That it would have found both expression and support via the NYT is a (sadly) laughable certainty.
spit
Posted on 01/21/2013 11:58:19 AM PST by Sir Napsalot
Politicians typically talk about rising inequality and the sluggish recovery as separate phenomena, when they are in fact intertwined. Inequality stifles, restrains and holds back our growth. When even the free-market-oriented magazine The Economist argues — as it did in a special feature in October — that the magnitude and nature of the country’s inequality represent a serious threat to America, we should know that something has gone horribly wrong. ...
There are four major reasons inequality is squelching our recovery. The most immediate is that our middle class is too weak to support the consumer spending that has historically driven our economic growth. While the top 1% of income earners took home 93% of the growth in incomes in 2010, the households in the middle — who are most likely to spend their incomes rather than save them and who are, in a sense, the true job creators — have lower household incomes, adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1996. ....
Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses.
Third, the weakness of the middle class is holding back tax receipts, especially because those at the top are so adroit in avoiding taxes and in getting Washington to give them tax breaks. ....
Fourth, inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable. Though inequality did not directly cause the crisis, it is no coincidence that the 1920s — the last time inequality of income and wealth in the United States was so high — ended with the Great Crash and the Depression.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Following his logic, the most ‘equaled society/nation’ then should enjoy (have enjoyed) the best economic prosperity, then.
Those academic types never seemed to envision while ‘forcing more equality’ onto a society, there will inevitably be involved with dictatorship or something close to it.
So...just pass a law making everyone equal. What’s the problem? [/s]
I would say inequality created by tax brackets is causing people who are acheivers to stay in the middle instead of moving up the ladder making it impossible for people on the bottom from moving up....
I have known people who ahve been ambitious who have been crushed by the fact that should they take a promotion they would earn less because it would boost them into a higher tax bracket and it would take 5 years worth of promotion before they ended up “breaking even” the effect this has on the people at the bottom who stay there because there is no forward flow is INCALCUABLE!
Thanks for sharing this revealing peak into the mind of a UN communist economist.
Just mint a whole bunch of those trillion dollar coins, distribute them to everyone, and we will mostly be on pretty equal footing. Wouldn’t that fix everything?
That it would have found both expression and support via the NYT is a (sadly) laughable certainty.
spit
leftists are seriously ignorant when it comes to economics
half the people pay NO taxes, how is that for inequality?
The most “equal” societies on earth in terms of wealth are the primitive hunter-gatherer tribes that haven’t made any significant technological progress in thousands of years. That’s hardly a state that I think we ought to aspire to!
Yeah, not enough government coercion. That’s why the USSR went belly up.
The author makes this statement:The Obama administration does not, of course, bear the sole blame. President George W. Bush’s steep tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and his multitrillion-dollar wars in Iraq and Afghanistan emptied the piggy bank while exacerbating the great divide.
Multi trillion dollar wars? Can we finally put that myth to rest? Here is the cost of both wars through 30 sep 2012:War Costs To Date
[Note: These totals are based on appropriations that provide funding through the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, 2012.]
•Total War Funding: $1.38 trillion has been allocated to date to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including $121.1 billion in fiscal year 2012.
•Iraq: To date, $807.4 billion has been allocated for the war in Iraq since 2003, including $10.1 billion in fiscal year 2012.
•Afghanistan: To date, $570.9 billion has been allocated for the war in Afghanistan since 2001, including $111.1 billion in fiscal year 2012.
Source: National Priorities Project.
Please note that Obama’s Stimulus alone cost more than the Iraq war.
You mean THIS Joseph Stiglitz?
http://blogs.wsj.com/developments/2012/10/01/how-joseph-stiglitz-misread-the-risks-at-fannie-mae/
How Joseph Stiglitz Misread the Risks at Fannie Mae
A March 2002 paper in this series by Dr. Stiglitz and others found that the probability of default by Fannie or Freddie was “extremely small.” The economists studied the risk-based capital requirements recently imposed by Fannie’s regulator. These capital requirements were based on a “stress test,” producing estimates of how much capital Fannie and Freddie would need to survive a sharp rise or fall in interest rates, coupled with a long-term surge in mortgage defaults. “The implied credit loss rate (under the stress test) is more than five times as large as the national credit loss rate in any year since 1980,” the paper said. The probability of the stress-test conditions actually occurring was less than one in 500,000, the authors wrote.
A "higher tax bracket" applies to MARGINAL not TOTAL income; a raise never means less after-tax income, although it may mean you keep a smaller percentage of the amount of your raise than of your pre-raise pay.
Bull crap. Just before I got sick and could not work for nearly a year I took in $42,000. When I got sick the total I took in with government support was about $45,000. This is after a very steep pay cut. If that is not incentive to not work I don’t know what is. I made less by not working and earning more. When I looked at the tax money that was stolen from others and given to me I realized how out of whack our system really was. I do my best now to pay as little in taxes that I can. The money is just wasted.
A "higher tax bracket" applies to MARGINAL not TOTAL income; a raise never means less after-tax income, although it may mean you keep a smaller percentage of the amount of your raise than of your pre-raise pay.
Bull crap. Just before I got sick and could not work for nearly a year I took in $42,000. When I got sick the total I took in with government support was about $45,000. This is after a very steep pay cut.
That has nothing to do with the original claim about higher tax brackets.
So you are saying that the $10,500 that I got from a tax return is not after tax income then? I did not earn it by working more but I had it after my taxes were done.
So raise taxes again on those Eeeeevil Rich and send everyone in the middle class a Walmart gift certificate.
Seems simple enough.
Second, the hollowing out of the middle class since the 1970s, a phenomenon interrupted only briefly in the 1990s, means that they are unable to invest in their future, by educating themselves and their children and by starting or improving businesses.
True - but unrelated to "inequality." Does Stiglitz think we'd improve these issues by bombing and incinerating the assets of the rich? That would reduce inequality.
So the "government support" came in the form of a tax credit or the like? That's a disincentive to promotion (the original claim) only for those currently getting that credit.
First, equality can refer to many, many things, and one of them is equality of effort. In the story of the three little pigs, it is the industrious little pig who builds a strong house out of bricks while his neighbors, the other two little pigs, spent much less time and effort building their homes and made them more quickly out of less durable materials. When the time came for the big bad wolf to come eat them, only the third little pig was safe, because of his efforts.
Now, following your line of flawed logic, the problem would be the inequality in housing. You and your brethren on the left would likely say that the third little pig was a 1%er, and should have to ‘give his fair share’ to provide for the other two little pigs. You would not say that the other two little pigs were responsible for their own problems, because of their lack of equal effort. Of course, this is unfair to the third little pig - the industrious one, but using your line of reasoning only the outcome of ‘equality’ would matter.
Which brings me to the second point, which is that you are a hypocrite. As an academic you are definitively a member of one of the most hierarchical societal institutions that exists. Do you consider Instructors, Assistant Professors, and Associate Professors equal to Full Professors? Why not? Where's the equality? Why don't you just make everyone a Full Professor, from day one? Wouldn't that be fair? What about tenure? Why should only some people be tenured, while others have no long-term job security of the type that tenured faculty have? Don't you support ‘equality’.
Oh, one additional thought. In the 3 little pigs story, for the third little pig, the industrious one, to give safe harbor to the other two, voluntarily because he wanted to help them, would be the right thing to do - as an act of charity. In turn, the right thing for the other two pigs to do would be to thank him and be grateful. Charity, however, is not what the left wants from people. They want to take and redistribute, because then a grateful thank you is not required.
If this article reflects reality then the fate of the middle class is exactly what Marx predicted years ago.
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