Corporate Tax Cuts Increase Income Inequality

North Star would like to thank Professor Louis Johnston of the College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University for critiquing earlier drafts of this article.   Conservatives typically argue that the benefit of corporate tax cuts will trickle down to workers in...

Estate Taxes in the Age of Inequality

Income and wealth inequality has accelerated in recent decades; at the same time, reliance on the progressive estate tax as a state revenue source has waned. Certainly, the decline of the estate tax is not the only—or even a primary—cause for the increase in...

Income Inequality, Tax Regressivity are Worse Than We Thought

There has long been convincing evidence—both at the state and national levels—that income inequality has accelerated in recent decades, with an increasing share of wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Extreme income inequality—coupled with stagnant or...

Income Inequality Continues to Escalate

Last summer, two separate North Star articles (published on July 18 and August 29) explored the growth in U.S. and Minnesota income inequality since the 1970s and 1980s. While recent data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed significant income growth in 2015, income...

Post-Great Recession, Rich Get Richer and Poor Get Poorer

We’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that average U.S. and Minnesota incomes increased from 2014 to 2015. Further good news for Minnesotans is that income growth among each of the Gopher State’s six income groups outperformed the...