Tuesday, June 26, 2018
On Leadership:
Michelle Goldberg: We Have a Crisis of Democracy, Not Manners
"...I’m somewhat agnostic on the question of whether publicly rebuking Trump collaborators is tactically smart. It stokes their own sense of victimization, which they feed on. It may alienate some persuadable voters, though this is just a guess. (As we saw in the indignant media reaction to Michelle Wolf’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner routine, some pundits project their own concern with Beltway decorum onto swing voters, who generally pay less attention to the news than partisans.)
On the other hand, there’s a moral and psychic cost to participating in the fiction that people who work for Trump are in any sense public servants. I don’t blame staff members at the Virginia restaurant, the Red Hen, for not wanting to help Sanders unwind after a hard week of lying to the public about mass child abuse. Particularly when Sanders’s own administration is fighting to let private businesses discriminate against gay people, who, unlike mendacious press secretaries, are a protected class under many civil rights laws.
Whether or not you think public shaming should be happening, it’s important to understand why it’s happening. It’s less a result of a breakdown in civility than a breakdown of democracy. Though it’s tiresome to repeat it, Donald Trump eked out his minority victory with help from a hostile foreign power. He has ruled exclusively for his vengeful supporters, who love the way he terrifies, outrages and humiliates their fellow citizens. Trump installed the right-wing Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from Barack Obama. Gorsuch, in turn, has been the fifth vote in decisions on voter roll purges and, on Monday, racial gerrymandering that will further entrench minority rule.
All over the country, Republican members of Congress have consistently refused to so much as meet with many of the scared, furious citizens they ostensibly represent. A great many of these citizens are working tirelessly to take at least one house of Congress in the midterms — which will require substantially more than 50 percent of total votes, given structural Republican advantages — so that the country’s anti-Trump majority will have some voice in the federal government.
But unless and until that happens, millions and millions of Americans watch helplessly as the president cages children, dehumanizes immigrants, spurns other democracies, guts health care protections, uses his office to enrich himself and turns public life into a deranged phantasmagoria with his incontinent flood of lies. The civility police might point out that many conservatives hated Obama just as much, but that only demonstrates the limits of content-neutral analysis. The right’s revulsion against a black president targeted by birther conspiracy theories is not the same as the left’s revulsion against a racist president who spread birther conspiracy theories.
Faced with the unceasing cruelty and degradation of the Trump presidency, liberals have not taken to marching around in public with assault weapons and threatening civil war. I know of no left-wing publication that has followed the example of the right-wing Federalist and run quasi-pornographic fantasies about murdering political enemies. (“Close your eyes and imagine holding someone’s scalp in your hands,” began a recent Federalist article.) Unlike Trump, no Democratic politician I’m aware of has urged his or her followers to beat up opposing demonstrators.
Instead, some progressive celebrities have said some bad words, and some people have treated administration officials with the sort of public opprobrium due members of any other white nationalist organization. Liberals are using their cultural power against the right because it’s the only power they have left, and people have a desperate need to say, and to hear others say, that what is happening in this country is intolerable.
Sometimes, their strategies may be poorly conceived. But there’s an abusive sort of victim-blaming in demanding that progressives single-handedly uphold civility, lest the right become even more uncivil in response. As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill."
Anthony Piel: Free Speech, Falsehood and the Law of Defamation
Part 1 - Responsibility of the Electronic Media
In April 2018, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg made a commendable appearance before the US Congress testifying about the role and intentions of Facebook in the light of the hacking and misuse of cyber communications technologies and social media to skew the 2016 US elections and undermine the democratic process in America. Facebook had been raided for personal information on more than 87 million unsuspecting users.
Zuckerberg explained that the whole point of Facebook was to facilitate open communication among users, in short, the exercise of "free speech." Under pressure from members of Congress, Zuckerberg outlined efforts that Facebook would try to make in future to screen out fake accounts, "trolls" and "bots," and purveyors of falsehood. He took personal and corporate responsibility for the past, and promised to make every effort to prevent such abuses in the future.
