American Income Inequity (good read)

[ruckman101]

Been doing my best to not quote those known to be on folk's ignore list, and on occasion, even manage to rein myself in here and there, but slip from time to time.


neal

[Amskeptic]

Im batteling a brain tumor that has me very edgie Barb

PM sent.
Colin

[turk]

Consider one conundrum in American politics. Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics. Yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it.

Barack Obama may have been elected president after telling Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread the wealth around. But large majorities in polls approved when Obama and congressional Democrats abandoned oft-repeated campaign promises to raise taxes on high earners in the lame duck session.

Why don't voters care more?

One reason is that economic statistics can miss important things that affect people's lives. Wages may not have risen much since 1973, but that's partly because the tax code encourages increased compensation in the form of benefits, including health insurance. And it's partly because the Consumer Price Index overstated the effect of inflation in the 1970s, making 1973 wages look higher in "real dollars."

Another is that inflation indexes can't fully account for product improvement and technological progress. I bought my first electronic calculator in 1970 for $110. Today you can buy the same gadget for $1.99 at your local drug store. The consumer electronics widely available today at declining prices simply didn't exist in the 1980s.

In addition, as George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen writes in The American Interest, "The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down over the past hundred years and perhaps over the past 20 years, as well." Bill Gates may have a bigger house than you do. But you have about the same access to good food, medical care and even to the Internet as he does.

Or consider something as prosaic as food. The supermarkets of the 1960s and 1970s didn't come close to matching the amazing selection of produce, meats and exotic foods as you find in supermarkets today -- and not just in high-income neighborhoods, but in modest-income places all over the country.

Or clothing. Firms like Walmart, Target and Kohl's have good quality clothes at astonishingly low prices -- you can outfit a kid in school clothes for $100 or so a year. Presidential candidate John Edwards claimed to have seen a little girl shivering in the winter because her parents could not buy a coat; you can get one for $5 at the Salvation Army.

It's a widespread assumption in some affluent circles that ordinary Americans are seething with envy because they can't afford to shop regularly at Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. My sense is that most Americans just don't care. They're reasonably happy with what they've got, and would like a little more.

So I am inclined to agree with Cowen when he writes, "The broader change in income distribution, the one occurring beneath the very top earners, can be deconstructed in a manner that makes nearly all of it look harmless."

Cowen is worried that high earners in financial industries benefit hugely when they bet correctly but are sheltered from losses by government bailouts when they bet wrong. It's a problem that the financial regulation bill passed by the outgoing Congress addressed but, in his opinion and those of many others I respect, did not solve.

But there's little evidence that most Americans begrudge the exceedingly high earnings of the likes of Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg or J.K. Rowling. We believe they have earned their success and don't see how taking money away from them will make the rest of us better off.

We already take quite a bit. Current tax rates mean that the top 1 percent of earners account for 40 percent of federal income tax revenue -- a higher percentage than in many Western European countries. Higher tax rates would probably produce more tax avoidance -- rich people can adjust their affairs -- and lower revenues than forecast by static economic models.

Of course, not everyone is well off in a nation where unemployment has been 9.4 percent or higher for the last 19 months. And I suspect that most Americans would be thrilled to get a 13th month of pay. But they're not seething with envy at those who are better off.

So who does? One example is the cartoonist and author Garry Trudeau, a college classmate of George W. Bush, who has been spewing contempt for the Bushes for 40-some years. The strongest class envy in America, it turns out, may be the resentment of those who were one club above you at Yale.

Michael Barone is a Fox News Channel contributor and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. He is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

[ruckman101]

Michael Barone's opinion strikes me as naive, insulated, and simplistic.


neal

[turk]

Yeah, I guess. There's got to be some explanation how the democrats lost 63 house seats in a landslide with the Obama administration mid terms. This one seems plausible at least. Or maybe as some would suggest, there's just a whole lotta people voting for the rich. It's a level playing field out there between the Yes We Can crowd and those who felt : "eh, maybe all that promising of lowering the rising oceans etc. is a bit far-fetched and we need some balance", and "What can I do for me, rather than what can my country do for me". That's my insulated opinion. Probably manufactured by Fox News. Lol.

