With the stock market at an all-time high, the debate about wealth accumulation and inequality has become a top issue in the 2020 campaign. The growing hostilities between the ascendant populist wing of the Democratic Party and the nation’s tech and financial elite have spilled repeatedly into public view over the course of the primary campaign, but they reached a crescendo with news that billionaire Michael Bloomberg, the former New York mayor, may enter the race. [Why income inequality is such a huge topic for 2020 candidates — and investors]The leaders of the populist surge, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.), have cast their plans to vastly increase taxes on the wealthy as necessary to fix several decades of widening inequality and make necessary investments in health care, child care spending and other government programs they say will help working-class Americans.

Source: Washington Post November 16, 2019 16:52 UTC