NYT 12. Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind, Reading for June 29th

Today, realization of an equal society is still difficult, and rather increasing obstacle that results in inequality between wealthy people and the poor by government policy is made. According to David Cay Johnston in “Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind”, today, very few rich class of people get most of wealth in the nation while majority of middle and working class people is in the opposite status; this concentration of wealth for certain class inevitably causes inequality in a society: “The share of the nation’s income earned by the taxpayers in the top 0.1 percent has more than doubled since the 1970s, and in the year 2000 exceeded 10 percent, a level last seen in the 1920s.” (184) This condition that is favorable for few wealthy people is appeared through concentration of income and “the net worth of American households” for wealthy people. (183) The factor that causes above situation is through the policy of the government like “tax cuts” (183). The reason is that tax cuts cause wealthy people have opportunity for accumulating much wealth by eventually increasing inequality between wealthy and the poor: “Under the recent tax cuts, the richest taxpayers get the largest break, in dollars and in the drop in their share of all federal taxed paid. That is because those taxpayers benefit most from lower taxes on dividends and investment gains…” (190). As well as tax cuts, “alternative minimum tax” also came to favorable policy of the government for wealthy people because “this tax, the successor to one enacted in 1969 to make sure the wealthiest Americans could not use legal loopholes to live tax-free, has never been adjusted for inflation.” (187) Thus, invisibly, the government helps accumulation of much wealth of wealthy people by depriving opportunity to accumulate wealth for the middle and working people. In this obstacle, it will be hard to decrease social inequality between classes, and institutional tool from the government to decrease this gap is needed to prevent further social problems.