A Painless Fix for America's Budget Squeeze

By Sam Pizzigati

Created 06/13/2010 - 1:10pm

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An emergency 1 percent 'wealth tax' on the nation's richest 1 percent could raise enough revenue to keep all our teachers on the job and libraries open. But our dysfunctional political system can't even raise that possibility.

An emergency 1 percent 'wealth tax' on the nation's richest 1 percent could raise enough revenue to keep all our teachers on the job and libraries open. But our dysfunctional political system can't even raise that possibility.

Last year may have been the worst year, economically, that most Americans alive today have ever experienced. By the year’s end, one of every ten Americans couldn’t find work. Millions more, over the course of the year, lost wages and benefits — or both.

But some Americans, says an eye-opening global wealth survey released [1] last week, survived 2009 quite nicely. U.S. households that hold over $1 million in “assets under management” — a financial category that covers everything from stocks and bonds to money market savings — have essentially recovered almost all the ground they lost right after the 2008 meltdown.

These millionaire households now hold over half of America’s wealth. In no other society outside the oil-rich Middle East, notes [2] a Los Angeles Times analysis, do millionaire households currently hold as large a share of their nation's treasure.