Renewing Democracy

In the midst of our country’s current multi-crisis situation we are losing track of what people want and need the most, which is recognition as valid human beings. Changes in laws or regulations alone have not – and cannot – eliminate our culture of divisiveness. Since the Civil War we have enacted numerous new laws – including three amendments to the Constitution and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968. There have been a series demonstrations that go back to the 1963 March on Washington – some violent and some peaceful. But we have seen only incremental changes in the way that minorities are treated in our country, including by those who have been sworn to uphold our laws equally.  Although we need new laws to curb the abuses of police, laws don’t change instinctive human behavior to see some people as dangerous or evil based on their color or background. Regulations don’t make people respect each other. When we see others only as members of their groups we fail to re...

The current pandemic has laid bare the extreme inequality in our society, including the shortage of food, health care, and other basic resources for many citizens who live paycheck to paycheck. Doing something about this will require us to turn to the complex and prosaic subject of tax reform. In their new book, The Triumph of Injustice (W.W. Norton & Co. 2019) , Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, Berkeley professors and former advisors to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, make a strong case for why the rich should be taxed way more than the US is currently doing, and how that can be done. Here are four big take-aways:   Taxing the Rich More Makes Good Economic Sense Although it may seem intuitively obvious that taxing the rich a lot more will mean a lot more money flowing into government coffers, those on the right have argued that raising taxes on the rich is a bad idea, because it will discourage productive economic activity among the “job creators” and therefore lead to a loss...