President Trump's Tax Plan And Widening Income Inequality

The Trump administration announced its vision for a revamped U.S. tax code Wednesday.

"The economic plan under Trump will grow the economy and will create massive amounts of revenues --
trillions of dollars in additional revenues," said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The proposal could also add trillions of dollars to the deficit. It calls for reducing the number of individual income tax brackets down to three, slashing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, eliminating the estate tax, and doubling the standard deduction, which would essentially eliminate taxes on the first $24,000 a couple earns.

You've probably heard of that quotation oft attributed to the great Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society."

So what version of a civilized society do we see in the Trump tax plan?

Richard Parker, lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and senior fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.