"At the same time that the rules have been rewritten to favor the already rich, new rules have been written that ensure harsh treatment for the poor... Coping with the foul effects of poverty costs us trillions of dollars a year... Poverty wastes minds and spirits, robbing all of us of opportunity. ...It makes us less trusting, less willing to see ourselves as one people..."
David Cay Boyle Johnston is an American investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.
"While only a minority of people was taxed during World War II, the politicians got a taste of the huge revenues... by expanding the tax base. After the war... the income tax was steadily expanded until it applied to most Americans..."
David Cay Johnston"Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top 10 percent got 48.5¢... the greatest share of income pie since 1929, just before the collapsed into the Great Depression."
David Cay Johnston"For the bottom 90 percent of Americans... the vast majority, annual income has been on a long, mostly downhill slide for more than three decades. ...Even with three decades of economic expansion, the vast majority has to get by on about $75 less each week than... a generation earlier..."
David Cay Johnston"Rewriting the economic rules... in the past few decades has been done under the banner of "" and its promise that less government means more economic growth. The term itself is a misnomer. No society is free from regulation. Everything has rules..."
David Cay Johnston"In the past quarter century... new rules... have weakened and even destroyed consumer protections while increasing the power of the already powerful. ...[T]he rules affecting who wins and who loses economically have been quietly and subtly rewritten."
David Cay Johnston"To pay for World War I... [t]he estate tax and the gift tax, which apply to wealth, were expanded and the income tax came to apply to a larger, but still minute, percentage of Americans."
David Cay Johnston