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- Obama Oversight or Lie?
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About Me
- John
- I am married and we have 3 adult daughters and a dog. We live in Plymouth MN. My interests are learning, communicating, home improvement projects, motorcycling, boating, and other outside activities. Thank you for reading my blog and have a great day !!!
29 comments:
There's a significant body of research, though, that high levels of income inequality are bad for everyone in society, including the rich.
Here are some excerpts of a post I wrote on this topic two years ago:
"The United States leads the world in income per capita, and among developed countries also has the largest income disparity.
But we also have the worst cumulative results across an index of social indicators, including life expectancy, infant mortality, crime, and mental illness.
While wealthy Americans have longer life expectancy than poorer Americans, they have life expectancy equal to (or frequently worse) than the average citizen of other developed countries. Why is that? Researchers have found that Americans (and citizens of other unequal societies) tend to feel less valued, feel less “in control” of their work and home lives, and tend to have lower levels of civic engagement."
http://brickcityblog.com/2011/08/15/income-inequality-is-bad-for-everybody/
more links, that precede the others on this topic:
The Triumph of the Right
Robert Reich on the triumph of the right
and a hyper link to Sean's blog:
Income inequality is bad for everybody
I haven't read Sean's blog post yet, but I have read this research previously and I think I agree with Sean that at a certain level (such as that in the USA) great income inequality is bad for people/society.
My favorite part of the several blog posts I read was the map of the USA apportioned by income or wealth. I have not seen this before.
Sean,
I think you have a correlation vs causation problem. I am pretty sure the wealth distribution has little to do with health and life span problems.
However they probably have a lot to do with that we are all wealthier than most citizens in the world, we have an unlimited cheap junk food supply, little self control and fear physical activity.
Based on my travels, our diet is much different from other countries. As you can tell by our over weight and obesity stats vs other countries.
And that is just the OBESE stats. Being amongst the overweight 47 yr old folks, I feel I have lots of company. But man I love my double cheeseburgers and fries...
Maybe some more physical labor jobs would help the health of some people.
You don't think that the fact that it's much harder for poor people to access health care in the U.S. impacts our life span numbers? What planet are you living on?
I think the notion that people in the U.S. are much worse than the rest of the world at caring for ourselves is somewhat overblown. Our smoking rates are lower than many countries in Western Europe, and on average we get more exercise than folks in Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Spain, Brazil, Ireland, Japan, and the U.K. You can buy a Big Mac pretty much anywhere on the planet nowadays.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdHpvT1V2eGt4bm91MzZWcUdXaDZzR1E#gid=0
If you want more labor-based jobs, then perhaps we should consider reforming laws that make it advantageous for companies to offshore work.
Here's a remarkable article about what is happening to poor white women in this country. Obviously, inequality isn't the only thing, but it's a factor.
http://prospect.org/article/whats-killing-poor-white-women
Yes, the article is in a progressive magazine, but was sparked by academic research here:
http://www.archicollaborative.org/olshansky_differences_in_life_expectancy_ha_8_2012.pdf
It is true that you can get our food elsewhere. However they have no drivethru and they aren't very busy. Even soft drinks aren't as popular.
Now tell us about these laws that encourage off shoring. Then tell me what brands of cars you drive, which tires are on it, your cell phone manuf, etc...
When will we accept that it is American buying habits that are driving jobs overseas and creating the wealth gap.
Although a bit dated in spots, Dean Baker's The Conservative Nanny State is goo reading on these sorts of topics.
http://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/cns.html
to me it is a no brainer that income inequality effects the well being of poor people. The interesting part of the Pickett/Wilkinson research is that income inequality also impacts rich people, who do worse on health measures than rich people in more equal countries.
Kate Pickett on the Case for Equality
for those who enjoy Ted talks here is Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies
Also, I think I have asked the question raised by Black here before, When does inequality become a problem for conservatives? When the rich take 40%, 60%, 80% of the income? the conservative in MN post seemed to be okay with it all the way up to 90% if I am recalling his answer correctly.
I searched the first link and found no mention of causation... Only correlation.
I'll read it in more detail later.
I just had an interesting thought. Could the unhealthy, free, morally challenged, etc society cause the income disparity? (Ie excessive spending, poor personal responsibility, gambling, drinking, crime, etc)
correlation is enough for me. I don't know how you would establish causation.
I think it was interesting to see the correlation at the state level. MN as a state with relatively lower income inequality comes out higher on the social/health measures.
I think their are many hard working people of good character who are low income. The problem is mostly the way our economy rewards people with different skills / jobs.
Last I see you ignored the question of when does inequality become problematic from your pt of view.
