If children are raised in common in the midst of equality [of condition] ... let us not doubt that ... they will learn to cherish one another as brothers, never to want anything but what the society wants.

--Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1. Introduction

Aristotle maintained that we, qua human beings, are inherently social creatures because we depend on each other--we are interdependent. He argued that the "proof that the state is a creation of nature and prior to the individual is that the individual, when isolated, is not self-sufficing; and therefore he is like a part in relation to the whole" (Politics, Book I, Chapter II). Far from viewing relations of interdependence as a defect, Aristotle viewed them as the very relations that make us properly human. Only gods and beasts have no need for others, he wrote, and human beings are neither.

Echoing Aristotle, the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is credited as saying that taxation is the price humans pay for a civilized society. This sentiment has been lost in contemporary America where relations of interdependence are viewed as inimical to individual liberty. Despite the fact that tax revenues pay for social goods, which allow individuals to live a good life, taxation has been compared to theft and even forced labor (cf. Nozick, 1974).

The aim of this paper is twofold. The first is to show that, by being less progressive than its counterparts, the current tax system in the United States promotes inequality of condition, which not only hinders projects that could lead to poverty alleviation but also contributes to higher rates of poverty. The second aim is to suggest that redesigning the tax system to be more progressive--that is, to require higher incomes to pay proportionally higher taxes--is instrumental in promoting equality of condition and alleviating poverty. We shall begin with a brief analysis of the tax system in the United States.

2. An (Brief) Analysis of the Tax System in the United States

What makes the United States tax and transfer systems far less progressive than most of the countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is that it does far less to counteract pre-tax income inequality than the tax systems of most of the OECD countries (Greenstone and Looney, 2012). Over the last forty years, the United States federal tax system has undergone three significant changes, each of which contributed to its becoming less progressive (Piketty and Saez, 2007).

The first change pertains to corporate taxes, which is one of the three major sources of federal revenues--the other two being individual and payroll taxes. Corporate income taxes as a fraction of gross domestic product (DGP) fell by half, from approximately 4 percent of GDP in the early 1960s to less than 2 percent of GDP in the early 2000s. There has been a steady decline in corporate tax rates since the 1950s, from 32 percent in 1953, accounting for 30 percent of federal tax revenues, to just over 7 percent in 2003, accounting for 10 percent of federal tax revenues. Currently, corporate income taxes account for a mere 8.9 percent of the federal revenue, making them the lowest of the three sources of federal revenues (Gravelle and Hungerford, 2008).

In addition to the steady decline in the corporate tax rates during the past sixty plus years, several major corporations have been involved in tax avoidance. In 2012, General Electric (GE) made national headlines for paying zero dollars in corporate income taxes. However, a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) showed that GE was not an anomaly: one in six of the top 250 largest corporations paid no corporate income tax in at least one of the years between 1996 and 1998. This trend continued for another decade. A report by the Citizens for Tax Justice shows that thirty major corporations paid no corporate income taxes between 2008 and 2011, despite the fact that their reported profits reached 160 billion dollars. Another report shows that between 2008 and 2010, a quarter of the defense corporations reviewed in the study paid effective federal tax rates (i.e., the total tax paid as a percentage of income) of 10 percent instead of the official rate of 35 percent (Citizens for Tax Justice and the ITEP).

The IRS estimated that the revenue losses from corporate tax shelters alone were between 11.6 billion and 15.1 billion from 1993 to 1999. This figure does not take into account that often corporations avoided paying corporate taxes by converting to partnerships. For example, owners of oil pipelines have avoided paying corporate taxes for the past 25 years by converting from a corporate form of ownership to partnerships, which unlike corporations do not pay taxes on their profits, saving approximately 3 billion dollars per year. (1)

Not only did tax avoidance by corporations increased, despite the rapid decrease in corporate tax rates, but the monetary incentives going to corporations from federal and state revenues also increased. A ten-month investigation by the New York Times revealed that 80.4 billion is awarded each year to many of the aforementioned corporations that are involved in tax avoidance. Forty-eight of those corporations received more than 100 million in state grants since 2007. GE alone was awarded at least 1.77 billion since 2007. (2) According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the top ten defense corporations benefited enormously from the growth in military spending (3) as the Defense Department nearly doubled its budget in the past eleven years from 312 billion in 2000 to 712 billion in 2011. The same year, the United States spent more on defense than the next thirteen nations combined. These developments are striking when we take into account that 20 percent of the federal budget is spent on defense, but only 2 percent is spent on education, another 2 percent on Science and Medical Research, and 3 percent on transportation and infrastructure, which, unlike defense spending, are essential to achieving equality of condition.

