Free Republic

Charles Calomiris has a splendid WSJ review of a great book, "The Myth of American Inequality" by by Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund and John Early. It is a "'a truth universally acknowledged,' according to the Economist magazine in 2020" that little progress has been made in raising average American living standards since the 1960s; that poverty has not been substantially reduced over the period; that the median household’s standard of living has not increased in recent years and inequality is currently high and rising Most of all the last one. All of this is false. Most of all the last...

The more liberal a state is, the more likely it is to be home to income inequality, according to a Daily Wire analysis of newly-released Census data. New York, Connecticut, and California had the biggest gulf between rich and poor, according to a Census Bureau yardstick called the Gini Index that measures how far an area is from “perfect equality (where everyone receives an equal share).” Utah, Indiana, and South Dakota had the least inequality. The Census Bureau’s detailed annual population study, the American Community Survey, was released September 15, and covered 2021. Although liberals prioritize reducing the “gaps” between...

The amazing strength of the data in that report show what the American economy, and American workers, can achieve—if given the right policy environment and opportunities. Based on a Census Bureau report released last Tuesday, the current debate over economic policy might come down to a question of numbers. Which would you prefer: A $1,200 “stimulus” check while not working during lockdowns, or a nearly $4,400 pay increase in a growing job?The Census report, which chronicled changes in income and poverty in 2019, documented the state of the economy well before the coronavirus hit. But the amazing strength of the...

CBS Sunday Morning exploited the coronavirus to whine about income inequality and how terrible capitalism is. It also speculated whether the virus itself was presenting an opportunity to change the economic system. The program, hosted by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) fan Jane Pauley, used 409 seconds of airtime grumbling about America’s “worsening economic inequality.” To start off, CBS News Business Analyst Jill Schlesinger exploited the economic plight of a random American family to argue that “last year, the Census Bureau found income inequality was at its highest level in fifty years.” Three of the four commentators Schlesinger used...

The news media are trying to rationalize violent riots. CBS News published a piece headlined, “Protests underscore worsening racial wealth gaps: ‘Justifiable anger.’” Authors Aimee Picchi and Irina Ivanova exploited the murder of George Floyd to suggest that the “nationwide protests” have also drawn “attention to the stark socioeconomic differences between black and white Americans.”

The U.S. economy broke a record for its longest expansion ever Monday. Economic expansion has continued for more than 10 years. Growth is now in its 121st month since the Great Recession ended in June 2009, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. The economy set its previous 120-month record between March 1991 and March 2001. That growth period ended after the dot com bubble burst. The rate of growth, however, has been slower than during other periods of economic expansion. For example, during that previous record-holding period in the 90s, the average growth was 3.6 percent per year....

Some Americans have much higher income and wealth than others. Former President Barack Obama explained, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money." An adviser to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has a Twitter account called "Every Billionaire Is A Policy Failure" tweeted, "My goal for this year is to get a moderator to ask 'Is it morally appropriate for anyone to be a billionaire?'" Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in calling for a wealth tax, complained, "The rich and powerful are taking so much for themselves and leaving so little for everyone else." These people would...

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) held a press briefing on Tuesday—one day before the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its second estimate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in the second quarter (stating it was 4.2 percent)—at which he stated that Americans “for too long” have been relying “on GDP alone as a bellwether” of how Americans are doing economically. […] “America’s working families deserve the full picture when the federal government publishes data showing how the economy is doing, especially with the quarterly numbers,” he said. […] “Too often, when we hear that GDP is rising and the...

It’s the wrong thing to be worried about. When Bernie Sanders came to the University of Massachusetts Amherst during his campaign for president, thousands of my fellow students turned out to hear him speak. With his many campus visits, the socialist senator certainly left an impression — roughly 2 million young people voted for him in 2016. Thanks to people like Sanders, the idea that income inequality is the “defining issue of our time” has been burned into the collective consciousness of my generation, so much so that a GenForward survey found that economic inequality was one of the highest...

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes thinks the government should give cash handouts to people with the lowest incomes in order to fight income inequality. And he thinks the money should come from higher taxes on wealthy individuals and even big tech companies, like Facebook. Hughes, 34, was one of Facebook’s co-founders, along with Mark Zuckerberg and three of their Harvard classmates, in 2004. He was Facebook’s spokesperson for the company’s first three years, before leaving to finish his Harvard degree and then to work on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign as a media strategist. He says he's made "half a billion...

