We in America have been blessed by geniuses. Our Forefathers. Who believed in a few critical principles that I so embraced when I learned about them. All men are created equal. These idealistic views of America meant so much to me. You said these words to David Westin on the July 5, 2024 episode of Wall Street Week. Though that interview closed on a positive note, its assessment of America’s present circumstances was anything but optimistic. It was rather quite grim. Noting that 60% of Americans are so insecure they struggle to put food on the table, you suggested that America’s

Three key points emerged from your lively discussion with Jon Stewart on September 10, 2024, where you discussed your work on your project USAFacts: First, that the twin pillars of America are capitalism and democracy; Second, that some form of government intervention is necessary to maintain a balanced and sustainable relationship between these two pillars; and Third, that some combination of taxes and incentives are the appropriate form of intervention. A fourth point not elaborated, but which Mr. Stewart has elsewhere addressed, concerns the political consequences which arise when government fails to strike the proper balance between capitalism and democracy.

Our last letter considered how middle-class primacy is the sine qua non for legitimate popular government, summarizing the role of the middle class in political society as follows: Where the middle class prevails, the people are too busy for demagogues, too optimistic for faction, too traditional for radical ideas, too independent for patronage, and too moderate for extremism. In the summary of Operation Abigail, enclosed with this letter, we outline a single, simple, historically-informed political intervention derived from the Classical anthropology contained in our last letter that, if duly enforced, would safeguard middle-class households from every conceivable economic force that could

Although America has progressed in many ways since 1968, it has regressed in the most important: the health of its middle class. This isn’t open for honest debate. It’s numerical fact, demonstrable in mathematical terms. While we should recognize the progress our country has made – the advancements in science and technology, the improvement of capitalism, a general intolerance of overt sexism and racism – we should also remember that none of them guarantee the middle-class foundation upon which our republican experiment in government always depended. That requires the broad, productive, and sustainable diffusion of wealth within the body politic.

The moderate grip with which you’ve held the reins of power, and the causes which compelled you to relax it altogether, earn you an affectionate memory among the characters of republican history. Your example is particularly striking given our own republic’s place in that history: The long period of prosperity, stability, and hegemony we’ve enjoyed under the Pax Americana leave us no yoke of foreign oppression to overthrow, no new government to establish, no new continent to explore, and no plutocrat-slaveholder army to meet on the battlefield. Though there remain ceilings to be broken – perhaps most conspicuously the elimination of

Reference is made to your recent interview with David Brooks, the transcript of which was published in The New York Times as the July 1, 2024 op-ed My Unsettling Interview with Steve Bannon. While we certainly don’t agree with all your comments, we agree with these two: First, that “We’re fighting for a republic.” And second, that to prevail, “You’ve got to not just reallocate income, you have to reallocate assets. People have to have a stake in this.” We write you today to solicit your consideration of an economic plan designed to serve both objectives: To productively de-concentrate wealth in

“Every American needs to read this,” Elizabeth Warren said of your 2017 book The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution. We agree. Your research in parts I and II have supplemented our own work on the question to which we are devoted, which is fast becoming existential for our form of government: shall Americans govern themselves as a democratic-republic, or be ruled by insatiable plutocrats or populist demagogues? We both hail from that political anthropology which places the answer to that question within in the realm of political economy. The principal lesson in the history of republican government is that the diffusion

Our last letter to you diagnosed the cause of America’s political distress. We therein concluded that the most virulent symptoms suffered by the body politic – pessimism, anxiety, polarization, tribalism, anger, demagoguery, and authoritarianism – are ultimately attributable to the middling insecurity arising from extreme wealth concentration. We now undertake to prescribe a cure for extreme wealth concentration – a disease which no political society has ever cured and which if allowed to naturally progress will prove mortal to our republican form of government. Although no society has yet corrected that disease, our last letter closed mentioning perhaps the nearest mankind