The second significant change that contributed to the federal tax system becoming less progressive pertains to individual income tax rates--another major source of federal revenues. Over the past forty years, we have seen a dramatic decline in top marginal individual income tax rates--the tax percentage on the highest dollar earned. The statutory individual income tax rate, which is the legally imposed rate, applied to the marginal dollar of the highest incomes declined from 91 percent in the early 1960s to 28 percent by 1988; and although it increased slightly to 39.6 percent in 1993, it had fallen to 35 percent by 2003.

Currently, individual income taxes provide 41.5 percent of federal revenues. As individuals earn more, their statutory tax rates increase producing what appears to be a progressive tax system. However, for the top 400 individuals who earn more than one percent of all income in the United States (81 billion dollars), the average tax rate was just 19.9 percent (Steward, 2012). The system can be made to appear moderately progressive, even though it is only mildly so, by citing the statutory rather than the effective federal tax rates, i.e., the total tax paid as a percentage of income. The statutory rate applies to different income levels increasing as income increases while the effective tax rate measures the overall tax paid as a percentage of income. For example, an individual making a gross family income of 91,000 dollars and having a taxable income of 61,000 after credits, deductions, and exemptions would have a 25 percent marginal tax rate but an effective tax rate of only 8.4 percent. By citing the statutory tax rate instead of the effective tax rate, Americans are often misled into believing that individual tax rates are too high.

The third significant change that has contributed to the federal tax system becoming less progressive pertains to payroll tax rates. Payroll tax rates were substantially increased in the past 40 years, as a way to offset losses in federal revenues resulting from the decline in corporate and individual tax rates. The combined employer-employee payroll tax rate on labor income increased from 6 percent in the 1960s to 15 percent in 1990s and 2000s. It is worth noting, however, that employers do have an advantage over employees due to the fact that their portion of payroll taxes is deductible against income for purposes of income taxes. Unlike employees, employers can also avoid paying payroll taxes. For example, many of the defense corporations that benefited the most from increases in military spending avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in the Cayman Islands, a well known tax haven. This resulted in a significant loss of revenue, particularly to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. (4) Even if we do not factor in the advantages employers have over employees, payroll tax rates are still extremely regressive since individuals making less than 117,000 dollars pay Federal Insurance Contribution Act-Social Security (FICA-SS) at 6.2 percent on every dollar they make while those making more than 117,000 stop paying FICA-SS above this amount.

Each of these significant changes--the decline in corporate and top marginal individual income tax rates and the increase in payroll tax--rates contributed in making the tax system in the United States much less progressive. Slightly progressive tax (and transfer) system(s) are designed to benefit one party (primarily, the top one percent) at the expense of another (the bottom 99 percent). Although the tax system constitutes relations of interdependence--since without tax revenues no civilized societies can exist--in the United States, there relations are not reciprocal. Relations of interdependence are reciprocal when they aim at some mutual benefit; they are not reciprocal when one party simply takes advantage of the other, even though those who are on the losing end often fail to realize that they are being harmed. As it has been shown, corporations increasingly receive more generous benefits from the federal and state government even though their contributions are declining. Individuals at the top marginal tax rates are also benefiting far more than lower income individuals. For example, individuals who earn 450,000 dollars a year often pay the same tax rate as those who earn 450 million, although due to tax breaks that benefit investors, it is likely that the person earning 450 million pays a lower tax rate. In addition, some taxes, such as excise taxes, (5) fall more heavily on lower income individuals, even though, by and large, tend to receive fewer benefits due to the lack of social services than their wealthy counterparts. Less progressive tax systems thus allow those at the top to take advantage of the rest, and since tax collection is not a transparent process, those who are on the losing end often fail to realize that they are being harmed. (6)

3. The Myth of Equality of Opportunity

Inadequately progressive tax systems tend to promote profound income inequalities. In the past fifty years, tax rates for the top one percent of Americans have declined by 40 percent, although tax rates for the bottom 90 percent of Americans have remained roughly constant. This decline coincided with income inequality where most of the wage gains concentrated in a relatively small portion of the American population, namely, the top one percent and, more so, the top 0.1 percent (Greenstone and Looney, 2012).

