'Raise My Taxes,' Says This Detroit-Bred Billionaire, Who Gets The Harm Of Income Inequality

"For most people, our system isn’t working," writes a well-known Michigan State grad and major benefactor who has done quite well under our system.

Eli Broad, a billionaire industrialist raised in Detroit by immigrant parents, has a provocative guest column in The New York Times. Under the headline "I'm in the 1 Percent. Please, Raise My Taxes," he discusses "the deep inequities preventing most Americans — the factory workers and farmers, entrepreneurs and electricians, teachers, nurses and small-business owners — from the basic prosperity we call the American dream."

It's time for those of us with great wealth to commit to reducing income inequality, starting with the demand to be taxed at a higher rate than everyone else. . . .

I have watched my wealth grow exponentially thanks to federal policies that have cut my tax rates while wages for regular people have stagnated and poverty rates have increased.

So when the Democratic candidates take the stage this week for their first debate, I invite fellow members of the 1 percent to join me in demanding that they engage in a robust discussion of how we can strengthen a post-Trump America by reforming our tax code.

Here's what great wealth means in his case: Broad (pronounced BRO-de) is 233rd on the global Forbes List with an estimated net worth of $6.7 billion -- making him the 78th wealthiest American.

The 86-year-old describes himself in The Times as "the child of Jewish immigrants from Lithuania who came here with little more than an oversize belief in what America could offer."

Read more: http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/22667/raise_my_taxes_says_this_detroit-bred_billionaire_who_gets_the_harm_of_income_inequality