WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE

"Should the top tax rate be 73 percent?"
By Dylan Matthews
The Washington Post, November 27, 2012
"Most arguments about tax brackets in the United States are over a percentage point or two. Obama wants the top rate to rise 4.6 points to 39.6 percent; Republicans want it to stay at 35 percent..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"The Twinkie Manifesto"
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times, November 18, 2012
"Above all, the success of the postwar American economy demonstrates that, contrary to today’s conservative orthodoxy, you can have prosperity without demeaning workers and coddling the rich..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"Income Inequality May Take Toll on Growth"
By Annie Lowrey
The New York Times, October 16, 2012
"The concentration of income in the hands of the rich might not just mean a more unequal society, economists believe. It might mean less stable economic expansions and sluggish growth..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent"
By Chrystia Freeland
The New York Times, October 13, 2012
"The reality is that it is those at the top, particularly the tippy-top, of the economic pyramid who have been most effective at capturing government support — and at getting others to pay for it. Exhibit A is the bipartisan, $700 billion rescue of Wall Street in 2008. Exhibit B is the crony recovery..." Read more...

 

CONGRESSIONAL RESEARCH SERVICE REPORT

"Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the Top Tax Rates Since 1945"
By Thomas L. Hungerford
The Congressional Research Service, September 14, 2012
"Analysis of such data suggests the reduction in the top tax rates have had little association with saving, investment, or productivity growth. However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution..." Read more...

 

DAILY CALIFORNIAN ARTICLE

"Off the beat: Will Politify work?"
By Jason Willick
The Daily Californian, August 8, 2012
"Politify describes itself as “a platform that provides Americans with data-backed financial projections of political scenarios”..." Read more...

 

THE NEW REPUBLIC ARTICLE

"You Are Probably Worse Off Than You Were Four Years Ago"
By Timothy Noah
The New Republic, August 24, 2012
"In March, the Berkeley economist Emmanuel Saez shocked a lot of people by calculating that during the first year of the recovery from the 2007-2009 recession, incomes for the top one percent grew by 11.6 percent while incomes for the bottom 99 percent grew a mere 0.2 percent..." Read more...

 

ECONOMIST ARTICLE

"Zero-sum debate"
The Economist, May 5, 2012
"The more interesting fight is going on within economics. For a generation, the profession’s message on capital taxes has been simple: the lower the better..." Read more...

 

WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE

"Diamond and Saez: High Tax Rates Won't Slow Growth"
By Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez
The Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2012
"We're not close to the top of the Laffer Curve. Raising tax rates is part of a sensible deficit reduction strategy..." Read more...

 

WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE

"A rich guy’s case for higher taxes"
By Ezra Klein
The Washington Post, April 16, 2012
"“I was a kid in the 1950s,” says David Levine. “And the whole time, the top marginal tax rate was 87 percent. Not many people paid that much. Only three baseball players — Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Willie Mays — got there. But it was 87 percent."..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"For Two Economists, the Buffett Rule Is Just a Start"
By Annie Lowrey
The New York Times, April 16, 2012
"Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have spent the last decade tracking the incomes of the poor, the middle class and the rich in countries across the world..." Read more...
 

NEW YORKER ARTICLE

"Inequality 101: The Picket Fence and the Staircase"
By John Cassidy
The New Yorker, April 12, 2012
"However you dice the numbers, the basic staircase pattern remains. Households in the upper parts of the distribution have seen their incomes grow a lot faster than poor and middle-income households..." Read more...

 

NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL

"The Buffet Rule: A Basic Principle of Tax Fairness"
The White House, April, 2012
"In a recent paper, Nobel-prize winning economist Peter Diamond and renowned tax economist Emmanuel Saez note the relatively greater ability of high income taxpayers to avoid taxes, and argue that “the natural policy response should be to close tax avoidance opportunities.”..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"The Case for Raising Top Tax Rates"
By Eduardo Porter
The New York Times, March 27, 2012
"A growing body of research suggests not only that the government could raise much more revenue by sharply raising the top tax rates paid by the richest Americans, but it could do so without slowing economic growth..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"The Rich Get Even Richer"
By Steven Rattner
The New York Times, March 25, 2012
"New statistics show an ever-more-startling divergence between the fortunes of the wealthy and everybody else — and the desperate need to address this wrenching problem..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"That Wishful Thinking About Tax Rates"
By Christina D. Romer
The New York Times, March 17, 2012
"At least since Calvin Coolidge, politicians have trumpeted the supply-side benefits of cutting marginal income tax rates. Lower rates will unleash economic growth and the cuts will largely pay for themselves — or so it’s often said..." Read more...