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), between 1979 and 2007, more of the growth in average income accrued to the top one percent than to the lower 90 percent. During that time, income inequality reached record highs as the same individuals who saw the biggest income gains were also the recipients of the largest tax decreases. Income for the top one percent grew 241 percent, compared to 11 percent for the bottom 5th.

Studies show that these trends not only have corroded the American society (Pickett and Wilkinson, 2011), but they also promoted profound wealth (7) inequalities. In 2010, the top one percent held 35.4 of the national wealth while the wealth of the top 0.1 percent outpaced everyone else (Freeland, 2013). (8) To put this into real terms, a single family owns more wealth than the bottom 41.5 percent of Americans. It is indeed shocking that the wealth inequality in America is currently higher than it was in the Roman Empire (Scheidel and Friesen, 2010) and in Russia on the eve of the revolution (Nafziger and Lindert, 2011). As some commentator noted, Americans now live in the Gatsby era. (9)

Income and wealth inequalities inevitably lead to inequality of condition and higher poverty levels. Yet, they are often dismissed as a serious malady requiring drastic changes in economic policy because equality of opportunity is viewed as an adequate antidote. However, in recent years, the notion of equality of opportunity has been rendered meaningless. Or it has been, at the very least, reduced to a mere national myth in societies that experience great income inequalities, as a Nobel laureate in economics, Joseph Stiglitz, recently argued. (10) According to Stiglitz, the "gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United states has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced country." As a result, upward class mobility in America is "becoming a statistical oddity."

Assuming economic growth, each generation is expected to have a higher income than the last. However, studies show that American families do not improve their incomes over a generation (Isaacs, 2007). The economic position of children is heavily influenced, not by their abilities or hard work, but by the economic position of their parents. Children of impoverished families do not, by and large, have equal opportunities with their counterparts in affluent families. Only 6 percent of children whose parents are in the very bottom move to the very top (Isaacs, 2007). Currently, only one third of Americans enjoy upward mobility while another one third of Americans are downwardly mobile. The rest are either remaining in the same economic position as their parents or are falling behind their parents in economic standing (Isaacs, 2007; Pickett and Wilkinson, 2011). A study conducted by the PEW Charitable Trusts using the relationship between parent's and children's incomes as an indicator for relative mobility showed that Denmark had three times more relative mobility than the United States, (11) because of (and not despite) Denmark's progressive tax system. (12) This suggests that extremely progressive tax systems are more conducive to upward mobility than mildly progressive or regressive ones.

4. Equality of Condition: A Better Measure of Success

Economic inequality inevitably manifests itself as a problem of unequal access to resources (Lynch and Baker, 2005). Stiglitz (2013) lists various policies that can promote equality of opportunity, including funding education, fixing the student loan system, ensuring that children have adequate nutrition and health care, and so forth. At the end, however, he admits that these steps, although crucial, are insufficient to promote real equality of opportunity. This suggests that equality of condition is a better measure of a civilized society.

Equality of condition is the notion that "people should be as equal as possible in relation to the central conditions of their lives ... [which] is about ensuring that everyone has roughly equal prospects for a good life" (Lynch and Baker, 2005: 132). Equality of condition thus differs from equality of opportunity. It also differs from equality of outcome since equality of condition "is about equalizing ... people's 'real' options which involves the equal enabling and empowerment of individuals" (ibid, their emphasis).

Lynch and Baker outline five key dimensions along which it is vital to pursue equality of condition in order for people to be able to pursue a good life: resources, which include economic, social, and cultural capital; respect and recognition, which are realized in terms of equal rights and privileges of global citizenship; love, care, and solidarity, which are fundamental for mental and emotional well-being and, more generally, for human development; power equalities, which require endorsing traditional liberal civil and political rights, but commit less to property rights; and working and learning, which ensures that everyone has the right to some form of potentially satisfying work, which includes paid and unpaid work, and compensation of unequal burdens.

In the United States, the top one percent has resources, enjoys the respect and recognition that often comes with access to such resources, has access to love, care and legalized solidarity as readily as it has suppressed any attempts for solidarity by the working class, enjoys power equalities, and can easily exercise its right to some form of potentially satisfying work. Most of these dimensions tend to be unrealized for the majority of Americans who are increasingly experiencing higher rates of inequality of condition.

