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Donald Trump’s tax avoidance isn’t just a story about Donald Trump. It’s also a story about the American tax system and how kind it has been to the wealthy over the past few decades.

The truly wealthy – like those in the top 0.1 percent of earners – paid more than half of their income in federal taxes in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Since then, Washington has bestowed very large tax cuts on them, with declines in the top income-tax rate, the estate tax rate and corporate taxes. The wealthy have also become expert at dodging taxes, as Trump did.

Over the same period, of course, the rich have received much bigger pre-tax pay increases than the middle class and poor. It is a double whammy of rising inequality. And it’s unfair: much of the growing bounty from the American economy has flowed to a small slice of the population.