Dec 02 2015
Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice
GUEST: Les Leopold, co-founder and Director of the Labor Institute in New York City and author of the award-winning biography, The Man Who Hated Work and Loved Labor: The Life and Times of Tony Mazzocchi.
In our last story with economist Chuck Collins, we heard the latest statistics on how absurdly rich the US’s wealthiest people are. Several questions arise from that: do we realize in our day-to-day lives just how unequal a society we live in? And, what are we going to do about it?
One Response to “Runaway Inequality: An Activist’s Guide to Economic Justice”
level the playing field, wealth inequality will keep growing, taxation of wealth tax on inheritance, annual wealth tax, reverse the concentration of wealth
Collins and Leopold are knocking on the right dor without a doubt but neither one speaks of or seems to know anything about what unearned income known to economists as “economic rent”. Unearned income is estimated to be 40+% of GNP and is the historical the root cause for the disparity of wealth. All economists agree that taxing economic rent causes no unintended economic results and many of them agree that shifting taxation off of earned incomes from labor and real investment of unmonopolized capital in the real economy where real gods and services are produced and provided to unearned incomes is the best possible tax policy.
Since neither Collins or Leopold speak of this a valid solution to the disparity of wealth and poverty I suggest that they are irresponsible. Some of the things they mention are OK but none of them begin to address the more fundamental systemic problem of the theft of wealth and incomes built into our property laws, land tenure policies and our corrupt tax policies where earned incomes are taxed to prevent taxation of unearned incomes.
Collins mention of taxation of inheritances makes some sense but taxation starting with property taxation of land values and other sources of unearned income like patents, copyrights, monopoly of capital, government subsidies, interest charged by banks on money they create out of thin air to name a few would intercept income and wealth monopoly before it can be accumulated.
I just want to make it clear that failure to make the distinction between earned and unearned incomes and failing to speak of shifting taxation away from earned incomes onto unearned incomes is completely irresponsible. It leaves the most fundamental root cause of the failure of capitalism in place and puts attention on peripheral issues that the wealth could care less about. To speak of it addresses with a concrete solution the premier way to level the playing field, a proven way to eliminate wealth inequality, is a way to tax wealth directly, and reverse the movement toward concentration of wealth that Collins mentions.