Bill,
The Times Op-Ed page (I know, your favorite), ran a piece comparing the current plutocracy (at our level of professional success we need not apply) to the 15th century Venetian elite, whose decline (over the next 150 years!) the author argues, serves as a warning of what happens when advancement to the top of the socioeconomic ladder is choked off by those who are already perched there. You'll be happy to know that I found her arguments less than compelling, to say the least. While I have some sympathy with the notion that marginal tax rates do matter (and I wouldn't at all mind seeing them higher), I can't imagine that they tell the whole story of the growing threat to middle class America. Is it really that the Richy Riches are doing so much better, or simply that so many of us are doing so much worse? Does the writer, a British journalist, really believe that raising taxes on the rich or rejiggering the wealth distribution machine in some other way will alter the increasing social disorganization that threatens our way of life, or return the rate of economic mobility to where it was before?
I don't know the answer, but simple redistribution without an increase in opportunity can't be it. Neither, will shamelessly fawning all over the super rich in the hopes they'll somehow rescue us do the trick.
Eli
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