[My note – there is a discrepancy in facts between an article I mention, and some facts that are quoted in the comments from Brian attached to this blog. The discrepancy as explained in the comment from Dn. Marty appears to be that the original article refers to income, not wealth, while the charts Brian refers to are talking about wealth not income. The difference is significant and certainly which statistics one is looking at changes the conclusion one can make. I have edited my original comments to better reflect the facts being offered in the original article. Probably need to retitle this blog to “The Redistribution of Income.” Thanks to Brian and Dn. Marty for their comments.]
In the ears of a number of Americans, “the redistribution of wealth” is an idea which is associated with notions of socialism, or the political left or the tax and spend folk of Washington, D.C. These fears seems also to feed the anti-tax political movements in America.
Apparently the thinking is that if only the tax rates would go down, more Americans would be or become wealthier. Statistics analyzed in the book PRESIMETRICS claim however from the time of Presidents Eisenhower to GW Bush that there is no statistical evidence to show “that lower taxes result in higher incomes” and amazingly enough “it is pretty evident” in that same time period that “higher taxes were not hurting people’s pocketbooks” as measured in real median income or net disposable income. Lower taxes did not yield the higher economic growth some predict and lower taxes “at least by themselves– are not the way to increase economic growth.” (You can analyze their statistics, pp 116-130 of the book: Some say numbers don’t lie, others that statistics can be interpreted to mean anything.)
What is perhaps more notable economically, is an article by A. Atkinson, T. Piketty, and E. Saez in the March 2011 issue of JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC LITERATURE (as reported in the Summer 2011 WILSON QUARTERLY). According to this article, in the United States, “The top one percent of earners more than doubled their share of income between 1976 and 2007, from nine to 24 percent.” [The discrepancy is in that the statistics in the comments below show in the increase in wealth going from 19% to 24%, while the article is claiming “their share of income” increased from 9-24%. That certainly changes the basis of my comments.] This means that in this time period the 1% wealthiest Americans in 30 years had their share of the nation’s income increase from 9% to 24%. The top 1% of the wealthiest now own almost 1/4 of the income generated in America. This is a redistribution of wealth not engineered by socialism, but certainly the direct result of American economic policies and capitalism as we practice it.
The article goes on to say, “For the top 0.1 percent of earners, the concentration was even more extreme: They quadrupled their share, from three to 12 percent.”
The rich have been getting richer faster! America, claimed to be the richest nation on earth, has an ever growing portion of its wealth controlled by one percent of its population.
So a redistribution of wealth actually does take place in America, one that is not the result of leftest policies or of increasing taxes: wealth is moving toward and pooling in the bank accounts of the wealthiest Americans. Some may say that is just the nature of things, but this doesn’t happen “naturally”, it is purely manmade: it happens as a result of the intentional economic policies to which we choose to adhere. It is, I suppose, a form of economic Darwinism: the strong not only survive, they thrive in the economic world they create and control. It is a human-made selection that favors those who have created the conditions which determine who thrives.
Now to be fair to the entire picture, in that same time period, the 99% of Americans not in that wealthiest 1% saw their income rise 18% as well. (By comparison, in that same 99% of French citizens, their income rose 26% in that same time period). So there was an overall income increase in America across the board, but an even faster growth in the income of the wealthiest American 1%. (The statistics show worldwide the rate of concentration of wealth in the wealthiest few occurred much more in America than in Europe or Japan).
I have not been convinced that the US can reduce its deficit and debt by spending cuts alon; rather I think we actually will need tax revenue increases to pay down the debt. It seems that also was the concern of S & P in lowering the credit rating of the U.S.: budget cuts alone are not going to be able to get the U.S. to balance its budget and eliminate its massive debt. Thus maybe the next impasse is going to be between the Tea Party adherents verse the Credit rating agencies and Wall Street.
I have read before that the U.S. and world economies have tended to fall into the hardest times when a disproportional amount of wealth gets concentrated in the few. The economy works far better when wealth is widely distributed over a greater number of people. So the current redistribution of the wealth toward the wealthiest few does not bode well for future economics in the U.S. Fareed Zakaria writing in the 15 August 2011 issue of TIME, said:
So far, the national debate has been built around the fantasy that we do not have to choose between big government and low taxes–that we can get both by cutting waste, fraud and abuse. But the money is in the big middle-class items, from Medicare to the mortgage-interest deduction. With federal taxes at 15% of GDP, a historic low, and spending at 24% of GDP, there is really no conceivable way to close the gap without increasing taxes–either raising rates or eliminating deductions and loopholes. And Republicans might find to their dismay that when forced to choose, Americans will decide that they like their government programs after all. Polls show that the public would rather raise taxes than, for example, cut Medicare. (In fact, we would have to do both.) The public may hate government in theory, but it has warm feelings about most individual government programs, from the space shuttle to Head Start to Pell Grants.
Whatever agreement our politicians cobbled together to increase the debt ceiling, they still neither solved the deficit and debt crisis facing the U.S., nor did they show enough good old American ingenuity in how to bring people together to solve a problem. They were not able enough or bold enough to take on the size of the problem facing us.
Americans often were viewed in the past by the rest of the world with amusement and admiration for their can-do attitudes toward problem solving and our belief in the power of negotiation to create compromise solutions that bring some benefits to all parties. Time will tell whether we still have that American spirit to solve our problems today.
Two ways in which Constantine demonstrated the influence of Christianity on his thinking and piety are associated with animal sacrifice and the gladiatorial games of Rome. Constantine first refused to participate in animal sacrifice and then began forbidding it in areas of the empire which were under his direct control – in the military and in civic ceremony. As both historians Leithart and Stephenson note, animal sacrifice was a normative part of Roman civil society, and in some ways marked the very nature of religion in Rome. Constantine’s personal choice to refuse to participate in such sacrifice and then his forbidding it in civic and military ceremonies in which he took part do reflect the growing influence of Christianity on his religious understanding. Christians did believe that Christ’s sacrifice once and for all replaced the need for animal sacrifice in the temple in Jerusalem, and now Constantine recognized that same truth for the empire: animal sacrifice was not needed to please the great God.
Fraternized 