And could we please begin talking about shifting taxes off of labor and onto privileges?  Privileges to tax include natural resource values such as broadcast spectrum, mineral extraction, pollution, and land (including urban driving).  Monopolies and special rights-of-way are also rightful objects of special taxation.  Practically every economist agrees that taxing things that are in fixed supply does not inpede production and may even stumulate production to the extent that the privileged resource is underused.  And taxes that fall on privileges would be more progressive that income taxes (with a few exceptions).  

We need new analytic tools and a few new legal structures.  For example we need rent models to estimate the value of privileges to guide tax policy.  We need legal recognition that mortgaged property actually belongs to both the "owner" and the mortgager.  For example, if a bank holds a 50% mortgage on a house they should receive 50% of the tax bill for the value of the land under the house.  Analagous splits would have to be made for other privileges.  

Taxing privileges would likely tilt wage level negotiations in favor of labor.  Untaxed privileges do not suffer much by the passage of time (they may actually benefit) while workers with families do not have the luxury of waiting.  Taxing privileges directly on an annual basis would place a time pressure on privilege, which would help labor to negotiate better rates.  I.e., we would see an upward pressure on wages rather than the downward pressure we have all been trained to believe is "normal".  

Note also that taxing privileged assets would also prevent bubbles of lending on them, which is just the most visible portion of the present rot.