You’ve made and will surely continue to make essential contributions to a discussion in which most of mankind has never had any real voice: By what form of regime shall we be governed? The debate goes back at least twenty-five centuries, to an argument among three Persian nobles over whether they would be ruled as a monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, and if John Adams is to be believed, political science has not advanced much since. We write you now to endorse two of your conclusions of importance to this discussion, while taking the liberty to explicitly link them to a

You joke and your audience laughs at events that are more horrifying than humorous to any serious student of history. Yet your comedic talent and fame couldn’t be put to a greater use than to help focus our polarized nation’s attention on the rising danger to our experiment in popular government. Nor has any project lent greater strength to the adage that the most serious things are said in jest. For what could be more serious than the question you’ve lately taken up, which is: Will we preserve the democratic-republican model of government established by our Founding Fathers? Or will our

We commend your 2020 Working Paper Trends in Income From 1975 to 2018, and we credit Civic Ventures’ interview of Dr. Price for raising it to our attention. The astonishing magnitude of the problem they reveal – and the headwinds younger generations now face – may perhaps be most effectively communicated to ordinary Americans with a little vignette explaining how, over the past 50 years, they’ve been deprived of an amount of income so massive that it exceeds the entire wealth of every other nation on Earth except China: In the Second World War, America and her allies defeated

In giving your account of January 6, you cited George Washington’s voluntary relinquishment of power as “one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world.” But though you quoted John Trumbull’s words, you omitted the story behind them. Trumbull said them to President James Madison. Congress had just commissioned Trumbull to execute four paintings in the national Capitol celebrating the foundation of our republic. The choice of subjects was left to Madison, who summoned Trumbull to the White House to discuss the matter. Upon briefly considering Trumbull’s words above, Madison, Father of the Constitution and a devout student

In Stephen Spielberg’s 1997 movie Amistad, John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins) famously said “in court, whoever tells the best story wins.” If only this were so in the realm of tax policy. But as your 2021 chat with Town Hall Seattle seemed to suggest, when it comes to tax policy, whoever writes the biggest checks wins. The quid pro quo which governs our tax system arises from the natural symbiosis existing between wealthy donors wishing to minimize their tax liability and ambitious candidates wishing to maximize their campaign funds. And so long as that bargain persists, the donor-candidate bond shall prevail

Although many folks are frustrated by the fact of your partisan neutrality, all should respect your reasons for it. And the greatest reason is, as far as we can tell, that your Christian faith prohibits you from casting aspersions and condemnations upon others. Your partisan neutrality does not, however, translate to political mootness. Touching on the themes of women’s dignity and equality, migrants and poverty, many of your songs convey an egalitarian, tolerant, and compassionate political disposition. But perhaps your most provocative political lyrics are found in your recent song World on Fire from your latest album, Rockstar. This song seems

The wisest founder of our republic once wrote that the best-known period of history covered the death of yours. Writing to you a hundred generations later, I fear that if we do not soon grasp the basic parallels in the causes which brought down Rome’s commonwealth and now threaten ours, we may have little hope of avoiding a similar fate. Many patriots tried to preserve the Roman Republic according to their understanding of fealty. The names of Gracchus and Brutus loom largest in my mind. No tragedy more than their failure could better teach us the fact that all euphoria that

Roughly one-fifth of America’s population were slaves at the moment of Independence, entitling their descendants a primal claim to America’s founding lineage, equal to any whose ancestors disembarked the Mayflower. Yet even 159 years after Abolition, countless millions of these descendants feel more alienated from the American Dream than those whose forebears later arrived by choice, making it understandable if any should decline to boast that heritage. History tells us how this wound was made. Economics tells us that the wound remains open. Ignorance daily pours fresh salt into it. And yet you, Mr. Walker, have told us not only how

By the time you earned your philosophy doctorate, you must have encountered Socrates’s saying: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And your own examination seems to have brought you some pain: wearing old clothes to conceal your wealth. Exiting the taxi a few blocks before your destination to be seen on foot. The warnings never to say anything about the family business. Your mother’s voice admonishing you to sit up straight when you do, as you prepared to call upon Congress to raise your own taxes. Witnessing the harm that extreme wealth concentration inflicts on our republic – the pessimism,