Most Americans and members of Congress have welcomed Zuckerberg's assurances , but rather little has been said about the implications under the US Constitution of requiring an electronic communications company, the media or "free" press to censor or control the source and content of "speech." For Americans, the First Amendment guarantee of "freedom of speech or of the press" is sacred text. However, historical study of the origins of "Constitutionally protected free speech" suggests that the framers' original intent was to to protect the right of all persons to express honest belief, opinion and truth, but NOT to protect known falsehood, hate speech or the defamation of others.
Although victims of defamation in the US generally have legal recourse against libel and slander, most jurisdictions do not extend such right of self-defense in the case of "public persons," such as "celebrities" and political figures. The idea of this exclusion is to allow for "robust" debate in the public domain. But the effect of that exception in modern times can be devastating, particularly for political candidates who are victims of falsehood and defamation.
Zuckerberg explained to Congress that the whole point of Facebook and other "social media" communications companies was to facilitate open, free communication among users. What most of us, including Zuckerberg himself, totally underestimated was the vulnerability of "social media" communication to hacking, theft or misuse of information, invasion of personal privacy and promulgation of falsehood, defamation, hate speech and "fake news," not only by home-grown wrong-doers, but also by hostile foreign agents and regimes. How bad can it get ? Here's one example.
Putin's Russia by all accounts used Cambridge Analytica and Wikileaks to seed our social media with an utterly false story, amplified in cyberspace by a handful of venal individuals on the "Radical Right" (including the son of Michael Flynn) to the effect that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex slavery ring out of a pizza joint near Washington D.C. This "Pizzagate" allegation was so ridiculous as to be patently false, yet as events turned out, some 25 percent of voters believed the falsehood, because they wanted to, and it led to the shooting of an innocent employee at the pizza joint. Overall, Russian meddling had a tremendous effect on a large segment of the voting public. As some cynics have concluded, the real winner of the 2016 US Presidential election was Vladimir Putin.
Early in the history of American jurisprudence, our courts of law and legislatures followed the English "Common Law" of "defamation" (literally character assassination), both "libel" (written) and "slander" (spoken words). Depending on jurisdiction, the ill-intended defamer could be sued under civil law, or criminal law, or both. It was early recognized that "Truth is an absolute defense to libel." (The seeming oxymoron "The greater the truth the greater the libel," simply meant it is more offensive to write something damaging and true about someone than it is to tell a damaging lie.). In any case, the key question is whether the defamer knew, or had obvious reason to know, that the allegation was false.
Against this background, what we and Congress have now effectively done is to impose on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the entire cyber-electronic communications world of Instagram, Tweet and others, responsibility for policing what millions of users may write or say, even the photos they may send, to detect and weed-out falsehood and calumny. Yet, at the same time, we continue to allow "yellow journal" tabloid publishers, who mostly originate what they print, to get away with virtual character assassination - full-blown defamation. High on the list of irresponsible tabloid publishers is Rupert Murdoch's empire which includes Fox News, the National Enquirer and the New York Post, just to scratch the surface.
Part 2 - The irresponsibility of the tabloid press
The other day going through the Stop & Shop grocery check-out line, I picked up two issues of the Globe weekly magazine, published by American Media Inc., formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch. The tabloid seemed to have two deliberate intentions: (1) to defame the Royal family of Britain, and (2) to defame liberal democrats in the USA.
If no one could possibly believe the Globe allegations, or if everyone considered them as merely a joke, that would be one thing. But we know from bitter experience that there is a sizable, and presumably uninformed and gullible segment of the voting public that willfully swallows the bait. Why ? Because they want to. These are the very ones Donald Trump, in an unguarded moment, characterized as "the stupidest people in America." Was he right ? Did they turn the 2016 election ?
