This is the second installment in an editorial series called The Changing Face of Minnesota. This year, the ECM Publishers Editorial Board is examining demographic changes and disparities in Minnesota that center around race, wealth, age, region and employment.
Years before “the 1 percent” was coined as an invective against deeply uneven U.S. wealth distribution, a Minnesota congressman was tilting his sword at the problem.broadstreet.zone(48036);
The late Martin Sabo, a Minneapolis Democrat, repeatedly introduced a bill called the Income Equity Act to limit corporate tax deductions on executive salaries. His ambition, always thwarted, was to use the tax code to try to narrow the gap between sky-high executive salaries and those of the rank and file.
Sabo believed growing stratification was corrosive, a threat to upward mobility and social cohesion. “We all do better when we all do better,” said another politician of the era, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone.
Were they still alive,
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