The debate over “tax reform” has, by design, a kind of bloodless technocratic sound to it. But lurking behind the euphemism and the sometimes-arcane details is a big debate about inequality, political power, and the nature of economic growth.
It’s no accident that by 2016 the richest 1 percent of the population had earned 24 percent of the income and held 39 percent of wealth or that household incomes at the middle are flat and living standards for the poor or falling. A new wave of research builds a persuasive case that tax cuts passed in the 1980s and 2000s were key drivers of this disparity.
