EC - Johnston's "Richest are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind"

David Cay Johnston's "Richest are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind" highlights a shocking perspective on the way institutional factors (tax breaks) have allowed the top 0.1 percent of income earners to more than double their average income over the past twenty years. It is interesting to evaluate Johnston's main claim - tax cuts that benefited the richest of the rich more than any other income group - against some of our other recent readings.

First, this NYT article solidifies the points made by Fischer et al in "Inequality by Design." Some of the invisible policies mentioned in Fischer's article describes how the government subsidizes the wealthy while having detrimental effects on those at the lower end of the income spectrum. Fischer et al claim that tax breaks, subsidies, free regulatory services, special exemptions, and deductions in tax codes have maintained the livelihoods of the wealthy, making the highest earnest pay the least. Furthermore, the "soak the middle" effects of the Reagan administration as well as "tax simplification" have increased tax burden on the middle class while decreasing taxes on the wealthy.

Second, Johnston’s article also brings what Erik Olin Wright claims in his latter part of “Logics of Class Analysis.” Among Wright’s three causal mechanisms of class processes – individual attributes & life conditions, opportunity hoarding, and exploitation & domination – we can see that the case of tax cuts benefits the hyper-rich through Wright’s second mechanism. Within opportunity hoarding, certain social closures form among social positions, leading to unequally advantaged and disadvantaged locations within market relations. Although every income group does technically receive a tax return, Johnston’s article truly represents how Bush’s tax cuts, the alternative minimum tax, and others have privileged the hyper-rich, while leaving the other 99.9 percent of Americans at the bottom.