It's a Mugging: Our National Wealth Is Getting Handed Over to the Bloated Rich

It's a Mugging: Our National Wealth Is Getting Handed Over to the Bloated Rich

By Mark Karlin, BuzzFlash. Posted April 16, 2009.

Tax responsibilities have shifted off of large wealth holders and onto wage earners, off corporations and onto individuals, off the progressive federal tax system and onto state and local tax systems, which tend to be more regressive. Tax cuts for the rich have shrunk federal services -- and shifted responsibilities to states for health, anti-poverty, transportation and more. That's the shaft part. …

We're in America's "Second Gilded Age."

-- Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good.