They claim to be "an authoritative magazine of liberal ideas, committed to a just society, an enriched democracy, and effective liberal politics." Let's check out their take on the problem widening income inequality, Bush's shifting of the tax burden, and how it effects local government services...

In order to afford half-way decent public services, property taxes in poor and working-class towns have to rise more than property taxes in wealthy places. But as they rise, a tax revolt is brewing, because these families just can't afford it. Yet if they don't pay more, they won't get better schools or other services.

Here's a radical suggestion: Abolish the property tax. Substitute another form of tax on wealth that's fairer. For example, instead of a local property tax, how about a national wealth tax? Say, one-tenth of one percent of someone's total wealth, per year. The proceeds would be sent back to towns to pay for schools and other services, according to a very simple formula -- the number of people living there. Simple ... and fair.

Robert B. Reich, "The Trickle-Down Tax Revolt", The American Prospect Online, Oct 27, 2004

Wicked awesome. You average out every concentrated city of the affluent and the ultra-rich and then give it back by population. The result means that in order for the wealthy in our world to keep their kids schools up to snuff, their roads as pothole-free, and their police departments as well-heeled, they'd have to fund everyone else's schools to the same extent.

In effect you're tapping into all the high quality (often white-flight) suburbs, where a few working and middle class families have traditionally made huge sacrafices to live "for the good schools," along with nationally-known places like Beverly Hills, Scottsdale and Palm Beach, as well as all the wealth that's sequestered away from local services in places like Aspen and the stock market and making it responsible for what goes on in everyday American life. That, my friend, is social justice. We're all in this together. Time to start acting like that: money where mouth is, dig?

The problematic part is setting up such a national program without being heavy-handed. I mean, if I had my druthers I might stick some standards for transparency on, an "open books" policy, and maybe some requrement about keeping services Public (e.g. accesible to all). Anything more than that would start to queer^* the deal, especially if you get into specific restrictions on how states spent their share of the national wealth tax, and to what extent they were allowed to levy additional taxes to support additonal services. That then leads back to affluent communities adding money to their own area, but on some level that's something that's unjust to prohibit. The trick is passing a hefty enough wealth tax to cover the meat and potatoes of local services regardless, which means negotiating it with the states so that property taxes are simultaniously lowered.

There are some good philosophical underpinnings here, relating to the modern realities of highly mobile labor, declining heavy manufacturing, the need to nurture markets, the ascendent importance of local government, etc. And hell, it's a Big Idea. If the Republicans are going to push scrapping the income tax in favor of a consumption tax -- which is an awfully regressive idea -- we have to push back with something equivalently outsized. A wealth tax makes a lot of sense.

^* The verb "to queer" is the appropraite term here, and doesn't have anything to do with homosexuality.