An UNMUTED Dialogue - TAX THE RICH (?)
DOORS OPEN AT 7, SHOW STARTS AT 7:30
Will Taxing the Rich Fix America’s Affordability Crisis?
Everyone agrees America is too expensive. Rent is brutal. Childcare is brutal. Groceries are brutal. Health care is brutal. The country that used to promise a middle-class life now feels like it’s daring normal people to fall behind.
So what do we do about it?
For the left, the answer is obvious: America has more than enough wealth. The problem is that too much of it is concentrated at the top, while everyone else pays the price. If billionaires, corporations, and the wealthiest households have benefited the most from the American economy, they should pay more to make the country livable for the people who keep it running.
For the right, that answer is dangerously incomplete: Washington already spends enormous amounts of money, and somehow life keeps getting less affordable. Higher taxes may sound like justice, but if the money flows into the same political class, agencies, contractors, universities, consultants, and nonprofit machinery that helped create the crisis, what actually changes?
Two populists. Two very different answers. One question every American feels in their bank account.
Troy Olson is Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club, a post-9/11 Army veteran, lawyer-by-training, writer, and legislative director in the New York City Council. He is also co-author of The Emerging Populist Majority, which argues that a new populist coalition is reshaping American politics. If you want to understand the right-populist case against America's progressive tax-and-spend model, he’s your guy.
Carlos Calzadilla-Palacio is a progressive organizer and content creator. He is the founder of Disrupt, a national youth-led post-partisan movement focused on taking back the American Dream and countering Turning Point USA. If you want to understand the case for confronting concentrated wealth and corporate power, he’s the person to ask.
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