. $20,836).
The super rich (top 1%) will continue to acquire wealthier faster than the rich (top 10%), who in turn will continue to acquire wealth faster than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans, who will become poorer in relative but not absolute terms. Their incomes will increase slightly, but they will get less and less of the total wealth pie. They will continue to fall behind.
It’s not yet clear how much Trump intends to cut corporate taxes if he’s elected.
But if it’s substantial (say from 21% to 15%), the consequences could be catastrophic. As the debt exceeds the Gross Domestic Product, the probability of bankruptcy and dire economic consequences increases. That’s what happened in Iceland in 2008.
America’s debt-to-GDP ratio, currently at 121 percent (100% if you exclude intergovernmental debt), is now greater than the tipping-point in Iceland. The Wharton School estimates that America’s tipping point is 200 percent. My estimates show that this threshold will be reached in 10 years, when the debt is $70 trillion (that assumes things continue on the present course). With additional tax cuts, that tipping point could come sooner.
But even if the debt-to-GDP ratio remains stable, America cannot continue to dole out massive tax breaks to the wealthy. As the debt grows, so does the wealth gap and the slide toward plutocracy.
The money to pay off the debt cannot come from the working- and middle-classes. Polls and research show they are struggling more than ever to pay their bills.
If the wealthy were smart, they would realize that their financial future also is in jeopardy if they don’t give back some of the wealth they obtained from tax cuts that favored them.
But will they?
*Dr. David Demers is author of Falling Behind: Why Wealth Gaps Prevent You from Getting Ahead, which will be published in 2025. He has written two dozen books and worked as a professor of communication and sociology at Washington State University before retiring to spend more time writing books. He lives in Phoenix.
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Commentary
The Future of Wealth Gaps: Economic Bifurcation
The Wealthiest 10 Percent Are Leaving the Rest of Us Behind
1,068 words 8/30/24
By David Demers
In the 2017 documentary “Inequality for All,” President Bill Clinton is shown thanking Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who was standing behind him on the White House grounds, for his service to the country.
The year was 1996, at the end of Clinton's first term in office.
Reich had just resigned from his position partly to spend more time with his family. But that wasn’t entire reason. Reich, an economics professor who had spent much of his life promoting economic equality, was frustrated that administration officials would not reinvest budget surpluses into programs that would have helped reduce economic inequality.
“[T]here wasn’t the political will to do that,” Reich says to the camera. “Bill Clinton did preside over one of the best economies we’ve had in this country in living memory. The wages of most people went up. Poverty actually declined. But we didn’t do enough. We didn’t really alter the underlying trend.”
A short time later, in a heartfelt moment, he says: “I — I do ask myself whether I’ve been a total failure. I’ve been saying much of the same thing for 30 years and some of the trends have grown worse. Inequality has become worse. The danger to the economy and democracy have become worse.”
Reich was right.
So what happens to wealth gaps if America continues down this path?
My projections over the next 15 years show that ...
Click HERE to download a PDF file
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Commentary
Why Aren't Politicians Talking about the Tax Cut Bias Problem? And Why This Could Trigger an Economic Disaster
1,067 Words 8/23/24
By David Demers
There’s a time-honored rule in science.
To solve a problem, identify its main causes, and then take action.
As logical as that seems, policymakers and journalists have failed to heed this maxim when it comes to the problem of wealth and income gaps.
A good example is the five-part series published three years ago in the Washington Post (“Sharing the Wealth ... Examining the Growing Wealth Gap in America — and How to Fix It”). The story mentioned tax cuts several times but failed to identify it as the single most important cause . . .
Click HERE to see the rest of the story
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Commentary
Is the American Dream a Dream?
Increasing Wealth Gaps Are Turning the Dream into a Myth
By David Demers 8/16/24
When I recently posted on Facebook a comment about the massive wealth gap between the richest 10 percent and the bottom 50 percent ($3.5 million vs. $13,000), I received some pushback.
“Life is not equitable,” one poster said.
“In other words, the wealthy have more money than the poor,” another sarcastically replied.
“I’m grateful to have the opportunities to shoot for the 10%,” said a third respondent. “There’s so many of them out there.”
I drew two conclusions from these and other comments. ...
Click HERE to see the rest of the story
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Income Growth Doesn't Always Justify Income Gaps (8/9/24)
Conservatives often argue that gaps in income are justified because real wages of all income groups are increasing.
This argument would hold up better if the relative wages in all income groups were increasing at the same rate.
But they aren't.
Incomes of the wealthy are growing at a much, much faster pace. ...
Click HERE to see the rest of the story
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Wealth Gaps in One Chart (8/3/24)
Critics of economic equality, like conservative Washington Post columnist George F. Will, often argue that wealth gaps are justified because the top 40 percent of Americans pay 82 percent of the taxes.
What he and others fail to point out is that the top 40 percent hold about 94 percent of the nation's wealth. So by this standard, they are actually paying 12 percentage points less than they should be.
But comparing how much top earning groups pay in taxes doesn't really justify or measure wealth gaps. To measure the gaps, you simply need to compare the wealth or incomes of various income groups over time. ...
