David Cay Johnston

Talk Description

A subtle bias in orthodox economic theory explains why individuals, businesses and governments have become mired in debt, why 15 million people have no work, and why income tax cuts are making us poorer, not richer as promised. In plain English, the untold story of how neoclassical economics favors the few and how a return to classical economics would enrich us all.

Biography

David Cay Johnston is an investigative journalist, author, radio and television essayist and lecturer. Until April 2008, he was the tax reporter for The New York Times. In 2008 he began 'Johnston's Take' for Tax Analysts' Tax Notes, and in 2009 started the 'By the Numbers' column for The Nation. He is Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Syracuse University College of Law. His books include Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With The Bill; Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich (New York Times bestseller, won the Investigative Reporters and Editors 2003 Book of the Year); and Temples of Chance. Johnston has been critical of news media coverage of the 2008 Wall Street bailout, urging reporters not to repeat the “failed lapdog practices” of the run-up to the Iraq war, and on September 26, 2008 pointed out that banks were “still making ordinary loans to ordinary businesses” even as the crisis was described as an emergency. He received the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting for exposing loopholes and inequities in the U.S. tax code, and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2003 and 2000. He has investigated LAPD political spying, Barron Hilton, United Way charitable fund misuse, news manipulation at WJIM-TV, and Donald Trump's net worth, and helped win acquittal for an innocent man at his fifth trial. At age 19 in 1968 he began his career at the San Jose Mercury News; after a 1973 five-month fellowship studying at the University of Chicago, he worked the Detroit Free Press's Lansing bureau (1973–76), the Los Angeles Times (1976–88), and the Philadelphia Inquirer (1988–95) before joining The New York Times in 1995. Johnston has won praise for his writings even though he has no formal education or training in economics; he studied economics at the University of Chicago graduate school and six other colleges, earning six years of college credits but no degree. He is a founder and board chairman of American Family Resort Hotels, a small lodging management company run by his oldest son.