I am sorry. I am at ISU distributing my wealth in Ames. (Never visit a kid in college...)
As for inequality, I agree with Peder. Gotta go, we are looking at futons now...
Must be comforting to know the ills of our society can solely be blamed on those less virtuous than yourself...
I accept that I am far from virtuous... However I do try to "Buy American" when an equivalent product is available. I do believe that many of our problems exist because we American consumers demanded low price high value products, no matter the consequences.
Then Liberals complain that all the good American jobs are gone and try to blame the "rich" and businesses. While driving their foreign cars, using their foreign devices, sitting on their foreign furniture, etc.
Some simple logic: If you want workers to be paid well, you have to be willing to pay a premium for your products and services. You can not buy the least expensive goods and expect them to be designed, tested, purchased, sold, and serviced by highly compensated American personnel.
One of my sins. My motorcycle is a 2004 Yamaha FJR 1300. I wanted a sport touring bike and the American cycle manufacters don't maake them...
Sean.
What are your thoughts regarding my logic?
While driving their foreign cars, using their foreign devices, sitting on their foreign furniture, etc.
I would never dream of owning a foreign car.
--Hiram
I still remember thinking it was ironic when after receiving a small USA flag on the 4th of July to note that it was made in China.
Americans saved trillions of dollars buying their goods from low cost countries. However, the consequence was that we didn't pay Americans those trillions of dollars. And now Liberals complain that it was "them"... Oh well...
I think buy American is not easy except for a few large products such as cars and motorcycles. Are there American made TVs for instance? Or where would one find American made clothing to purchase?
In the last 5 years all of the increase in income has gone to the 1% and this is not because Americans had better shopping habits 10 or 20 years ago.
America should do as Sweden does and decrease the income gap at least a little bit through the tax code. Changes in the tax code such as eliminating certain deductions could also generate revenue needed for investment such as early childhood education and increased financial aid for college students.
So if these are the total effective tax rates before the Democrats mandated tax increase on the rich. (ie refusal to renew that portion of Bush tax cuts) Which I believe took care of the slight dip at the end, and probably significantly more.
How much more do you want who to pay and for how long?
I guess here is the update.
Effective Total Tax Rates
One more note / assumption... Since these are titled "tax graphs", I am pretty sure they do not include the benefits that citizens receive. Most of which the folks in the top 10% do not receive. And which the bottom 20% receive even more of. So things are likely more progressive than shown.
It depends what you call a "benefit", doesn't it? What if you add the mortgage interest deduction in there? Ability for hedge fund managers to use "carried interest" instead of paying taxes at wage rates? On and on and on...
Hi Sean,
Removing those benefits would increase the taxes paid. If they were gone the effective tax rates would be even higher.
Personally I am a fan of getting rid of the home mortgage deduction. Maybe then folks wouldn't be so excited to own those monster homes on credit. (ie 3000+ sq ft) I don't think that will be happening anytime soon, since the home builders, realtors, bankers and most home owners would be against it. That deduction is probably another factor that contributed to the 2009 recession...
It looks like you may get your wish regarding the carried interest issue. Then the effective rate for the wealthy will even be higher. Or they will exit that business and make it harder for at risk businesses to find funding? (ie more bankruptcies) Remember that they are in that risky business because of the high potential rewards. If the rewards go away, they likely will also.
Folks seem to think people won't change their behavior to avoid taxes. ("a move that would raise an estimated $16 billion extra over a decade.") I will never understand, would you keep doing things the same way if they double the tax rate?
Where as true benefits do not impact the tax rates. They are money or services that people receive outside the tax system.
Apparently we even have a database to help people find them. Benefits.gov
So if a low income person pays a 15% effective tax rate. (~$4,500 on $30,000) And gets back $9,000 in food stamps, medicaid, housing assistance, earned income, etc. Their actual effective rate would be -15% because they are making more than they are paying. Somehow Liberals seem to forget this in their tables when they complain about the high tax rate on the poor.
No, John, it's not true that "true benefits do not impact the tax rates". The fact of the matter is we've turned the tax code into a handout machine, supplementing traditional ways of distributing money because it's easier politically to do it that way.
My point was that these "Effective Tax Rates" should take all of the standard deductions, credits and exemptions into account.
Where as "benefits" will not be accounted for here.
Now as for "we've turned the tax code into a handout machine".
I guess I agree that tax credits are examples of this. I mean you have calculated the amount you owe based on the tax code's definition of income, expenses and profit... Then you get to just subtract some defined amount off your bill because of who you are.
Unfortunately for your case, more credits are usually available for lower income people, and they are pretty well eliminated for the upper 10%. (ie child tax credit, earned income credit, etc.
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