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1)Amazing to see billionaires try to say that allowing huge inequality is "capitalism," while returning to US tax rates under Eisenhower and Nixon is "socialism." Utter nonsense! But dangerous because it is textbook example of "selfish elites."
2) What matters is not the level of taxation, but how US spends its revenues. In the 1950s, we created world-class airports, interstate freeways, and mass transit. All that is now aging and creaking, both embarrassing and a drag on the US economy.
3) Add that US healthcare is the world's most expensive (because it's run for profit) and paid for by private corporations who have to keep employment and wages down to pay for it, and it's no wonder average Americans feel cheated out of their nation's prosperity and are angry.
4) America needs a rejuvenation. Probably will take another major crisis to spur this. But a new "progressive" agenda has potential to spread prosperity by investing in world-class infrastructure (high-speed rail, replacing broken-down subways & stations, roads & bridges).
5) Americans need to demand that $100 million + apartments in NY, Miami, SF, & LA are NOT the way to make America great again! We need taxes on wealth and extreme high incomes to restore equality, opportunity, and put resources to work to rebuild the country and invest in people
It's a simple agenda, and will be wildly popular if explained properly. The struggle will be to deal with the bile and distortion that will be poured on by those seeking to protect unlimited concentration of private wealth.
The irony is that because of US and global population changes, if things go on the super-wealthy will be hurt by bond defaults as wealth concentration and aging undermines the ability of state and federal governments to meet their obligations and service their debts.
Even the wealthy will benefit in the long run from a general rebuilding of the foundations of American prosperity. Keeping taxes low so that the rich can compete in building ever greater monuments to their own wealth leads to an Easter Island outcome -- we all perish.
