How to Tax the Rich—And Live Happily Ever After

Sharpening inequality, rocketing “financial partnership” income, and obscene levels of executive “compensation” make all the more unacceptable the accompanying massacre of job-related entitlements to health care and pensions. Mounting foreclosures, bankruptcies, and threats to employment itself have led to a deepening and widespread sense of insecurity. Many of these insecurities affect the middle class as much as the poor.

One response has been outbreaks of economic populism. Unfortunately, some populists aim at the wrong target and fail to press the most important measures of redress. For example, some attack Hispanics rather than a tax system that the corporations and the rich evade almost at will. A system that fails t...