Education alone cannot promote equality of condition, especially since obtaining a degree is far more costly in the United States than it is in any other industrialized country while the rewards are marginal. According to the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, 10 percent of student borrowers in the United States owe 54,000 dollars and 3 percent owe more than 100,000.

Existing power inequalities have empowered banks to impose interest rates up to 8 percent on student loans, (13) even though no risk is involved in the transaction as the government guarantees repayment of the loan and the interest accrued in the event students default. As a result, most college graduates are very likely to experience poverty, especially since wages have remained stagnate for the past forty years. In 2011, entry-level wages for males with college degrees were only 5 percent greater than they were in 1979 while entry-level wages for males with high school degrees were slightly above the poverty threshold and 25 percent lower than the wages of their counterparts in 1979 (EPI).

Achieving equality of condition requires, among other things, expanding the list of inalienable rights to include the right to work and to earn an adequate wage, to leisure, to education, and to protection against insecurity, sickness, and old age (Laski 1949). Redesigning the tax system to be more progressive is the first step in this direction. The second, perhaps more crucial step, is to redesign a transfer system to alleviate poverty and promote equality of condition by counteracting pre-tax income and wealth inequalities that are corrosive to any society.

5. The Cost of Income and Wealth Inequality

The decline in corporate and individual tax rates engenders a significant decline of federal revenues. As federal revenues decline income and wealth inequality increases, inevitably giving rise to inequality of condition. It is not accidental that the decline in tax rates for the top one percent coincided with income inequality where most of the wage gains have concentrated in the top one percent (Greenstone and Looney, 2012). Even the recent economic recovery benefited primarily those in the top 10 percent who also happen to own 81 to 94 percent of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity, and almost 80 percent of non-home real estate (Center of Tax Justice, 2010).

One of the measures of a just civilized society is how well it looks after its most vulnerable members (Rawls, 1971). On that measure, the United States ranks very close to the bottom when compared to other industrialized countries. Income inequality is one of the primary causes of higher poverty rates. By being less progressive than its counterparts, the current tax system in the United States not only hinders projects that could alleviate poverty, but it also contributes to higher rates of poverty. According to The Associate Press, the risk of being in poverty in the United States has been increasing in recent decades. Despite the current economic recovery, four in five Americans face near-poverty. The risk of encountering poverty for individuals between 35 and 45 years of age, which was 17 percent between 1969 and 1989, increased to 23 percent between 1989 and 2009. In 2010, over 46 million Americans were officially in poverty. This year marks the third consecutive year that neither the official poverty rate nor the number of people in poverty was statistically different from estimates of the two previous years. According to the Census Bureau, 46.5 million Americans are still living in poverty. Additionally, a quarter of Americans cannot afford enough food for their families, which is three times more than the number of their counterparts in Germany and more than twice the number in Italy and Canada (Pew Research Center).

At the same time, the transfer system in the United States has shifted expenditures toward the disabled and the elderly, who are perceived as deserving, and away from those with the lowest incomes. As a result, it has been more successful in reducing poverty for the disabled and the elderly, but less so for those with the lowest incomes (Ben-Shalom et al., 2011). Increasing the minimum wage, providing more generous unemployment benefits, and ensuring access to financial services might make a dent in alleviating poverty. However, instituting a more progressive tax system and using tax revenues to ensure equality of condition is the best way to alleviate poverty. (14)

A comparison between tax (and transfer) distributions among the OECD countries and the United States illustrates the negative impact inadequately progressive tax systems have on income distribution and poverty. In the United States, between 1995 and 2014, there was a marginal increase of the relative income poverty level (i.e., the share of the population within an income of less than 50% of the respective national median income) from 16.7 to 17.4 percent. OECD countries, by comparison, ranked much lower even after seeing a marginal increase from 10.1 percent in 1995 to 11.7 percent in 2014. (15)

In addition to higher poverty levels, societies that experience profound income and wealth inequalities tend to experience higher school dropout rates, homicide, obesity, infant mortality, mental illness, and incidents of drug use; they also tend to imprison a larger portion of the population and give less in foreign aid (Pickett and Wilkinson, 2011). Individuals in such societies tend to also become less trusting, which makes them less likely to experience love, care, and solidarity. In each of these categories, the United States ranks much higher than its OECD counterparts (Pickett and Wilkinson, 2011).

