Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (and Stick you With

Economic figures show that in 2005, the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the country’s population had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the lower economic half of the country. Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top ten percent got 48.5 cents, the highest percentage since 1929, just before the Great Depression.


AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston has been closely tracking the nation’s income gap in the pages of the New York Times. In 2004, he published the bestselling book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich—and Cheat Everybody Else. David Cay has just published a new book. It’s called Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill). He joins us now from the PBS station WXXI in Rochester.


Welcome to Democracy Now!, David.


DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Thank you for having me, Amy and Juan.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the wealth transfer.


DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, I was struck, listening to the program from Kenya, where they talked about the president and his power to give money to people, give land, and that’s why many people identify with it. We have created in the United States, largely in the last thirty years, a whole series of programs—a few of them explicit, many of them deeply hidden—that take money from the pockets of the poor and the middle class and upper middle class and funnel it to the wealthiest people in America. And among the biggest recipients of these subsidies are the wealthiest family America, the Waltons; George Steinbrenner; Donald Trump; a whole host of healthcare billionaires. And these are policies that either have not been reported on or the news reporting on them generally has not informed people about what they really are.


http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18/free_lunch_how_the_wealthiest_americans

.......and.........

1/3/08 -- David Cay Johnston is interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR's "Fresh Air"

Intro: Why are the rich getting richer while the middle class falls behind? That’s the question that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, David Cay Johnston, sets out to answer in his book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).” He says that since the Reagan administration, it’s become the unstated policy to create federal laws and regulations that favor the already wealthy and the politically-connected. Johnston writes, “Money for the basics that make society work – from raking leaves in the park to highway bridge maintenance – is dwindling because so much has been diverted to the already rich through give-aways, tax breaks, and a host of subsidies that range from the explicit to the deeply hidden. It’s those give-aways, tax breaks and subsidies that Johnston examines in his book. Johnston is an investigative reporter for the New York Times and has written extensively about taxes.

Terry Gross: … Before we look at some of the case studies in your book, make the larger point for us that you’re trying to make about how, as you put it, free markets aren’t really free, they’re kind of rigged to benefit a select few.

David Cay Johnston: Well, you know, a generation ago, Ronald Reagan asked the question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” And Americans said, “No!” And they put him in the White House and set in motion a vast new experiment in whether reducing the size of government, reducing government regulation, and relying on market solutions would make us wealthier – would make us happier, would make us healthier, would make for a better country. A generation of time has now passed and I’m asking a new question: “Are you better off than you were a generation ago?” On the surface, we are. We’re twice as wealthy as we were then as a country. But when you look deeper, you find out that no, most of us are worse off. Incomes for most Americans have stagnated while at the top they’ve gone through the roof. Growing numbers of people don’t have health insurance. Fewer and fewer people have pension plans. More and more people are filing for bankruptcy and are in debt. They are worse off. So the question I addressed is “how did this happen?” What fundamentally has been taking place in our society? What I’ve done is examine a number of cases to show that government has rewritten the rules to favor the already rich, the politically connected, and the powerful at the expense of everyone else. In effect it’s set up mechanisms that the government itself reaches into your pocket and gives money to rich people; the government allows businesses to reach into your pocket in ways it never did; the government has all sorts of subtle and hidden policies now that funnel from the poor and middle class and upper middle class into the hands of the super-rich. And that is at the core of what’s happening in our society.

TG: Let’s start with big box stores. You devote a chapter to them. They move into a community and they often drive out local businesses – the local businesses can’t compete. Now, we assume that that’s because the big box stores buy in bulk and sell in bulk and therefore the prices are cheaper. But you say it goes further than than. They also get special advantages. What are some of the special breaks those big box stores often get?

http://prairieweather.typepad.com/the_scribe/2008/01/free-lunch-davi.html

:kick: for more visibility.

This is the fundamental issue facing our political system and who weilds power. Until we deal with this, it's unlikely that anything substantial will happen.