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The US ultra-rich justify their low tax rates with three myths – all of them rubbish

A record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of billionaires, who pay a lower tax rate than the average American. This is indefensible 

by Robert Reich

Part 3 - The second myth is the “free market”

The ultra-rich claim they’re being rewarded by the impersonal market for creating and doing what people are willing to pay them for.

The wages of other Americans have stagnated, they say, because most Americans are worth less in the market now that new technologies and globalization have made their jobs redundant.

Baloney. Even if they’re being rewarded, there’s no reason why the “free market’ would reward vast multiples of what the rich were rewarded with decades ago.

The market can induce great feats of invention and entrepreneurship with lures of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars – not billions.

As to the rest of us succumbing to labor-replacing globalization and labor-saving technologies, no other advanced nation has nearly the degree of inequality found in the United States, yet all these nations have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change.

In reality, the ultra-wealthy have rigged the so-called “free market” in the US for their own benefit. Billionaires’ campaign contributions have soared from a relatively modest $31m in the 2010 elections to $1.2bn in the most recent presidential cycle – a nearly 40-fold increase.

What have they got for their money? Tax cuts, freedom to bash unions and monopolize markets and government bailouts. Their pockets have been further lined by privatization and deregulation.

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