How the Mega-Rich Treat Our Treasury Like a Buffet (And Stick You with the Bill)

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on January 21, 2008, Printed on January 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/74389/

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. 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). Explain the wealth transfer.

David Cay Johnston: 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.