Income distribution
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Don’t Resent the Rich; Fix the Tax Code (Part 3): Robert Shiller - Bloomberg
We have ample reason to believe that financial markets are quite useful. And yet our wonderful financial infrastructure has not yet brought us the harmonious society we might consider ideal. There remains the ugliness of extreme economic inequality, of some who endure hardship while others are pampered. While some inequality is actually in many ways a good thing, for the motivation and stimulation it provides, arbitrary and extreme inequality poses problems.Tax System Seen as Unfair, in Need of Overhaul | Pew Research Center for the People and the Press
Public dissatisfaction with the tax system has grown over the past decade, and the focus of the public’s frustration is not how much they themselves pay, but rather the impression that wealthy people are not paying their fair share. The number of Americans who feel they pay more than their fair share in federal taxes has dropped significantly over the past decade, from 55% in 2000 to 38% today. About half (52%) now say they pay the right amount in taxes. Yet at the same time, fewer see the overall tax system as even moderately fair (43%, down from 51% eight years ago), and roughly six-in-ten (59%) say that so much is wrong with the tax system that Congress should completely change it.
Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
What’s the most important issue in American politics? In a narrow sense, the sputtering economy and ballooning deficits are likely to dominate the 2012 election season. But while every election has its own particular concerns, fundamentally it is to the American Dream that our politicians must tend — that libertarian and egalitarian bundle of values and hopes that transcend our partisan, economic, and social divisions. When the Pew Economic Mobility Project (EMP) surveyed people about what the American Dream meant, it got widely ranging answers. [1] Indiana’s governor, Mitch Daniels, recently hit on a common sentiment when he observed that “upward mobility from the bottom is the crux of the American promise.” But even those who would focus more broadly on the rising tide that lifts all boats should be concerned about the state of economic mobility in America.
Is U.S. Upward Economic Mobility Impaired? - Brookings Institution
Mobility
Obama says it’s only ‘fair’ to raise taxes on the rich. He’s wrong. - The Washington Post
President Obama’s criticisms of the Republican budget proposal put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin center on one main objection: It is unfair. The Ryan plan is based on three premises. First, our economy is headed for a predictable disaster because of the ruinous levels of government spending.
There is no doubt that incomes are unequal in the United States — far more so than in most European nations. This fact is part of the impulse behind the Occupy Wall Street movement , whose members claim to represent the 99 percent of us against the wealthiest 1 percent. It has also sparked a major debate in the Republican presidential race, where former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has come under fire for his tax rates and his career as the head of a private-equity firm.
Angry about inequality? Don’t blame the rich. - The Washington Post
Tax reforms
US welfare
America is coming apart. For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world—for whites, anyway. "The more opulent citizens take great care not to stand aloof from the people," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, the great chronicler of American democracy, in the 1830s. "On the contrary, they constantly keep on easy terms with the lower classes: They listen to them, they speak to them every day."
Charles Murray on the New American Divide - WSJ.com
Click here for the answer . Update : Wow. This brief post--really just a link to another blog--proved more controversial than I expected.
What nation has the most progressive tax system?
Economics for public policy
Emmanuel Saez of the University of California at Berkeley has updated his work with Thomas PIketty on the evolution of US Top Incomes to 2010 . He finds that: “In 2010, average real income per family grew by 2.3% … but the gains were very uneven. Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6%, while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery.
Mar 21, 2012 - In the wake of the Great Recession, the Economic Mobility Project updated its 2009 national poll to reassess public perceptions of economic mobility and the American Dream. Read More Dec 16, 2011 - Through nonpartisan research on the facts and drivers of economic mobility, the Economic Mobility Project is fostering an informed discussion about the health and status of the American Dream.
Economic Mobility Project
Ronald McKinnon: The Conservative Case for a Wealth Tax - WSJ.com
The Occupy Wall Street protests have faded from the news, while the unemployment rate fell to 8.5% in December, the lowest level since February 2009. Still, unemployment and income inequality remain justifiable concerns for tens of millions of Americans and are two of the most pressing issues in the 2012 presidential election. Reforming the income-tax system is commonly seen as the principal way to reduce inequality. But any attempt to impose higher marginal tax rates on even moderately high income earners—as President Obama wants for families earning more than $200,000 per year—can lead to losses in economic efficiency and even ...
Edmund Phelps was born in 1933 in , , spent his childhood in Chicago and, from age six, grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He earned his B.A. from Amherst in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Yale in 1959. He is McVickar Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University, Director of Columbia’s Center on Capitalism and Society . He was the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics.
Edmund Phelps Home Page
Brookings’s Campaign 2012 project identifies and addresses the 12 most crucial policy challenges facing the next president in the months leading up to Election Day. The Africa Growth Initiative conducts high-quality policy research and analysis focused on attaining sustainable economic development and prosperity in Africa, while amplifying the voice of African researchers in policy-making and planning. Katherine Sierra is a senior fellow in Global Economy and Development program who focuses on climate change, with a particular emphasis on the issues and policies in the developing world.
Income Distribution - Brookings Institution
Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space WASHINGTON, DC – The United States continues to be riven by heated debate about the causes of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Is government to blame for what went wrong, and, if so, in what sense? In December, the Republican minority on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), weighed in with a preemptive dissenting narrative .