 

REUTERS ARTICLE

"The richest get richer"
By David Cay Johnston
Reuters, March 15, 2012
"The aftermaths of the Great Recession and the Great Depression produced sharply different changes in U.S. incomes..." Read more...

 

HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE

"The Problem With U.S. Inequality"
By Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson
Huffington Post, March 11, 2012
"Economic inequality often comes bundled with inequality of opportunity and political inequality..." Read more...

 

ECONOMIST ARTICLE

"Inequality: The gap widens, again"
The Economist, March 10, 2012
"Excluding capital gains, the top 10% of earners captured a near-record share of income in 2010. More increases may follow..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"A U.S. Recovery, but Only for the 1 Percent"
By Chrystia Freeland
The New York Times, March 8, 2012
"Mr. Saez shows that while the financial crisis hurt those at the top more than anyone else — the income of the 1 percent plummeted 36.3 percent between 2007 and 2009, compared with an overall average fall of 17.4 percent — their recovery has been spectacular, while everyone else has languished..." Read more...

 

TIME ARTICLE

"How Much Do Income Taxes Affect Our Behavior?"
By Christopher Matthews
TIME, March 5, 2012
"A working paper issued in February by the National Bureau of Economic Research and co-written by the former chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer, and her husband David, suggests that tax rates have a much lower effect on investing and labor decisions than previously thought..." Read more...

 

NEW REPUBLIC ARTICLE

"The One Percent Bounce Back"
By Timothy Noah
The New Republic, March 4, 2012
"In the first year of the recovery, 93 percent of all income gains went to the top one percent..." Read more...

 

CNN MONEY ARTICLE

"A new day for the minimum wage?"
By Elizabeth G. Olson
CNN Money, January 24, 2012
"This election season, influential Republicans are straying from party orthodoxy and are open to raising the minimum wage. But such a boost would not be a quick fix for a decade of stagnating wages..." Read more...

 

ECONOMIST ARTICLE

"Who exactly are the 1%?"
The Economist, January 21, 2012
"The very rich in America increasingly work in finance, marry each other and care passionately about politics..." Read more...

 

ECONOMIST ARTICLE

"Soak or swim: How to raise the highest rates without doing too much damage"
The Economist, January 21, 2012
"Does raising taxes on those who are doing well economically stifle growth and slow down the recovery?..." Read more...

 

CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ARTICLE

"The Rise and Consequences of Inequality"
By Alan Krueger
Center for American Progress, January 12, 2012
"Growing inequality and a shrinking middle class are at the root of our economic problems..." Read more...

 

CNN ARTICLE

"How inequality damages economies"
By Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry
CNN, January 9, 2012
"Countries with high inequality are far more likely to fall into financial crisis and far less likely to sustain economic growth..." Read more...

 

VOX ARTICLE

"Taxing the 1%: Why the top tax rate could be over 80%"
By Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Stefanie Stantcheva
Vox, December 8, 2011
"Rich countries have all grown at roughly the same rate over the past 30 years – in spite of huge variations in tax policies..." Read more...

 

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SPEECH IN KANSAS

"Text: Obama's Speech in Kansas"
The New York Times, December 6, 2011
"The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her workers now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade, the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about six percent..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"Raising Taxes on the Rich: Not Whether, but How"
By Bruce Bartlett
The New York Times, December 6, 2011
"It is no longer possible to deny that there has been a sharp rise in the income and wealth of the ultra-rich while everyone else’s income has stagnated..." Read more...