The lead article in the first Globe weekly magazine blazed out: "Queen HATES Harry's Bride !" Then it added: "Elizabeth humiliates Meghan." The evidence? The Globe asserts that Queen Elizabeth sent a "terse letter" to Parliament saying she was "not happy" with the union. (Of course, no such letter was sent.) The second Globe magazine follows this up with the headline: "Kate and Meghan HATE each other." (All objective evidence points to their friendship.)
Then comes the Globe's "shocking news." The headline runs: "Charles' Four Secret Children." The implication is scandalous philandering by the Prince, first in line for the British throne. Again, no actual evidence or truth to it. Why ? To what end? To titillate the readership ? Or bring down the monarchy ?
Then the Globe turns its venom on "liberal" Americans, like George Clooney. But the banner headline is devoted to Barack and Michelle Obama: " Michelle Throws Barack Under the Bus ! " The Globe then explains: "Having suffered for too long with her husband's infidelities, Michelle Obama is writing a book about Obama and his numerous 'other' women." Extra juicy, the book describes an "explosive fight" during a Hawaiian vacation where Michelle first learned that "the Secret Service had been hiding Barack's infidelities."
No matter that Barack and Michelle are a virtual American icon of fidelity in marriage, and as responsible parents of two fine young daughters. So, what's the point ? What's the Globe's motive ? Is it just to titillate ? Is it to undermine American family values ? Is it to detract attention from President Trump's own behavior ? Is it to convince a gullible segment of the US voting public that all US Presidents are philandering adulterers, so don't pay attention to the current allegations about the sitting President ? Or is it defamation for the fun of it ?
Not content with that calumny, the Globe goes on to "break the news" that Michelle Obama is being paid $ 15 million for a "tell-all" book "set to expose cheating and dirty tricks with the crooked Clintons." Guess where the word "crooked" comes from. But why ? Does the Globe want to vilify any and all Democrats ? Is the Globe still fighting the long-past 2016 US Presidential election ? Does the Globe want to distract public attention from all the more plausible allegations concerning the Trump/Kushner organizations, money laundering, the "Russia connection," and possible obstruction of justice ? In any event, the alleged book publication date predicted by the Globe is now past. Still no book. Nor would Michelle ever write such a thing about Hillary and Bill Clinton.
The Globe has done great disservice, and continues to do so, to Great Britain and to the United States, not to mention to all of civilization. The time has come to ask whether the tabloid press should not be subjected to the same rules of decency we are asking of Facebook and the rest of the cyber-electronic communications industry. Why do we hold Zuckerberg's feet to the fire, while we let Murdoch run away free ? Shouldn't we reconsider the exception from the laws against defamation as concerns "public persons ? Isn't it time to clean up our politically motivated discourse ?
Yes, it's high time to act. With full respect for the Constitutional rights of free speech and free press, the tabloid publishers have to be held accountable for the truth and decency of what they write, receive and publish, like any other citizen or agency. They must be prosecuted for false reporting of what they know, or have clear reason to know, is false or defamatory. No exceptions, no pardons, no immunities. The best way to do this is by federal and state legislation to open our courts of law to hearing lawsuits by injured parties under both civil and criminal law against all purveyors of damaging falsehood and defamation.
The result will be a more decent American society, cleaner elections and a return to the original intent, ideals and principles of the founders of our nation. If we want to "Make America Great Again," this is one way to do it."
Anthony Piel: Wealth Disparity versus Genuine Tax Fairness Reform
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the compensation of CEOs at the wealthiest US corporations has been rising at more than 30 percent each year, while average worker pay has been increasing at a mere 0.15 percent. Meanwhile, the actual purchasing power of the US dollar (not to be confused with the so-called CPI index) has been declining at an average rate of 3.5 percent per annum, which more than wipes out the worker's 0.15 percent. The New York Times reports that, as a result, the richest 1 % now owns 90 % of the total wealth in the US.
