Here in "Actually, the 1 Percent Are Still The Problem".
Actually, the Reagan 1986 tax reform was the problem, but Jordan Weissmann never mentions it.
This despite his wonderful graph of the top 10% over time showing the 1% take-off after the reform. When it becomes easier for the already rich to take high incomes the ordinary way, like everyone else, because of low top marginal rates, less money ends up getting plowed back into productive purposes like it used to before 1986.
We keep believing the myth that "the rich are different than you and me", but they're not. They're as indolent, undisciplined and blinkered as any middle class family leveraged to the hilt which believes it deserves a house a little larger than it can afford, two car payments, the weekly fine dinner out and the expensive annual winter vacation.
The 1% aren't the problem. You will have them always with you, by definition. The problem is human nature, and government's failure to correct for it.
Say what you will about "Christian" belief, previously it at least curbed the 1%'s enthusiasm, with the stick of high marginal income tax rates and the carrot of low long term capital gains taxes.
