In the small college town within commuting distance of a big city where I grew up sixty years ago, income inequality was not starkly apparent. Clearly the children of the professional and managerial class had slightly bigger, newer houses and their parents more money in the bank than the sons and daughters of working-class parents who learned to drive a Chevy rather than a Buick.

Still, the doctor lived two blocks from us, the lawyer equally nearby, and even the Sohio executive in a faux Italian villa from the gilded age spent all his spare time up a ladder replacing the rotting eaves. We kids sat in the same classrooms, played on the same sports teams, and took the same SATs.

Half a century on, the wealth gap has widened noticeably between the gated community crowd and the wage earners struggling to get by in crumbling neighborhoods. Many factors are at work, including the migration of manufacturing abroad and the concomitant decline of union wages, but two economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman in the new book, “The Triumph of Injustice,” place much of the blame elsewhere.

They argue that the increasing divide between the have-a-lots and the have-less-and-lesses is homemade and the result of conscious political decisions, not economic forces that cannot be controlled.The jist is this. Thanks to policy starting from Reagan and continued through Clinton, a brace of Bushes to Obama and Trump, “for the first time in the past one hundred years, the working class — the fifty percent of Americans with the lowest incomes — today pays higher tax rates than billionaires.”

We all know the lion’s share of the Trump tax cut was a bonanza for people in his own tax bracket ot higher while leaving most Americans no better off. It was just the latest whittling down of top rates. This is hardly surprising. The donor class that can afford to pick politicians by their financial support, to influence elections through their contributions, and to lobby for legislation to suit their needs inevitably wins the spoils. The 91% are outgunned in this fight.

As a result, the structure of our tax system works against the average wage earner. not only can top earners and corporations avail themselves of tax breaks written into law at their behest, but they spend a tiny portion of their wealth on the most regressive taxes — consumption taxes like the sales tax— that hit working class taxpayers hard.

Then there’s the payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. It makes up a substantial portion of the tax bite for working and middle class taxpayers. For example, the bottom 50% of income earners pay about 24% of their income in taxes, but 80% of those taxes are for consumption and the payroll tax. The income tax is a relatively small burden on them because their income is small.

For middle class taxpayers who make up the next 40% of the people, income taxes loom larger but still account for less than 50% of their tax liability. They too pay more in consumption taxes and the payroll tax.

The top earners pay a larger percentage of their taxes on income, but far less than in the past. But they also pay a smaller percentage of their tax on consumption or on the payroll tax. This is because the payroll tax is levied only on the first $118,000 earned. Thus, the lowest 50% of earners pay 11% in their income to fund Social Security and Medicare. The top one percent pay less than one percent of their income.

The way back to a society that is less glaringly unequal is clear. Make federal income taxes more progressive, as they were from their inception in 1913 to the beginning of the tax cutting binge with Reagan in 1981. At the same time, stop capping the payroll tax. Allow all income to be taxed, not just the first $118,000, giving the rich the opportunity to join fully in financing the social safety net for the elderly. At the state and local level, an attempt is needed to make the consumption taxes less regressive, in order to place more of the burden for financing public services on those who can best afford it.

Will any of this happen? Not so longer as the 91% are relatively powerless to influence political decisions and the donor class can purchase the tax policy that most benefits them. The United States government really shouldn’t operate as if imitating a cynical song from “Cabaret.”

Money, Money, Money, Money
A mark a yen a buck or a pound
That clinking clanking clunking sound
Is all that makes the world go round.

A brief version of the Saez-Zucman case can be found in “How to Tax Our Way Back to Justice” in the New York Times of October 11.