The principal cause of this disparity, in addition to business laws and practices engineered by the wealthiest among us, is the unfairness that they have shrewdly and deliberately built into a "rigged" US tax code and practice. Naturally, a number of would-be tax reformers have proposed varius ways of raising income tax rates on the highest earners. These offer only partial solutions because of the observed fact that most multi-millionaires and billionaires do NOT report all their income much less their wealth gain from year to year.
The way to measure tax inequity is not by comparing what income the magnates report to the IRS, but rather by looking at what they don't report (and thus "avoid" or "evade" paying any tax at all). From this can be calculated what is called the effective tax rate actually paid. A recent multi-year independent study tracking down the income and wealth gain of US billionaires (even to their off-shore tax haven accounts) found that while some billionaires actually do pay all taxes due, the overwhelming number (95%) do not, such that, taken together, the average US billionaire pays an effective tax rate of only 4.2 % (while his secretary, if he has one, pays over 12 % or nearly three times that of her boss).
An example of the "rigged" tax system is the infamous "depreciation allowance" which allows a would-be real estate "investor" or "developer," having borrowed from banks and lured in other "investors," to put in a small amount of his own money, to build a casino, hotel or tower dedicated to himself, and then year after year take high rates of "depreciation deductions" that eventually pay back his original investment, as if the value of the property had declined, when in fact the value of the property had increased.
What this means is that it is not enough to increase the US tax rates on the wealthiest "elites." The plutocrats will never pay those rates on their income and wealth gain. What is needed is genuine, non-partisan tax system reform, for the sake of fairness to all Americans, beginning with an intensive review of ALL tax loopholes" and abolition of all those that do not serve fairness and the "common good." If these reforms could be implemented, we could consider a nearly flat tax rate of 10 - 15 % for all Americans, which would instantly balance our federal and state budgets. It's a win-win solution - but only if we have the political will to do the job."
Michelle Goldberg: We Have a Crisis of Democracy, Not Manners
"...I’m somewhat agnostic on the question of whether publicly rebuking Trump collaborators is tactically smart. It stokes their own sense of victimization, which they feed on. It may alienate some persuadable voters, though this is just a guess. (As we saw in the indignant media reaction to Michelle Wolf’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner routine, some pundits project their own concern with Beltway decorum onto swing voters, who generally pay less attention to the news than partisans.)
On the other hand, there’s a moral and psychic cost to participating in the fiction that people who work for Trump are in any sense public servants. I don’t blame staff members at the Virginia restaurant, the Red Hen, for not wanting to help Sanders unwind after a hard week of lying to the public about mass child abuse. Particularly when Sanders’s own administration is fighting to let private businesses discriminate against gay people, who, unlike mendacious press secretaries, are a protected class under many civil rights laws.
Whether or not you think public shaming should be happening, it’s important to understand why it’s happening. It’s less a result of a breakdown in civility than a breakdown of democracy. Though it’s tiresome to repeat it, Donald Trump eked out his minority victory with help from a hostile foreign power. He has ruled exclusively for his vengeful supporters, who love the way he terrifies, outrages and humiliates their fellow citizens. Trump installed the right-wing Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court seat that Republicans stole from Barack Obama. Gorsuch, in turn, has been the fifth vote in decisions on voter roll purges and, on Monday, racial gerrymandering that will further entrench minority rule.
All over the country, Republican members of Congress have consistently refused to so much as meet with many of the scared, furious citizens they ostensibly represent. A great many of these citizens are working tirelessly to take at least one house of Congress in the midterms — which will require substantially more than 50 percent of total votes, given structural Republican advantages — so that the country’s anti-Trump majority will have some voice in the federal government.
But unless and until that happens, millions and millions of Americans watch helplessly as the president cages children, dehumanizes immigrants, spurns other democracies, guts health care protections, uses his office to enrich himself and turns public life into a deranged phantasmagoria with his incontinent flood of lies. The civility police might point out that many conservatives hated Obama just as much, but that only demonstrates the limits of content-neutral analysis. The right’s revulsion against a black president targeted by birther conspiracy theories is not the same as the left’s revulsion against a racist president who spread birther conspiracy theories.
