👉Condemned to plutocracy? The relentless rise of #US inequality👈

(2/n)

What gargantuan conceptual abyss lies between #LBJ's address at the #UniversityOfMichigan in 1964 + the #MAGA ideology as embodied in the #OneBigBeautifulBill of 2025!--#LyndonBJohnson had a much more egalitarian society for 2014 in mind:

"...in your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the #GreatSociety.

The #GreatSociety rests on abundance...

@TheGuardian

#UShistory

(3/n)

...and liberty for all.
👉It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning.👈

The #GreatSociety is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs...

#UShistory

(4/n)

...of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.

👉It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.👈

But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a...

@TheGuardian

#UShistory #Economics

(5/n)

...final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.

So I want to talk to you today about 👉three places where we begin to build the #GreatSociety--in our cities, in our countryside, and in our classrooms.👈

Many of you will live to see the day, perhaps 50 years from now,..."2)

2)
presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/…

@TheGuardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(6/n)

Despite such grand visions for its future, in retrospect, #America’s #History of combating inequality is rather grim.

Even #Obama’s track record as the #UnitedStates’s most committed equalizer in over half a century [since #LyndonBJohnson’s "Great Society, see above" 2),] 👉underscores the ultimate lack of interest of the nation’s political coalitions in bringing about a more equitable distribution of the fruits of...

1)
founders.archives.gov/document…

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(7/n)

...prosperity...."👈

Let's have a brief review of the #US' 20th century #IncomeTaxRate:

"👉From 1918 through 1981 (easy to remember ;)) the marginal rate in the #US varied between 70% and 94% percent.👈

[#MarginalTaxRate: the percentage of your income you must pay to the #Treasury on the last dollar you earn in progressive tax systems.]

And then, #Reagonomics and #TEFRA happened, the Tax Equity and #Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982.

👉It...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(8/n)

...reduced the marginal #tax rate from 70% to just 50%. In 1988, #RonaldReagan and the #GOP slashed it even more to just 28%.👈

The only time in post-WWI #US history that the #MaginalIncomeTaxRate was even lower for a few years, had been in 1925 (25%), which proved to be unsustainable.

After that, it went back up to 39% and stands now at 37%..."

[For a more detailed discussion, see:
mastodon.social/@HistoPol/1099…]

"As #BarackObama’s...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(9/n)

...presidency was coming to a close, [...] strides his administration had made to curb the nation’s exorbitant income inequality in 👉“the largest investments in reducing inequality since the #GreatSociety”.👈

Indeed, by the end of 2016, 👉taxes and transfers cut the share of income accruing to the richest 1% of households by just over a fifth...more than under any government since at least #JimmyCarter’s.👈

They...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(10/n)

...raised the slice of income going to the poorest fifth from 3.9% to 7.9%, the highest share since at least 1979."

And after #Reagan, #Trump I happened:

"His Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 👉2017 offered massive tax cuts to #Americans in the upper percentiles of income.👈

By the end of his first presidency, the share of income accruing to the richest 1% of households – after #Taxes...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(11/n)

...and transfers – had drifted back up to 13.2%, from 12.5% the year #Obama left office.

The $2.2tn Cares Act that #Trump signed into law as a response to the economic shock from the #Covid pandemic did improve the lot of the poor.

👉In 2020, the share of national income accruing to the poorest fifth of households reached a multi-decade high of 8.2%.👈

Yet by 2022, under #JoeBiden...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(12/n)

...and the last year for which the #CBO has crunched data, it had dipped to 7.4%."

So, #Biden's presidency was not so democratic based on #LBJ's #GreatSociety vision, as one might have expected, due to the reduction in "egalitarian" wealth transfers.

"According to the #CBO, the legislation reduced the annual income of the poorest tenth of households by 3.1% on average – about $1,200 – while boosting the income of...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(14/n)

.. .households in the top decile by 2.6%, a cool $13,600. 👉The [income] #Tax blow came on top of tariffs that took a disproportionately large bite from the disposable income of the working class."👈

👉It is crucial to understand that..."the lopsided distribution of prosperity is a feature of #American society that has persisted across administrations, whether Democratic or Republican." 👈 Of cannot be attributed to #Biden or...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(15/n)

...#Trump only.

In #Economics, "... the #Gini index [#GiniCoefficien] is a common measure of inequality. It ranges from zero, when income is distributed equally, to one when a single individual takes all. 👉#America’s Gini is among the highest in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [#OECD counties!].
What’s most concerning, though, is that 👉#Taxes and transfers have done less to reduce inequality in the #US than in...

@guardian

#UShistory #Economics #Equality

(16/n)

... almost every other country in the #OECD."

"Gospel of Wealth"?
Well, only for an elite few:

[*TBC*]