Even though income inequality coincided with the decline in tax rates for the top one percent, the austerity measures proposed as a cure for the national debt (which is often attributed to the decline in tax rates for the top one percent) would leave already vulnerable Americans even more vulnerable since their income will be less than two times the supplemental poverty threshold. For many of the 41 million seniors who are already vulnerable, financial security is rooted in Social Security and Medicare. Of those, a majority of elderly women are already dangerously close to poverty (Cooper and Gould, 2013). Despite these numbers, changes to Medicare proposed by the House Budget Committee chairperson Paul Ryan would produce almost 3.5 million more economically vulnerable seniors (Gould and Cooper, 2013).

The argument that is most often made against proposals to increase tax rates on corporations and the top one percent is that such increases would inevitably have negative effects on economic growth, as measured by GDP. However, there is no empirical evidence to support such pessimistic predictions. On the contrary, economic research shows that productive economic activity is relatively unresponsive to increases in the top income tax rates (Diamond and Saez, 2011) and GDP growth is compatible with economic crises (Talberth, 2013). In addition, studies show that both short-run demand-side and long-run supply-side growth effects on productive economic activity, as well as related "dynamic" revenue impacts ("leakages"), stemming from raising top marginal tax rates are extremely modest (Fieldhouse, 2013 and 2013a).

Thomas Piketty (2014) argues that if we do not increase taxes on wealth, inequality will soar causing political and economic instability in the future. This is due to the fact that wealth grows faster than economic output (r > g, where r is the rate of return on wealth and g is the rate of economic growth) benefiting those who hold the majority of wealth. To prevent this outcome, he suggests the introduction of a global wealth tax. Other economists suggest subjecting the concentration of wealth to a 10 percent annual levy, i.e., an "equality tax" (Lavoie, 2014) or capping the deduction for charitable contributions in the current estate tax law at 50 percent of wealthy taxpayers' estate values (Goldburn, 2014).

The fact that viewing growth solely in terms of increases in GDP, i.e., increases in money-capital, encourages the destruction of natural capital lends more weight to Piketty's prediction. Dale (2005: 100) describes this state of affairs as follows:

Since growth, within the capitalist system, is understood purely in terms of money-capital, the push for unsustainable growth (which sacrifices, to use McMurtry (1999) terminology, life-capital for money-capital) does not register as a cost within the system even though the destruction of natural capital has negative effects on both the economy and the society that it sustains (cf. Gatzia, 2011 and 2012).

6. Progressive Taxation, Equality of Condition, and Poverty Alleviation

The tax system in the United States must be at least as progressive as that of other industrialized countries if equality of condition is to be achieved. Currently, the United States has a less progressive tax system relative to other countries and over time, ranking only above Turkey, Chile, South Korea, and Mexico (Greenstone and Looney, 2012). At the same time, the United States collects less in corporate revenues, relative to the size of its economy, than 75 percent of the 29 OECD countries. Loss in tax revenue results in declining social services--a trend that inevitably leads to higher rates of poverty and inequality of condition (Fieldhouse, 2013b).

Studies show that people in societies that promote equality of condition are much more likely to be happy, even when they encounter higher tax rates. Sweden and Denmark, followed by Switzerland and Austria, ranked as the happiest countries in the world despite the fact that their individual tax rates are among the highest in the world. For example, high-wage earners in countries such as Denmark and Sweden (16) pay up to 57 percent of their total income in income taxes (Buettner 2010) but rank far above the United States, which came in 23rd, on the happiness index (Science Daily). (17) Oishi et al. (2012) compared 54 different countries and found a correlation between progressive tax policies and overall happiness, provided that the tax revenues are used to provide good social services such as education, health care, public transportation, etc.

Opponents of progressive taxation often argue that the (apparent) benefits of progressive taxation outweigh the costs as they create disincentives to work more or harder. (18) However, empirical research lends ample support to the claim that the prevalent capitalist ideology, which assumes that higher performance is achieved through higher rewards, has become increasingly counterproductive leading to lower performance even in rudimentary cognitive tasks (Pink, 2011). Studies show that what motivates people is not money, but autonomy, mastery and the opportunity to make a contribution in society (Pink, 2011). These studies suggest that far from creating disincentives to work more or harder, a progressive tax system would increase productivity since it would foster an environment of autonomy and self-direction. Other studies corroborate the claim that far from creating an inefficient society, progressive tax systems promote economic growth (Amabile and Kramer, 2011; Ryan and Deci, 2000). These studies show that, contrary to popular belief, it is the outdated capitalist ideology that stands in the way of an efficient and happy society as well as economic growth, not progressive taxation.