A Walmart employee earning the company’s median salary of US$19,177 would have to work for more than a thousand years to earn the US$22.2 million that Doug McMillon, the company’s chief executive, was awarded in 2017. At Live Nation Entertainment, the concert and ticketing company, an employee earning the median pay of US$24,406 would need to work for 2,893 years to earn the US$70.6 million that its chief executive, Michael Rapino, made last year. And at Time Warner, where the median compensation is a relatively handsome US$75,217, an employee earning that much would still need to work for 651 years...

Faulkner is married and living on two paychecks, while Ms. Schairer is raising her children by herself. That gives the Faulkner family a profound advantage in income and nurturing time, and makes their children statistically more likely to finish college, find good jobs and form stable marriages. Ms. Faulkner goes home to a trim subdivision and weekends crowded with children’s events. Ms. Schairer’s rent consumes more than half her income, and she scrapes by on food stamps.

I am thankful for being a middle class person today instead of the richest person in the world 200 years ago I am thankful for being a middle class person today instead of the richest person in the world 200 years ago. I can have a real time conversation with someone who is 1,000 miles away. I have light bulbs. I can get from New York to California in hours instead of weeks. Antibiotics will save my life if I step on a rock and cut my foot. I don’t have to worry about getting smallpox, measles, or polio. I...

Following the lead of a several trodden upon, yet Democrat-controlled municipalities, Washington D.C. recently approved a bill raising the minimum wage to fifteen dollars an hour by 2025. This move has been hailed by leftists as a triumph for equality and the little guys. Except minimum wage laws were first proposed by racists to keep minorities down, and current minimum wage laws further disenfranchise those in our society who are already disenfranchised.To help understand, a brief history lesson is in order. At the risk of wandering off topic, this brief history lesson will also serve to demonstrate why many leftists...

The phrase Income Inequality has become a standard battle cry for politicians these days, with the implicit assumption that inequality is a bad thing, but is the basic concept of inequality truly a bad thing? ... We hear a lot of lip service from various politicians about the ills of income inequality, so letÂ’s look at actual recent track records. The U.S. Census Bureau uses four measures of income inequality, Gini, Theil, Mean Logarithmic Deviation of Income (MLD) and Atkinson Measure. â—¾Since the financial crisis, income inequality (as measured by the US Census Bureau using 3 different types of metrics)...

Hillary Clinton took a lot of flak on Monday after a report surfaced that the presidential candidate wore a Giorgio Armani jacket worth more than $12,000 during a speech in April about inequality. Clinton, who was well-known for her vast pantsuit collection, has upgraded her wardrobe during her most recent bid for president to appear more relatable, according to the New York Post. Social media users don't seem to be buying it, however.

For the next 12 months, a man from Sarasota, Florida will receive $1,250 a month for doing absolutely nothing, and the people footing the bill couldn't be happier about it. The recipient, a man named Edwin who declined to speak to the press, won the $15,000 in a raffle held in San Francisco on May 31. The giveaway was organized by the nonprofit advocacy group My Basic Income, which wants to set up a slew of lotteries to see how basic income might work around the world.

Is there a more brain-dead concept than to empower the government to fight "income inequality"? What sane, normal, rational human being thinks that human talent, drive, interests and opportunity can -- or should -- result in equal outcomes? Despite my love of athletics, I knew in third grade that my friend, Keith, could run much faster than I could. For two years I played Little League ball, and I got better at it. But no matter how hard I tried or how many hours I spent, I could not hit, run or throw as well as my friend Benji. Later...

Bernie Sanders issued a global call to action at the Vatican on Friday to address “immoral and unsustainable” wealth inequality and poverty, using the high-profile gathering to echo one of the central platforms of his presidential campaign. The Democratic senator from Vermont cited Pope Francis and St. John Paul II repeatedly during his speech to the Vatican conference commemorating the 25th anniversary of a landmark teaching document from John Paul on social and economic justice after the Cold War. […] “We don’t choose to politicize the pope,” Sanders told attendees, “but his spirit and courage and the fact, if I...

For Democrats, few issues rank as high as “income inequality.” Reducing it is a priority of both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. But a new study finds that we are measuring inequality all wrong, and that as a result, imposing still more wealth-transfer laws probably won’t do anything to help.