The social compact which came out of the Gilded Age was basically that (1) the income of the wealthy would be taxed at roughly 50%, to fund a social safety net, (2) the capital of the wealthy would be diminished 50% at each generation by estate and inheritance taxes, so that within a few generations even the Rockefellers had to work for a living, (3) labor unions were empowered, so that there was a balance of power in the negotiation between capital and labor.
My mother grew up in a home where her father, a successful business executive, but before they were paid like they are now, railed against the taxes at the dinner table. I recognize his views in Jane Mayer’s writing in her book “Dark Money”, but they are attributed to the super rich instead, who have over the last two generations captured the legislative branch of the US government, and seriously chipped away at that social compact to the point where the rich get richer and the middle class is endangered.
We need to get control of the legislature back (no more locking the Representatives and Senators in damned cubicles every morning until they have called enough rich donors to make quota for the day, before they can go do what we elected them to). And then the legislature needs to re establish the social compact as it stood when I was born, regaining balance in the negotiating power between capital and labor. (And yes, I have to hold my nose about big-labor officials who make decisions to entrench themselves rather than to benefit their members — but that’s better than what happens to Uber drivers.)
