The United States federal government should substantially increase fiscal redistribution in the United States by adopting a federal jobs guarantee, expanding Social Security, and/or providing a basic income. John Goodman grew up in Waco, TX and participated in high...
Dylan Matthews at Vox has the best explanation I’ve seen yet on the technical dispute among economists about inequality – mainly focused on whether the rich have gotten richer over the past 60 years.
2 1/2 miles. It’s not very long. Only slightly longer than the National Mall in Washington. Not even 2/3 of the length of the Las Vegas Strip.
But also … it can be the distance between two different worlds. In fact, 2 1/2 miles is the distance between Australia and Papua New Guinea at their nearest point, in the Torres Strait.
In Papua New Guinea, the national wealth averages out to about $3,500 per person per year. In Australia, it averages out to around $65,000 per person per year. Two-and-a-half miles apart … and nearly 20 times wealthier. How does this kind of thing happen? Actually, we know the answer. Because it turns out that the secret to how nations get wealthy … isn’t really a secret at all.
Seniors are not getting the Social Security benefits they deserve after years of working and paying taxes. Because of bad and misleading information from Social Security itself:
Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics), Emmanuel Saez (University of California at Berkeley) and Gabriel Zucman (University of California at Berkeley) – herein after PSZ – in a paper called “Rethinking Capital and Wealth Taxation,” advocate taxing billionaires with a progressive wealth tax.
Here is a nontechnical explanation of the issues at Vox.
A 2012 Congressional Budget Office report looking at the example of Pennsylvania, found that unemployed single taxpayers with one child would face an effective marginal tax rate of 47 percent for taking a minimum wage job in 2012, and if their earnings disqualified them from Medicaid, they could have faced an astonishing marginal tax rate of 95 percent.
The Piketty-Saez-Zucman estimates show a substantial increase in the share of national income going to the top 1% of income earners. But these estimates ignore government taxes and transfer payments.
Yet a new study finds that the share of after-tax income earned by the top 1% has not changed since the 1960s.
There is no single act of government that creates more inequality in a shorter amount of time than the lottery. Tickets are mainly purchased by below-average income buyers, and then the winner becomes fabulously wealthy.
Surprisingly, this activity is rarely criticized by “progressives.”
The largest lottery winner in history walked away with an estimated $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot.
From 1940 to 2019, Americans’ life expectancy rose by almost 16 years, while the share of the U.S. population 65 and older grew from 9.8% to 16.7%. The elderly have progressively more healthy years to work. Most important, increased life spans have meant that older Americans’ wealth portfolios have been able to compound for longer.
Source: Richard McKenzie, Americans are Living Longer and Prospering, Wall Street Journal.