Robert Reich
Several of you have asked: What would a strategy designed to reverse widening inequality look like? For starters, it would focus on raising the productivity of all Americans through better education — including early-childhood and near-free higher education, community college, and world-class technical schools.
Low-wage service workers would be unionized, giving them bargaining power to get higher wages. The minimum wage would be half the median wage, and the Earned Income Tax Credit would be expanded.
The highest effective marginal tax would be 50 percent for both ordinary income and capital gains. The Social Security tax would be eliminated on the first $15,000 of income, and the shortfall made up by raising the cap on income subject to it.
Companies would be required to give their workers shares of stock and more voice in decision making. And they’d have to spend at least 2% of their earnings upgrading the skills of their lower-wage workers. Corporations receiving government R&D funding would have to do their R&D in the U.S. No corporation would be allowed to deduct from taxes the cost of executive pay in excess of 100 times the pay of their average employees or that of their contractors. And they’d be from giving tax-free benefits to executives without providing them to all employees.
Finally, the biggest banks would be broken up, and the Glass-Steagall Act resurrected.
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