functions. As inequality has widened, the means America once used to temper it—progressive income taxes, good public schools, trade unions that bargain for higher wages—have eroded. As the risks of sudden loss

The distinguished Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati argues that computerization is the main cause behind the two-decades-long stagnation of middle-class wages.

Since 1962, the effective tax rate for poor, working-class, and middle-class Americans has increased, while it has decreased for the top 10 percent of income earners, and particularly for the richest among us. This is absurd. We should bump up the top marginal tax rate—perhaps to 50 percent, as it was in 1986; or 70 percent, as it was in 1975—and