We could increase public investment in education, including early-childhood.
We could eliminate college loans and allow all students to repay the cost of their higher education with a 10 percent surcharge on the first 10 years of income from full-time employment.
We could expand the Earned Income Tax Credit.
And we could pay for all this by adding additional tax brackets at the top and increasing the top marginal tax rate to what it was before 1981 -- at least 70 percent.
But none of this will happen until the public understands why widening inequality is so damaging. Even the rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than a large share of one that's barely growing at all.
Our political leaders in Washington have for now chosen supply-side austerity economics over Keynesian economics. That's bad enough. Their inability or unwillingness to do much of anything about widening inequality will prove a larger problem.
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