I'm Micahutrich, Associate Editor at Jackman.

Today is Tax Day, the last day for Americans to file their taxes.

Opposition to taxation is a long-standing gripe of the right out of a belief that rich people

deserve to keep their money because they earned it.

In other words, taxes impinge on their freedom.

Mike McCarthy argues this is the wrong way to think about both taxation and

about freedom. Mike has a chapter in the ABCs of socialism called Don't the Rich

deserve to keep most of their money. Mike is a sociologist at Marquette

University in Milwaukee and the author of dismantling solidarity, capitalist

politics and American pensions since the New Deal.

The ABCs of Socialism is available for only $5 on Jackovin's website.

You can get it by going to Jackovin mag.com slash store. And also be sure to listen to the other podcasts

in our ABC's series, which tackle questions

that include why do socialists talk so much about workers?

Doesn't human nature make socialism impossible? Is socialism a Western Eurocentric concept and isn't

the United States already kind of socialist? Here's Mike McCarthy. So Mike you don't have to

convince too many people that inequality is a problem in society. That's pretty well established.

Discussed at length through things like Occupy Wall Street, Bernie Sanders campaign.

But just remind us to start off with what

the inequality of taxation in the United States looks like right now.

I think it's important to start out by thinking a little bit about, you know, the richest 1% share of income and how that's kind of changed over time.

If you look at their share of pre-tax income, that's their income prior to taxation. Under Kennedy Johnson,

...