[ruckman101]

Suggesting a political cartoonist is an example of class envy is telling.


neal

[turk]

Suggesting a political cartoonist is an example of class envy is telling.


neal

Those seething with envy types are clever, at least they think so.

[Amskeptic]

Michael Barone:
Consider one conundrum in American politics. Income inequality has been increasing, according to standard statistics. Yet most Americans do not seem very perturbed by it.

Which changes the significance of this rising inequity not in the slightest.

Michael Barone:
Barack Obama may have been elected president after telling Joe the Plumber that he wanted to spread the wealth around. But large majorities in polls approved when Obama and congressional Democrats abandoned oft-repeated campaign promises to raise taxes on high earners in the lame duck session.

Not true. Not true. Not true. A 62% plurality wanted the 250K income earners to pay the pre-Bush taxcut rate. Bloomberg News poll no less.

Michael Barone:
Why don't voters care more?
One reason is that economic statistics can miss important things that affect people's lives. Wages may not have risen much since 1973, but that's partly because the tax code encourages increased compensation in the form of benefits, including health insurance.
So I am inclined to agree with Cowen when he writes, "The broader change in income distribution, the one occurring beneath the very top earners, can be deconstructed in a manner that makes nearly all of it look harmless."

Such rationalization. Benefits can be taken away, and they are being taken away all right. Benefits are going up at the top too, like vetted 100K healthcare for the CEOs and 100K "housing allowances" for public university presidents, and don't you know there are always the arrogant rich pricks who say,"fuck 'em, they got plasma screen TVs now, what are they complaining about?" and they miss entirely the fact that most Americans are one stupid medical emergency away from total economic destruction, turk. I don't like the heartless. The Republican Congress is declaring war on the safety net for average Americans, yet codifying guarantees that no matter what the stupid rich do, they make money regardless, to wit, Goldman Sachs!!

Michael Barone:
Cowen is worried that high earners in financial industries benefit hugely when they bet correctly but are sheltered from losses by government bailouts when they bet wrong. It's a problem that the financial regulation bill passed by the outgoing Congress addressed but, in his opinion and those of many others I respect, did not solve.

as in . . . did not go far enough, due to intense lobbying from the regulated who have their Republican caucus all bought up.

Michael Barone:
But there's little evidence that most Americans begrudge the exceedingly high earnings of the likes of Steve Jobs, Steven Spielberg or J.K. Rowling. We believe they have earned their success and don't see how taking money away from them will make the rest of us better off.

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS CRAP!! J.K. Rowling, Steve Jobs, and Steven Speilberg, are not the object of this fury!! What sort of straw men arguments are these?? Financial securities executives who made off with other people's mortgages and got pouty at the thought that their BONUSES would be taxed more, they are the people we are talking about. Bringing up J. K. Rowling (not an American citizen anyway) is typical Fox News deflection horseshit, and boy do they know your average American would be led in into a stupor of confusion as theybob and weave away from the true target of this immoral unethical transfer of wealth.

Michael Barone:
We already take quite a bit. Current tax rates mean that the top 1 percent of earners account for 40 percent of federal income tax revenue -- a higher percentage than in many Western European countries. Higher tax rates would probably produce more tax avoidance -- rich people can adjust their affairs -- and lower revenues than forecast by static economic models.

The old argument again. Racking up the absolute dollars of the upper tax bracket and bludgeoning us with "SEE? They paid!" Then jumping in with the treasonous, traitorous, illegal, they won't pay anyway . . . oh well."
Throw them in prison if they can't obey the law.
The top 1% currently control 90% of all wealth in this country. They did not EARN this money.

Michael Barone:
I suspect that most Americans would be thrilled to get a 13th month of pay. But they're not seething with envy at those who are better off.

And then this fucking idiot calls it ENVY? I can't take this crap.

Michael Barone:
So who does? One example is the cartoonist and author Garry Trudeau, a college classmate of George W. Bush, who has been spewing contempt for the Bushes for 40-some years. The strongest class envy in America, it turns out, may be the resentment of those who were one club above you at Yale.

Michael Barone is a Fox News Channel contributor

Does this chump really really think Garry Trudeau is "envious" and "resentful" of the Bush Dynasty?
Thanks for the opportunity to punch holes in this guy's self-serving essay.
Colin

[turk]

LOL. So what are ya' gonna do go eat the rich? Everybody kept the tax rates they had since 2004. Big deal. I think most people are just glad to have that. The tax-paying ones anyway. If taxes went up, the super rich would still be able to shelter more than they need. Drop the class-warfare bit. It's old and tired.

