Democracynow.org: The rigging of our tax system.

“Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill)”

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston joins us to talk about his new book, “Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill).” Johnston reveals how government subsidies and new regulations have quietly funneled money from the poor and the middle class to the rich and politically connected.

As voters head to the polls in Nevada and South Carolina Saturday, the economy remains one of the top issues for voters across party lines.

Today, we are going to spend the rest of the hour examining the growing income gap in the United States.

Economic figures show that in 2005, the wealthiest 0.1% of the country’s population had nearly as much income as all 150 million Americans who make up the economic lower half of the country. Of each dollar people earned in 2005, the top 10 percent got 48.5 cents – the highest percentage since 1929, just before the Great Depression.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Cay Johnston has been closely tracking the nation’s income gap in the pages of the New York Times. In 2004 he published the best-selling book “Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich–and Cheat Everybody Else.”

David Cay Johnston has just published a new book. It is titled “Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill).” He joins us from Rochester New York.

David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist for the New York Times. His latest book is titled “Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves At Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill). He is also author of the best-selling book "Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else.”