A prescient report on income inequality

When I saw the obituary of journalist Donald Barlett, who died earlier this month at the age of 88, my immediate thought was “Barlett and Steele.” I recognized Barlett and (James) Steele as inseparable surnames, like Woodward and Bernstein, titans in the golden age of investigative journalism.

Beginning in the 1970s, Barlett and Steele won Pulitzers for decades for The Philadelphia Inquirer, exposing official corruption in health care, housing and criminal justice. But their most lasting achievement, one that resonated loudly through the years until this political moment, was a nine-part series on economic inequality that they published in 1991. “America: What Went Wrong?” became a bestseller and topped The New York Times list for more than six months. It chronicles the betrayal of the middle class by corporate interests and their eager minions in Washington, and more than thirty years later it helps explain the enduring appeal of Donald Trump’s performative populism.

With readable graphs and human stories, the series captured the steady erosion of middle-class support starting around 1980. It showed how the tax burden was lifted from the wealthy and placed on workers, how reliable pensions were traded for 401( k) plans. , how wages stagnated while CEO pay ballooned, how private equity firms bought local companies with stable revenues and dismantled them for parts. “The people in Washington who write the complex web of rules by which the economy functions have rigged the game to favor the privileged, the powerful, and the influential,” they wrote.

The series struck a chord much deeper than anyone expected. People lined up outside the Inquirer offices to get their hands on reprints. Presidential candidates Bill Clinton and Ross Perot prominently praised the book on the 1992 campaign trail—although when Clinton became president, his neoliberal policies on trade and deregulation blithely ignored the book’s warnings.

In fact, many of the inequities that Barlett and Steele highlighted have only gotten worse. In my 1992 edition, a graph shows that the share of U.S. income taxes paid by corporations fell from 39 percent in the 1950s to 17 percent in the late 1980s. Today, corporations’ share of income tax revenue is 6.5 percent. Another graph shows that the top 4 percent of the population earns as much as the bottom half. Today, the top 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. The middle class is heavily in debt. Barlett and Steele themselves were moved to update the book in 2020, with a new edition subtitled “The Crisis Deepens.”

The benefits of the information economy – and they have been plentiful – have largely gone to the connected and college-educated. But 62 percent of Americans do not have a bachelor’s degree. That disparity partly explains why the race for president is close, despite Trump’s obvious unfitness, his criminal convictions, his dangerous instability and his contempt for democracy. Every time he rallies the faithful, he exploits economic and social concerns by scapegoating immigrants and telling his supporters that the MAGA tribe is all they have. The sad irony, of course, is that Trump is far more plutocrat than populist, and cares little about anyone but himself and his rich friends.

Despite President Biden’s current unpopularity, the Biden-Harris administration has done more to shift actual economic benefits to the middle class than any team in recent history. The first president and vice president without an Ivy League degree since 1984 took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the slimmest of majorities in Congress to make massive public investments in job creation, domestic manufacturing, family support and the green economy . Healthcare coverage reached an all-time high and pharmaceutical companies were eventually forced to negotiate prices, saving Americans billions.

These Biden-Harris policies are steadily reorienting the manipulated economy. But it takes time, and all that will be in jeopardy if Trump is re-elected. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which he promises to expand and deepen, mainly benefited the very wealthy, widening the income gap and increasing the national debt by more than $1 trillion. Numerous economists say his proposed tariffs will sharply raise prices for American consumers and raise interest rates. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and his “concept of a plan” to replace it is a black box.

“America: What Went Wrong?” is a brilliant recent history, but it doesn’t have to be a prediction for the future. Voters will have a chance to put things right in just over two weeks.

Renée Loth’s column appears regularly in the Globe.