Click HERE to see the chart
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Commentary
Can America Solve Its Wealth-Gap Problem without Violence?
715 words 7/27/24
By David Demers
The answer is “no,” if history is our sole guide.
That was the major conclusion of a 2017 book titled The Great Leveler by Stanford University history professor Walter Scheidel.
He scoured world history searching for evidence that economic inequality could be reduced substantially through benign political change. He considered land reform, debt relief, economic depressions, democracy, economic development, and education.
No luck. ...
Click here to continue reading
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Commentary
Wealth/Income Gaps Fueling Fascist, Radical-Right Politics
1,440 words with references (click link to see full text and references) 7/23/24
By David Demers
When the Washington Post examined the backgrounds of people arrested for storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021, they found 6 of 10 had financial problems, including bad debts, bankruptcies, evictions, foreclosures, or unpaid taxes.
“I think what you’re finding is more than just economic insecurity but a deep-seated feeling of precarity about their personal situation,” political science professor Cynthia Miller-Idriss told the Post. “And that precarity — combined with a sense of betrayal or anger that someone is taking something away — mobilized a lot of people that day.”
Political science professor Tess Wise also found a lot of anger when she interviewed 48 people who had gone through Chapter 13 bankruptcies. Most did not blame the government, the tax system, or America’s lack of social safety net.
“Instead, they blamed the ‘entitlement’ of others for ruining things for ‘hardworking Americans,’” Wise wrote. “More often than not, I found the ‘entitled’ Americans they had in mind were members of minority groups.”
These findings are troubling, because more than six of ten Americans currently struggle to pay their bills and, thus, are vulnerable to radical right-wing or fascist political parties or movements. To attract followers, these parties often create scapegoats out of undocumented immigrants and welfare recipients.
But would these movements lose support if fewer Americans were struggling financially? ...
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Commentary
It’s the Tax Cuts, Stupid!
Critics of the Burgeoning National Debt Just Don’t Get It
598 words 7/15/24
By David Demers
For decades critics of the growing national debt (now at $34 trillion) have been spewing out the wrong reasons for and causes of the debt.
Their most popular theory is that “government is spending too much.”
But, after controlling for inflation, federal expenditures have only increased at a average annualized rate of 2.3 percent since 1980. This rate of increase even includes the $6.2 trillion spent to combat the effects of the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic.
Another popular theory is what I call “debt creep.” ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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Commentary 7/9/24
The National Debt Stems from an Unwillingness to Tax the Wealthy, not Increased Spending
By David Demers*
Nothing is certain but death and taxes.
That idiom is only half true, of course.
Some Americans refuse to pay taxes. And some don't have to pay federal income taxes, because their incomes are too low or because they have high incomes and know how to reduce their tax burden through loans on business assets or through trust accounts.
But there's one other thing no citizen in America can escape.
Debt. ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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Commentary 7/11/24
Did Greed Create America’s Massive Wealth Gaps?
By David Demers*
When President Ronald Reagan peddled his 1981 tax cut bill to the American people, he wasn’t completely truthful.
“Our bill calls for a 5-percent reduction in the income tax rates by October 1st, a 10-percent reduction beginning July 1st, 1982, and another 10-percent cut a year later, a 25-percent total reduction over three years,” he said on July 27, 1981.
Those statistics represented the average cuts for all Americans.
What he failed to mention is that the earned income tax reduction for wealthy Americans was three times bigger. The top tax bracket rate was cut from 70 percent to 50 percent, a 29-percent reduction. ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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Commentary 7/8/24
Ronald Reagan’s Legacy to America: Massive Wealth Gaps
By David Demers
Seventy-seven-year-old President Ronald Reagan warmed up his audience with a joke about his age and Christopher Columbus.
"When Columbus discovered America, I can't believe that he got as warm a reception as you've given me. And I doubt there was a delicious plate of baked ziti waiting for him, either. Now, contrary to what you may have heard, however, I was not with Columbus on that trip."
The congenial audience roared. ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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For Immediate Release 6/24/24
U.S. Faces Economic ‘Catastrophe’ If it Fails
to Increase Taxes on Wealthy, Sociologist Warns
‘America Is Going into Debt to Make the Wealthy Wealthier’
The United States will undergo a major economic crisis within 10 years if it doesn’t increase taxes on the wealthy, a sociologist warns in a new book about wealth gaps. ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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Commentary 7/5/24
Why the Working and Middle Classes Need a Major Tax Cut
By David Demers*
During the early 1950s, my father worked as a printer but his modest salary was enough to support his family of five, buy a new car every two years, and build a 3-bedroom home, which only cost $4,000.
Local, state and federal taxes were low on the working class back then, about 17 percent.
Our family was living the American Dream. ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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For Immediate Release 7/2/24
Wealth Gaps Will Soar If Taxes Remain the Same, Sociologist Says
In the 2017 documentary “Inequality for All,” President Bill Clinton is shown thanking Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who was standing behind him on the White House grounds, for his service to the country.
The year was 1996, at the end of Clinton’s first term in office. ...
Click here to continue reading news release
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