 

THE INDEPENDENT ARTICLE

"Making the rich pay the tax they owe is one way to achieve fairness"
By Andreas Whittam Smith
The Independent, November 24, 2011
"What are people angry about? The deepening recession? Yes. The high level of youth unemployment? Yes. The excesses of the bankers? Yes. But more than anything, I believe, people are rattled by the widening gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots"..." Read more...

 

PROJECT SYNDICATE ARTICLE

"The 70% Solution"
By J. Bradford DeLong
Project Syndicate, November 30, 2011
"The superrich command and control so many resources that they are effectively satiated: increasing or decreasing how much wealth they have has no effect on their happiness..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"Where the One Percent Fit in the Hierarchy of Income"
By Ford Fessenden and Alan McLean
New York Times, October 28, 2011
"The Occupy Wall Street protests have set off an enduring conversation in the city concerning what has come to be known as the 99 percent..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"The Paradox of the New Elite"
By Alexander Stille
New York Times, October 22, 2011
"Inequality has traditionally been acceptable to Americans if accompanied by mobility. But most recent studies of economic mobility indicate that it is getting even harder for people to jump from one economic class to another..." Read more...

 

FOREIGN POLICY ARTICLE

"The World's 99 Percent"
By Uri Friedman
Foreign Policy, October 18, 2011
"The World Top Incomes Database indicates that the top 1 percent of American earners receive about a fifth of the country's income..." Read more...

 

BLOOMBERG ARTICLE

"Growing Income Gap May Leave U.S. More Vulnerable to Crisis"
By David J. Lynch
Bloomberg, October 13, 2011
"A widening gap between rich and poor is reshaping the U.S. economy, leaving it more vulnerable to recurring financial crises and less likely to generate enduring expansions..." Read more...

 

BERKELEY NEWS CENTER ARTICLE

"Wall Street protests echo researcher’s findings on growing income gap"
By Kathleen Maclay
UC Berkeley News Center, October 7, 2011
"Saez and French economist Thomas Piketty have been generating steady academic, governmental and public attention after reporting (in 2008) that from 2002 to 2007, the top 1 percent of American households accounted for about two-thirds of all income gains..." Read more...

 

SLATE MAGAZINE ARTICLE

"The Economics of Occupy Wall Street"
By Annie Lowrey
Slate Magazine, October 5, 2011
"One thing is inarguably true: The 99 percent don’t have 99 percent of anything, money-wise, in the United States. But just how bad is the skew toward the top 1 percent?..." Read more...

 

HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE

"Class Warfare?"
By Bruce Ackerman
Huffington Post, September 27, 2011
"During the boom between 1993 and 2008, the top one percent took more than half of the total increase in national income..." Read more...

 

ECONOMIST ARTICLE

"Gurgaon grief"
The Economist, September 24, 2011
"The most striking feature of rising wage dispersion is not the wider gap between the skilled and unskilled but the bigger slice that goes to a tiny elite..." Read more...

 

ECONOMIST ARTICLE

"Diving into the rich pool"
The Economist, September 24, 2011
"This week Barack Obama proposed paying for new stimulus measures and deficit cuts by reforming the tax system to ensure that millionaires do not pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families..." Read more...

 

AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND ARTICLE

"New Census Data Show Middle Class Continues to Struggle"
By David Madland, Karla Walter, Nick Bunker
American Progress Action Fund, September 13, 2011
"The middle class received close to the smallest share of the nation’s income it ever has since this data was first collected, according to Census data released today..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"The Limping Middle Class"
By Robert B. Reich
New York Times, September 3, 2011
"The economy won’t really bounce back until America’s surge toward inequality is reversed..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"What Does 'Economic Growth' Mean for Americans?"
By Uwe E. Reinhardt
New York Times, September 2, 2011
"As a nation we worship a deity called economic growth..." Read more...

 

HARVARD MAGAZINE ARTICLE

"Sciences Still Young"
By Edward L. Glaeser
Harvard Magazine, August, 2011
"The youth of the social sciences is exciting: progress is still being made at a ferocious pace, and the contours of these fields are rapidly evolving..." Read more...