Faced with the unceasing cruelty and degradation of the Trump presidency, liberals have not taken to marching around in public with assault weapons and threatening civil war. I know of no left-wing publication that has followed the example of the right-wing Federalist and run quasi-pornographic fantasies about murdering political enemies. (“Close your eyes and imagine holding someone’s scalp in your hands,” began a recent Federalist article.) Unlike Trump, no Democratic politician I’m aware of has urged his or her followers to beat up opposing demonstrators.
Instead, some progressive celebrities have said some bad words, and some people have treated administration officials with the sort of public opprobrium due members of any other white nationalist organization. Liberals are using their cultural power against the right because it’s the only power they have left, and people have a desperate need to say, and to hear others say, that what is happening in this country is intolerable.
Sometimes, their strategies may be poorly conceived. But there’s an abusive sort of victim-blaming in demanding that progressives single-handedly uphold civility, lest the right become even more uncivil in response. As long as our rulers wage war on cosmopolitan culture, they shouldn’t feel entitled to its fruits. If they don’t want to hear from the angry citizens they’re supposed to serve, let them eat at Trump Grill."
Anthony Piel: Free Speech, Falsehood and the Law of Defamation
Part 1 - Responsibility of the Electronic Media
In April 2018, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg made a commendable appearance before the US Congress testifying about the role and intentions of Facebook in the light of the hacking and misuse of cyber communications technologies and social media to skew the 2016 US elections and undermine the democratic process in America. Facebook had been raided for personal information on more than 87 million unsuspecting users.
Zuckerberg explained that the whole point of Facebook was to facilitate open communication among users, in short, the exercise of "free speech." Under pressure from members of Congress, Zuckerberg outlined efforts that Facebook would try to make in future to screen out fake accounts, "trolls" and "bots," and purveyors of falsehood. He took personal and corporate responsibility for the past, and promised to make every effort to prevent such abuses in the future.
Most Americans and members of Congress have welcomed Zuckerberg's assurances , but rather little has been said about the implications under the US Constitution of requiring an electronic communications company, the media or "free" press to censor or control the source and content of "speech." For Americans, the First Amendment guarantee of "freedom of speech or of the press" is sacred text. However, historical study of the origins of "Constitutionally protected free speech" suggests that the framers' original intent was to to protect the right of all persons to express honest belief, opinion and truth, but NOT to protect known falsehood, hate speech or the defamation of others.
Although victims of defamation in the US generally have legal recourse against libel and slander, most jurisdictions do not extend such right of self-defense in the case of "public persons," such as "celebrities" and political figures. The idea of this exclusion is to allow for "robust" debate in the public domain. But the effect of that exception in modern times can be devastating, particularly for political candidates who are victims of falsehood and defamation.
Zuckerberg explained to Congress that the whole point of Facebook and other "social media" communications companies was to facilitate open, free communication among users. What most of us, including Zuckerberg himself, totally underestimated was the vulnerability of "social media" communication to hacking, theft or misuse of information, invasion of personal privacy and promulgation of falsehood, defamation, hate speech and "fake news," not only by home-grown wrong-doers, but also by hostile foreign agents and regimes. How bad can it get ? Here's one example.
Putin's Russia by all accounts used Cambridge Analytica and Wikileaks to seed our social media with an utterly false story, amplified in cyberspace by a handful of venal individuals on the "Radical Right" (including the son of Michael Flynn) to the effect that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex slavery ring out of a pizza joint near Washington D.C. This "Pizzagate" allegation was so ridiculous as to be patently false, yet as events turned out, some 25 percent of voters believed the falsehood, because they wanted to, and it led to the shooting of an innocent employee at the pizza joint. Overall, Russian meddling had a tremendous effect on a large segment of the voting public. As some cynics have concluded, the real winner of the 2016 US Presidential election was Vladimir Putin.
