Invited to interview Oregon CD 6 Congresswoman Andrea Salinas for a Zoom call with supporters of Indivisible Oregon, Labor Press editor Don McIntosh asked her about inequality.
MCINTOSH: For 55 years the gap between the truly wealthy and ordinary Americans has been widening. We may be looking at the birth of a new aristocracy, and in a generation or so, the rest of us will be working for them or paying them rent. That’s not a future I think a lot of people would want to see. Do you have some ideas about how to close that gap?
SALINAS : Oh, do I! Ezra Klein had this Boston College tax professor on his show. Her name is Ray Madoff, and I was intrigued because she talked about the “second estate.” Back in Europe, that’s what they called the aristocracy. You don’t get the second estate without creating it through giving them wealth, and that is exactly what we are doing in the United States right now. So the New Democrat Coalition (Ed. note: a caucus of Democrats who advocate pragmatic bipartisan problem-solving) had the opportunity to have her talk to us. I was really excited about some of her ideas because it’s the things I had been talking about. I’m not quite through her book, but she has a number of different proposals. Ultimately, we need to tax wealth.
