Today we turn to policies where widening inequality is directly implicated. The first and most obvious (and most politically contentious) involves taxing higher-income people and redistributing to lower-income people. My goal today is to get students to reexamine their assumptions, both about how the system of taxing and redistributing actually works (or doesn’t) and about the practical consequences.

The questions I’ll be focusing on are: Should the top marginal tax rate be raised? Should wealth be taxed? In what ways is income now redistributed? To what extent is it redistributed upward, from the poor or the lower middle to the upper middle and the rich? What’s the difference between redistribution policies that focus on taxes and those that focus on the beneficiaries of government programs financed by taxes?

Recommended readings (just click on the link):

• Jesse Eisinger et al., “The Secret IRS Files,” ProPublica, June 8, 2021

• Anu Partanen, “What Americans Don’t Get About Nordic Countries,” The Atlantic, March 16, 2016

• Chye-Ching Huang and Roderick Taylor, “How the Federal Tax Code Can Better Advance Racial Equity,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 25, 2019

• Thomas Piketty, “Capital in the 21st Century,” Chapters 14-15