 

WALL STREET JOURNAL ARTICLE

"Five False Premises about Economic Recovery"
By Ha-Joon Chang
Wall Street Journal, August 7, 2011
"Figuratively speaking, the Americans have been paying their “wealth creators” two to three times more than before to get the same outcome..." Read more...

 

THE ATLANTIC ARTICLE

"Can the Middle Class Be Saved?"
By Don Peck
The Atlantic, August, 2011
"Income inequality usually shrinks during a recession, but in the Great Recession, it didn’t. From 2007 to 2009, the most-recent years for which data are available, it widened a little..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"What Happened to Obama?"
By Drew Westen
New York Times, August 6, 2011
"The stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be..." Read more...

 

THE ATLANTIC ARTICLE

"The Case for Making Wages Public: Better Pay, Better Workers"
By Daniel Indiviglio
The Atlantic, July 20, 2011
"Are you paid fairly? Do coworkers at an your level make more or less money than you do? How much would you make if you got a promotion? If you took a job with a competing company, would you make more money?..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"Raising Taxes vs. Cutting Spending"
By Christina Romer
New York Times, July 2, 2011
"Dealing with our nation’s gaping budget deficit is going to hurt. So here is a question for policy makers: What would hurt more, raising taxes or reducing spending?..." Read more...

 

WILSON QUARTERLY ARTICLE

"Comparing the Tippy Tops"
Wilson Quarterly, Summer, 2011
"The ebb and flow of income inequality over the last century is a well-examined feature of the U.S. economy..." Read more...

 

WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE

"With executive pay, rich pull away from rest of America"
By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post, June 18, 2011
"The evolution of executive grandeur — from very comfortable to jet-setting — reflects one of the primary reasons that the gap between those with the highest incomes and everyone else is widening..." Read more...

 

AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND ARTICLE

"An Increased Minimum Wage Is Good Policy Even During Hard Times"
By T. William Lester, David Madland, and Nick Bunker
Center for American Progress Action Fund, June 7, 2011
"There is also a growing consensus among economists and academics that raising the minimum wage does not kill jobs even during periods of recession..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"A Budget Without Core Purposes, Taxation Without Compassion"
By Eduardo Porter
New York Times, May 22, 2011
"President Obama trusts America’s generous and compassionate nature, that our rugged individualism is tempered by a belief that we’re all connected..." Read more...

 

C-SPAN VIDEO

"Economic Growth and Equality"
Center for American Progress
C-SPAN, April 22, 2011
"The Center for American Progress held a forum on economic growth and equality..." Read more...

 

MILLER-McCUNE ARTICLE

"In Tax Debate, Lessons from Ronaldinho and Beckham"
By Lindsey McCormack
Miller-McCune, April 7, 2011
"How high can you tax the rich before they decide to pack up and move somewhere cheaper?..." Read more...

 

VANITY FAIR ARTICLE

"Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%"
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
Vanity Fair Magazine, May 2011
"An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul..." Read more...

 

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK ARTICLE

"Why Teachers and Their Critics are Failing"
By Chris Farrell
Bloomberg Businessweek, March 1, 2011
"It's wrong to demonize teachers, but they and their unions must embrace radical change to get the public to support efforts to recruit top talent..." Read more...

 

THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR ARTICLE

"Do tax rates affect where people live? Ask a soccer star."
By Laurent Belsie
The Christian Science Monitor, March 11, 2011
"Europe’s soccer stars have an important message for Americans: Tax rates..." Read more...

 

ECONOMIC POLICY INSTITUTE

"The State of Working America"
February 2011
"When income grows, who gains?..." Read more...

 

THE ATLANTIC ARTICLE

"The Rise of the New Global Elite"
By Chrystia Freeland
The Atlantic, January/February 2011
"Today's super-rich are also different from yesterday's: more hardworking and meritocratic, but less connected to the nations that granted them opportunity..." Read more...

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"How Superstars’ Pay Stifles Everyone Else"
By Eduardo Porter
New York Times, December 25, 2010
"CAPITALISM relies on inequality. Like differences in other prices, pay disparities steer resources in this case, people to where they would be most productively employed...." Read more...

