Thanks to Mike C.: A good letter in 6/23/24 NY Times (that I did not write):
To the Editor:
In his anguished attempt to place the country’s woes at the doorstep of progressives, David Brooks ignores the single greatest creation of inequality in the U.S. today — the tax code. Progressives did not pass the Reagan tax cuts of 1981, nor the Bush tax cuts of 2001, nor the Trump tax cuts of 2017, which have shifted enormous wealth from the middle class to the very wealthy — a shift that shows no signs of abating anytime soon.
The economic divide in this country has not been unwittingly created. The divide is the result of concerted effort by a greedy class, not the educated class. The educated class, though, has been better at navigating the resulting system than the working class, an effect that the wealthy class has used to divide and conquer to insure that the educated and working classes do not finally work together to create a more just society.
John Q. Gale
Hartford, Conn.
The writer is a member of the Hartford City Council.