[ruckman101]

LOL. So what are ya' gonna do go eat the rich? Everybody kept the tax rates they had since 2004. Big deal. I think most people are just glad to have that. The tax-paying ones anyway. If taxes went up, the super rich would still be able to shelter more than they need. Drop the class-warfare bit. It's old and tired.

Actually, taxes have gone up for the poorest citizens.


neal

[Amskeptic]

LOL.
So what are ya' gonna do go eat the rich?

No, it is much simpler and less inflammatory than that.
Ensure that they pay their taxes. Determine their taxes based on the progressive tax rate that last seemed to pay the bills, how about the rate under the Clinton years for starters.

And when they get all catastrophic about how raising their taxes "during a recession boo hoo" (even as their income went up by 10-50% in the past two years!) will kill jobs, tell them to shut up, that canard has been disproved.

Everybody kept the tax rates they had since 2004. Big deal. I think most people are just glad to have that. The tax-paying ones anyway. If taxes went up, the super rich would still be able to shelter more than they need. Drop the class-warfare bit. It's old and tired.

No, it is not old and tired. It is vitally necessary to find solutions and quickly. There is NO RATIONALIZATION for their incomes to have shot up over the past two years just to hear them whining about the end of what were declared under George Bush as temporary tax cuts. Anybody who apologizes for the uber-rich has a fricken screw loose. You will never acknowledge much less understand the innumerable times I have said that if somebody invents the next new thing I hope they get rich! But I expect that they will pay their taxes with gratitude. I am Republican to the core when it comes to capitalism that plays by the rules. Colin, shut up already, he is not listening
Colin

[glasseye]

http://www.truth-out.org/will-our-econo ... overy66628

How the corporations have benefited since the recession and how ordinary Americans are getting screwed. But we know all this, right?

[Lanval]

FWIW: Here's a partial history of the top tax rates in the US. Note that the period that Reagan and others referred to (and continue to refer to) as a kind of "golden age" (Reagan used the phrase "morning in America" to suggest a combination of the metaphorical value of a new beginning coupled with a sense of an earlier time) also corresponded with some of the highest tax rates. In other words, the single most powerful period of the American economy is directly related to a substantial tax rate. No surprise there ~ everybody makes money, everybody pays money.

From "TruthandPolitics.org" though you can find the same information elsewhere (I note that Ed Slott quotes these figures in his discussion on IRAs on PBS routinely):

"1949 82.13 <4> 400,000
1950 84.36 400,000
1951 91 <5> 400,000
1952 92 <6> 400,000
1953 92 <6> 400,000
1954 91 <7> 400,000
1955 91 <7> 400,000
1956 91 <7> 400,000
1957 91 <7> 400,000
1958 91 <7> 400,000
1959 91 <7> 400,000
1960 91 <7> 400,000
1961 91 <7> 400,000
1962 91 <7> 400,000
1963 91 <7> 400,000"

Original link here: http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

The bottom line is that historically America most powerful domestic and international period coincides with its highest tax rates. That's not a coincidence, it's cause and effect, and though the circumstances were exceptional, circumstances always are.

The short answer is: When everyone shoulders their responsibility, we all gain. When they don't, we don't.

L.

[glasseye]

The short answer is: When everyone shoulders their responsibility, we all gain. When they don't, we don't.
L.

Ahhhh. But then, that's socialism.

By the way, the phrase "It's morning again in America" was written by a PR/ advertising firm, not Ronnie.

[Lanval]

The short answer is: When everyone shoulders their responsibility, we all gain. When they don't, we don't.
L.

Ahhhh. But then, that's socialism.

By the way, the phrase "It's morning again in America" was written by a PR/ advertising firm, not Ronnie.

I didn't *say* [you'd think I'd check my own writing for errors...] he wrote it, I said he used it; which he did. Reagan, being an actor, was probably illiterate. Here's the link from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_in_America

Individual responsibility isn't socialism; the underlying concept was central to the development of the Constitution as a response to the failures of the Articles of Confederation.

L.