We Can and Must Do Better: A Personal Reflection on Wealth Inequality
By Mark Naison (July 6, 2015)
The greatest sustained period of economic growth in the US took place between 1941 and 1970 when tax rates on the wealthy were much higher than they are now, when business regulation, especially of the financial sector, was much more rigorous, and when trade unions were much stronger. There are options within the US constitutional framework that could be invoked that will produce far better results that the current social contract, which has concentrated wealth at the top to a greater degree than at any time since the 19th century.
Having grown up in that era in a family of modest means, and having had far greater opportunities that young people in comparable conditions have today, I would hardly call myself a product of a failed experiment. I grew up in Crown Heights, attended PS 91 and Winthrop Junior High School, then went on to Wingate and Erasmus High Schools before going on to Columbia, where I ended up being captain of the tennis team even though I learned my tennis in Lincoln Terrace Park where my instructor was a mailman named Phil Rubell. My cousin Steven, may his soul rest in peace, had the same experience, playing basketball at Columbia after learning the game in public school night centers
Could that happen today? Highly doubtful, since the parks and public school programs that my cousin and I benefited from have long since been de- funded. We can look to our own history for alternatives to a social order where upward We Can and Must Do Better: A Personal Reflection on Wealth Inequality – The Anarres Project: