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Leading Democrats Differ Sharply on Ways to Close 'Wealth Gap'

Rob Garver

   WASHINGTON - In the cacophonous race for the Democratic presidential
   nomination, where two dozen candidates face a daily struggle to make
   themselves heard, many are promoting plans to tackle income and wealth
   inequality in the United States. It's a topic that both addresses a
   real issue confronting the country, and allows Democrats to contrast
   their policies to those of U.S. President Donald Trump, whose signature
   tax bill funneled vast amounts of money to the wealthiest Americans
   while offering only modest benefits to lower income taxpayers.

   It's an issue tailor-made for stump speeches, with eye popping
   statistics that can leave a candidate's supporters frothing for some
   sort of action to be taken.

   Earlier this year, Elise Gould, a senior economist with the
   non-partisan Economic Policy Institute, testified to the House Ways and
   Means Committee that "the top 1 percent of household income has grown
   229 percent since 1979, far in excess of the slower 46 percent
   growth--just 1.0 percent annualized growth--for the bottom 90 percent
   of households."

   If anything, the wealth gap has become even more pronounced than the
   income gap. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the three
   richest people in the U.S., Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet
   together hold more wealth than the bottom 50 percent of the country's
   population combined. Together, the richest 5% of Americans hold
   two-thirds of the country's wealth.

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