Early in the history of American jurisprudence, our courts of law and legislatures followed the English "Common Law" of "defamation" (literally character assassination), both "libel" (written) and "slander" (spoken words). Depending on jurisdiction, the ill-intended defamer could be sued under civil law, or criminal law, or both. It was early recognized that "Truth is an absolute defense to libel." (The seeming oxymoron "The greater the truth the greater the libel," simply meant it is more offensive to write something damaging and true about someone than it is to tell a damaging lie.). In any case, the key question is whether the defamer knew, or had obvious reason to know, that the allegation was false.
Against this background, what we and Congress have now effectively done is to impose on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook and the entire cyber-electronic communications world of Instagram, Tweet and others, responsibility for policing what millions of users may write or say, even the photos they may send, to detect and weed-out falsehood and calumny. Yet, at the same time, we continue to allow "yellow journal" tabloid publishers, who mostly originate what they print, to get away with virtual character assassination - full-blown defamation. High on the list of irresponsible tabloid publishers is Rupert Murdoch's empire which includes Fox News, the National Enquirer and the New York Post, just to scratch the surface.
Part 2 - The irresponsibility of the tabloid press
The other day going through the Stop & Shop grocery check-out line, I picked up two issues of the Globe weekly magazine, published by American Media Inc., formerly owned by Rupert Murdoch. The tabloid seemed to have two deliberate intentions: (1) to defame the Royal family of Britain, and (2) to defame liberal democrats in the USA.
If no one could possibly believe the Globe allegations, or if everyone considered them as merely a joke, that would be one thing. But we know from bitter experience that there is a sizable, and presumably uninformed and gullible segment of the voting public that willfully swallows the bait. Why ? Because they want to. These are the very ones Donald Trump, in an unguarded moment, characterized as "the stupidest people in America." Was he right ? Did they turn the 2016 election ?
The lead article in the first Globe weekly magazine blazed out: "Queen HATES Harry's Bride !" Then it added: "Elizabeth humiliates Meghan." The evidence? The Globe asserts that Queen Elizabeth sent a "terse letter" to Parliament saying she was "not happy" with the union. (Of course, no such letter was sent.) The second Globe magazine follows this up with the headline: "Kate and Meghan HATE each other." (All objective evidence points to their friendship.)
Then comes the Globe's "shocking news." The headline runs: "Charles' Four Secret Children." The implication is scandalous philandering by the Prince, first in line for the British throne. Again, no actual evidence or truth to it. Why ? To what end? To titillate the readership ? Or bring down the monarchy ?
Then the Globe turns its venom on "liberal" Americans, like George Clooney. But the banner headline is devoted to Barack and Michelle Obama: " Michelle Throws Barack Under the Bus ! " The Globe then explains: "Having suffered for too long with her husband's infidelities, Michelle Obama is writing a book about Obama and his numerous 'other' women." Extra juicy, the book describes an "explosive fight" during a Hawaiian vacation where Michelle first learned that "the Secret Service had been hiding Barack's infidelities."
No matter that Barack and Michelle are a virtual American icon of fidelity in marriage, and as responsible parents of two fine young daughters. So, what's the point ? What's the Globe's motive ? Is it just to titillate ? Is it to undermine American family values ? Is it to detract attention from President Trump's own behavior ? Is it to convince a gullible segment of the US voting public that all US Presidents are philandering adulterers, so don't pay attention to the current allegations about the sitting President ? Or is it defamation for the fun of it ?