SLATE ARTICLE

" Obama's War on Inequality "
By Jacob Weisberg
Slate Magazine, December 26, 2010
"Wasn't reversing the decades-long trend toward income inequality supposed to be the big theme of the Obama administration?..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"College, Jobs and Inequality"
Editorial
New York Times, December 13, 2010
"As a cure for unemployment or as a way to narrow the chasm between the rich and everyone else, “more college” is a too-easy answer..." Read more...

SLATE ARTICLE

" Forget Tax Simplification "
By Timothy Noah
Slate Magazine, November 18, 2010
"What America needs is more tax brackets, not fewer..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"A Hedge Fund Republic?"
By Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times, November 17, 2010
"At a time of such stunning inequality, should Congress put priority on spending $700 billion on extending the Bush tax cuts to those with incomes above $250,000 a year? ..." Read more...

 

REUTERS ARTICLE

"Special Report: The haves, the have-nots and the dreamless dead"
By Emily Kaiser
Reuters, October 22, 2010
"In 2007, when the world was on the brink of financial crisis, U.S. income inequality hit its highest mark since 1928, just before the Great Depression.." Read more...

 

 

BLOOMBERG ARTICLE

"Obama's Tax Pitch: The Income Gap That Millionaires Should Fill"
By Rebecca Christie
Bloomberg, October 5, 2010
"President Barack Obama has shifted his central argument against the Bush-era tax cuts to make the income gap as much a voter concern as the budget gap..." Read more...

SLATE MAGAZINE ARTICLE

"The Great Divergence"
By Timothy Noah
Slate Magazine, September 2010
"Today, the richest 1 percent account for 24 percent of the nation's income. What caused this to happen? Over the next two weeks, I'll try to answer that question by looking at all potential explanations..." Read more...

 

SLATE MAGAZINE ARTICLE

"How Much Do You Think He Makes? "
By Ray Fisman
Slate Magazine, September 28, 2010
"The anxiety and discontent caused by previously private salaries being revealed is an office story line common enough that it's been dramatized in episodes of The Office and Mad Men. It's now also been carefully analyzed in a newly released study by a group of Berkeley and Princeton researchers" Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

"What the Rich Don't Need "
By Richard Thaler
The New York Times, September 25, 2010
""Want to give affluent households a present worth $700 billion over the next decade? In a period of high unemployment and fiscal austerity, this idea may seem laughable. Amazingly, though, it is getting traction in Washington."" Read more...

U.S. CONGRESS JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE REPORT

"Income Inequality and the Great Recession"
U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee
September 2010
"Over the past three decades, income inequality has grown dramatically. After remaining relatively constant for much of the post -war era, the share of total income accrued by the wealthiest 10 percent of households jumped from 34.6 percent in 1980 to 48.2 percent in 2008..." Read more...

 

NEW YORK TIMES EDITIORIAL

"How to End the Great Recession "
By Robert B. Reich
New York Times, September 2, 2010
Where have all the economic gains gone? Mostly to the top. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty examined tax returns from 1913 to 2008. They discovered an interesting pattern. In the late 1970s, the richest 1 percent of American families took in about 9 percent of the nation’s total income; by 2007, the top 1 percent took in 23.5 percent of total income. Read more...

NEW YORKER MAGAZINE ARTICLE

"Soak the Very, Very Rich"
By James Surowiecki
The New Yorker, August 16, 2010
The fight on Capitol Hill over whether to extend the Bush tax cuts is about many things: deficit reduction, economic stimulus, supply-side ideology. But at its core is a simple question: who counts as rich? Read more...

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS KINDERGARTEN STUDY

"The Case for $320,000 Kindergarten Teachers"
By David Leonhardt
New York Times, July 27, 2010
How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project STAR
Link to research findings PDF
Raj Chetty, Harvard
John N. Friedman, Harvard
Nathaniel Hilger, Harvard
Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley
Diane Schanzenbach, Northwestern
Danny Yagan, Harvard