Next week the Graduate Center will host an event with Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, who will present a blueprint for tax reform that may allow a more democratic and equal system to prevail, followed by a panel discussion.
In the US, income inequality has been on the rise for decades. No other rich democracy records higher levels of inequality, both in terms and income and wealth. A new book “The Triumph of Injustice” by economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman now shows that after the 2017 tax reform, the richest 400 families in the US pay taxes at a lower tax rate than the middle class. This is a problematic development as the tax system in the US is supposed to be progressive. In a progressive system, tax rates increase for higher income brackets. Progressive income taxation and redistribution form part of the historic compromise between capital and democracy.
“In 2018, for the first time in the last hundred years, the top 400 richest Americans have paid lower tax rates than the working class,” the authors write. “This looks like the tax system of a plutocracy.” The richest individuals derive the largest share of their income from capital. This income source is taxed a lower rates than income derived from labor. This leads to the richest families being taxed at lower rates than the typical middle class family.
Join us for the event, panel and discussion on Wednesday October 23, from 6:30 pm – 7:45 pm, with Lily Batchelder, NYU law professor and former deputy director of President Obama’s National Economic Council, and Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize–winning economist, New York Times columnist, and distinguished professor at The Graduate Center and Janet Gornick, professor of political science and sociology and director of the Stone Center at the GC.
More information here or here.
Can’t attend in person? Watch the livestream.