Not content with that calumny, the Globe goes on to "break the news" that Michelle Obama is being paid $ 15 million for a "tell-all" book "set to expose cheating and dirty tricks with the crooked Clintons." Guess where the word "crooked" comes from. But why ? Does the Globe want to vilify any and all Democrats ? Is the Globe still fighting the long-past 2016 US Presidential election ? Does the Globe want to distract public attention from all the more plausible allegations concerning the Trump/Kushner organizations, money laundering, the "Russia connection," and possible obstruction of justice ? In any event, the alleged book publication date predicted by the Globe is now past. Still no book. Nor would Michelle ever write such a thing about Hillary and Bill Clinton.
The Globe has done great disservice, and continues to do so, to Great Britain and to the United States, not to mention to all of civilization. The time has come to ask whether the tabloid press should not be subjected to the same rules of decency we are asking of Facebook and the rest of the cyber-electronic communications industry. Why do we hold Zuckerberg's feet to the fire, while we let Murdoch run away free ? Shouldn't we reconsider the exception from the laws against defamation as concerns "public persons ? Isn't it time to clean up our politically motivated discourse ?
Yes, it's high time to act. With full respect for the Constitutional rights of free speech and free press, the tabloid publishers have to be held accountable for the truth and decency of what they write, receive and publish, like any other citizen or agency. They must be prosecuted for false reporting of what they know, or have clear reason to know, is false or defamatory. No exceptions, no pardons, no immunities. The best way to do this is by federal and state legislation to open our courts of law to hearing lawsuits by injured parties under both civil and criminal law against all purveyors of damaging falsehood and defamation.
The result will be a more decent American society, cleaner elections and a return to the original intent, ideals and principles of the founders of our nation. If we want to "Make America Great Again," this is one way to do it."
Anthony Piel: Wealth Disparity versus Genuine Tax Fairness Reform
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the compensation of CEOs at the wealthiest US corporations has been rising at more than 30 percent each year, while average worker pay has been increasing at a mere 0.15 percent. Meanwhile, the actual purchasing power of the US dollar (not to be confused with the so-called CPI index) has been declining at an average rate of 3.5 percent per annum, which more than wipes out the worker's 0.15 percent. The New York Times reports that, as a result, the richest 1 % now owns 90 % of the total wealth in the US.
The principal cause of this disparity, in addition to business laws and practices engineered by the wealthiest among us, is the unfairness that they have shrewdly and deliberately built into a "rigged" US tax code and practice. Naturally, a number of would-be tax reformers have proposed varius ways of raising income tax rates on the highest earners. These offer only partial solutions because of the observed fact that most multi-millionaires and billionaires do NOT report all their income much less their wealth gain from year to year.
The way to measure tax inequity is not by comparing what income the magnates report to the IRS, but rather by looking at what they don't report (and thus "avoid" or "evade" paying any tax at all). From this can be calculated what is called the effective tax rate actually paid. A recent multi-year independent study tracking down the income and wealth gain of US billionaires (even to their off-shore tax haven accounts) found that while some billionaires actually do pay all taxes due, the overwhelming number (95%) do not, such that, taken together, the average US billionaire pays an effective tax rate of only 4.2 % (while his secretary, if he has one, pays over 12 % or nearly three times that of her boss).
An example of the "rigged" tax system is the infamous "depreciation allowance" which allows a would-be real estate "investor" or "developer," having borrowed from banks and lured in other "investors," to put in a small amount of his own money, to build a casino, hotel or tower dedicated to himself, and then year after year take high rates of "depreciation deductions" that eventually pay back his original investment, as if the value of the property had declined, when in fact the value of the property had increased.
What this means is that it is not enough to increase the US tax rates on the wealthiest "elites." The plutocrats will never pay those rates on their income and wealth gain. What is needed is genuine, non-partisan tax system reform, for the sake of fairness to all Americans, beginning with an intensive review of ALL tax loopholes" and abolition of all those that do not serve fairness and the "common good." If these reforms could be implemented, we could consider a nearly flat tax rate of 10 - 15 % for all Americans, which would instantly balance our federal and state budgets. It's a win-win solution - but only if we have the political will to do the job."