Changing the tax system in the United States requires radical changes in political and economic policy. This might be an easier task in European countries, which, unlike the United States, underwent a transition from the feudal to the capitalist system ushered by the French revolution. The symbiotic relation between feudal lords and serfs, commonly referred to as a "fraternity" (cf. Rousseau, 1997), has never been experienced in the United States. As a result, the political and economic ideologies in the United States emphasize individual liberty over fraternity and view government intervention as an anathema to individual liberty (cf. Nozick, 1974). Piketty's (2014) prediction that soaring wealth inequality will cause political and economic instability in the future, however, suggests that the value Americans place on individual liberty should be reevaluated. Moreover, G. A. Cohen (1997/2006) argues persuasively that, contrary to Nozick, equality of condition is compatible with individual liberty. His argument, in a nutshell, is that either capitalism does not confer consequential liberty, i.e. self-ownership, since the workers' liberty is not robust enough to qualify as such or, if it does so qualify, then no inequality follows from it. Cohen goes on to argue that individual liberty should not be understood in terms of self-ownership but in terms of autonomy. For, autonomy involves genuine control of ones own life, which the working class is not able to attain within the confines of the capitalist system. If the conflict between equality of condition and individual liberty is only apparent, then the reasons for objecting to a progressive tax system that can bring about equality of condition, and hence increase autonomy, are purely ideological and merit no further consideration.

7. Conclusion

It has been argued that the current tax system in the United States is not progressive enough. As a result, it promotes inequality of condition, hinders projects that could lead to poverty alleviation, and contributes to higher rates of poverty. Redesigning the tax system to be more progressive--that is, to require higher incomes to pay proportionally higher taxes--is instrumental in the promotion of equality of condition and, hence, poverty alleviation. When the tax system is progressive and tax revenues are used to promote equality of condition by investing in good social services such as education, health care, public transportation, etc., both individuals and their societies thrive.

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DIMITRIA E. GATZIA

dg29@uakron.edu

University of Akron Wayne College

DOUGLAS WOODS

dbw@uakron.edu

University of Akron Wayne College

NOTES

(1.) David Cay Johnston (2010), http://consumerist.com/2010/07/07/youre-payingoil-pipeline-owners-income-taxes/

(2.) http://www. nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-bankroll-corporations.html

(3.) http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/03/10/10-companiesprofiting-most-from-war/1970997

(4.) http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/03/06/top_iraq_contractor_skirts_us_taxes_offshore/?page= full

(5.) An excise tax is an indirect tax charged on the sale of a particular good.

(6.) The repeal of the Estate Tax serves as an example of how politicians' perceptions about a potential public opinion reprisal are manipulated, even when public opinion itself does not change (see Birney, Shapiro, and Graetz 2007).

(7.) "Wealth" is defined as the sum of all assets such as home, stocks, retirement plans, etc., minus liabilities such as mortgage, medical bills, student loans, etc.

(8.) See also "Class Matters: Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind." By David Cay Johnston. New York Times, June 5, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html

(9.) http://www.epi.org/blog/nostalgic-gatsby-era-surprise-youre-living/

(10.) See "Equal Opportunity, our National Myth", in Opinionator, New York Times, February 16, 2013. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/equalopportunity-our-national- myth/?ref=opinion

(11.) Many other industrialized countries including Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and France have more relative mobility than does the United States.

(12.) The report is made available here: http://www.pewstates.org/research/reports/ does-america-promote-mobility-as-well-as-other-nations-85899380321. See also Isaacs, 2008.

(13.) The student loan interest rates in Canada, by comparison, are below 2 percent primarily because the banks are not involved in the process.

(14.) Rawls' (1971) theory of justice can provide an independent argument for the claim that the current tax system in the United States is unfair since no one behind the veil of ignorance would agree to institute a system that benefits a small minority at the expense of rest.

(15.) See www.compareyourcountry.org

(16.) http://www.theguardian. com/money/2008/nov/16/sweden-tax-burden-welfare

(17.) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.htm

(18.) We thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments here.