As a result, the poor and middle class are drowning in a deluge that is also eroding American democracy, says New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston.

"The tax system we have is not what you think. We have a tax system that is destroying jobs, damaging families and taking money out of pockets of the middle and upper middle class and giving it to the rich," said Johnston, who was in Salt Lake City on Tuesday.

The keynote speaker at a conference sponsored by the low-income advocacy group Utah Issues, Johnston was preaching to the choir.

But his message struck a chord with at least one conservative state lawmaker who, in the coming months, will be among those debating a state tax reform proposal that includes removing the sales tax on food and a plan to boost Utah's minimum wage.

Rep. David Clark, R-Santa Clara, says he is open to both ideas, but warns against moving too swiftly.

"Even small deviations at the front, 10 to 15 years down the road, can end up far from where we intended to be," said Clark, a banking executive.

Johnston didn't pitch solutions on Tuesday.

But he noted years of federal tax reforms, large and small, have led the nation astray.

"Progressive taxation - taxation based on one's ability to pay - is the most conservative principle in Western civilization. It was the idea that gave birth to democracy" in ancient Athens, said Johnston.

"We are violating this Athenian principal."

To prove his point, Johnston read findings from his recent analysis of tax records and other government data. Published Sunday in The New York Times, the numbers show a widening gap between the "haves" and "have mores."

The 145,000 taxpayers who qualify as super wealthy - those in the top 0.1 percent of the earnings bracket, or who earned an average of $3 million in 2002 - have seen their incomes more than double since 1980, said Johnston.

And Bush's supposedly "progressive" tax cuts, which were supposed to go to low- and middle-income citizens, will give these top-tier earners an even greater lead, Johnston said. "We found that 53 percent [of the tax cuts] will go to the top 10 percent."

Johnston, who studied economics and law at the University of Chicago, has spent years mining the tax code for loopholes and inequities. Much of his reporting is summarized in a book, Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else.

He says his concerns are nonpartisan, explaining his motivations are his eight children and five grandsons.

"I don't want a descendent of mine to ever sit down in a high school classroom and pick up a chapter in a history book that begins, 'The United States was . . . ' ”

kstewart@sltrib.com