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Since the 2020 Covid outbreak, the top 1% have been on the Stimulypto gravy train. The top 1% in terms of share of total net worth (blue line) is near the all-time high while the bottom 50% share of total net worth (red line) is at the all-time low. So, you thought all that Covid relief spending along with Fed monetary stimulus would help the bottom 50%?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has appointed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to a newly created committee targeting economic disparity, in an apparent olive branch following tensions between the caucus leader and the 'Squad' of progressive Democrats. Pelosi unveiled the new Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness in Growth at a press conference in DC on Wednesday, saying it will study ways to reduce economic disparity. The speaker said Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, will focus on 'addressing generational disparities and increasing worker power in the economy.' Ocasio-Cortez will join seven other Democrats on the panel, including Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington,...

White House press secretary Jen Psaki struggled to explain why President Joe Biden’s administration was considering putting up migrants in hotel rooms. Psaki did not dispute reports that the Biden administration awarded a Texas-based nonprofit $86 million to provide hotel rooms for six months for approximately 1,200 families who cross the southern border. AD Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson questioned Psaki on why the Biden administration would provide hotel rooms, food, and shelter for migrants even as American national guard troops were forced to sleep on the floor when they protected Capitol Hill. “That’s a disparity a lot of people are...

One of the many painful signs of the mindlessness of our times was a recent section of the Wall Street Journal, built around the theme "What's Holding Women Back in the Workplace?" Whenever some group is not equally represented in some institution or activity, the automatic response in some quarters is to assume that someone has prevented equality of outcomes. This preconception of equal outcomes requires not one speck of evidence, and defies mountains of evidence to the contrary. Even in activities where individual performances are what determine outcomes, and those performances are easily measured objectively, there is seldom anything...

The media is ripe with sensationalism over the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The left has made it a false flag to rally troops for class warfare, which is neither healthy, nor beneficial for anyone involved. "The wealthy don't work for their money!" "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer!" This is bumper sticker economics and it's time to put the myths around income disparity to rest.

The China puzzle The "Chinese miracle" has been the biggest economic story for several years now, a tale of a nation rising from the ashes of a Stalinist command economy to become the world's premier trading partner. But China reminds us with distressing regularity that the progress has been selective. The latest reminders are reports of slave labor in Chinese factories and the discovery that some of the popular Thomas the Tank Engine toys manufactured in China have lead in their paint. Before that, it was the contaminated dog food, the stubborn support of Sudan for its oil, the regular...

China's communist leadership is trying to paint a smiley face over its most recent brutal suppression of dissent. Five days ago, protestors were gunned downed by police in a village not far from Hong Kong. The authorities blame a "few instigators" for the violence, but this event is indicative of growing socio-economic shifts in mainland China; namely the disparity between those profiting from communist experimentation with capitalism, and those left on the sidelines. China's government is trying to put lipstick on the pig. From MSNBC.com: The government said three people died in Tuesday’s violence in this coastal village northeast of...

[...] A study by Klinger's group last month found that CEOs at 23 companies under investigation for accounting fraud made an average of $62.2 million during 1999-2001, 70 percent more than CEOs at comparable companies with clean records. Last year the average CEO of a major company got 411 times the pay of the poorest-paid worker. Thanks largely to falling stock prices, and their impact on stock options, that's down from 531 times in 2000. But if the average annual pay of a production worker had grown at the same rate as CEO pay since 1990, that worker would have...

April 11, 2002 Top Ten Civil Liberties Abuses of the Income Tax by Chris EdwardsChris Edwards is director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute.Any tax system creates a threat to individual liberty because "the power to tax involves the power to destroy," as Chief Justice John Marshall observed.[1] But the federal income tax and its enforcement harm civil liberties much more than necessary to raise needed funds for the government. Certainly, the IRS performs poorly and too easily abuses the rights of citizens. But ultimately Congress is to blame for creating an excessively complex and high-rate tax system....