New Economic Perspectives has the article Forget Taxes for Redistribution: What to do about Inequality.

And, as we know, Uncle Sam doesn’t need any stinking taxes to “pay for” jobs and income and healthcare and decent retirements for the poor. If you have unemployed resources, free lunches abound! Just put the resources to work, and you’ve got Bernstein’s wish list filled.

Forget taxes for redistribution. It will not work. It is a bad meme—especially in America. Once you let the greedy rich get their riches, trying to take them away is harder than prying guns out of the “cold dead hands” of NRA members.

Every time a progressive proposes a tax hike on the rich to pay for welfare, the Koch brothers giggle in gleeful delight. It is the surest way to prevent any policies that would help the poor. Tying tax hikes to sensible policy plays right into the greedy hands of the Conservatives and Regressives.

Did you ever hear a One-Percenter ask for a tax hike to bail out Wall Street? Come on, they are not that stupid.

What I’ve long argued is that we need “predistribution”, not “redistribution”.

This article is a continuation of a series that I first posted about in Randy Wray: What are Taxes For? The MMT Approach. Reading the article referred to in the previous post gives you more context and nuance than appears in the current article.  In this article, Wray goes to such an extreme to make his point, that you may not think about other aspects of his recommended policy mentioned in that previous article.

Wray says more about pre-distribution in a subsequent article Pre-distribution or redistribution? The Piketty moment, the Democrats, and the oncoming elections (Guest Post).  Again, Wray’s rant might cloud what he is saying.