If everyone gets 2x as much tomorrow as today, income inequality rises. Ask people if they would support everyone getting 2x their income tomorrow.
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US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
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Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#12"Most Americans would look at these charts and conclude that inequality is out of control. The president, on the other hand, seems to think that inequality isn’t big enough." Would nobody else reading this want some further information to back up this statement? Its a shame it wasn't nearer the beginning of the article as I could have stopped reading earlier.
It's literally in the preceding paragraph. Notes about how the proposed healthcare law was essentially a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, how the proposed tax cuts mainly benefit the richest Americans, and plans to cut school funding.
Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#13If everyone gets 2x as much tomorrow as today, income inequality rises. Ask people if they would support everyone getting 2x their income tomorrow.
wait, wouldn't scaling income by a constant multiple be the same as not changing anything? Your income and expenses are both doubled.
this would just kill the bank accounts of anyone holding cash.
Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#14It looks to me that QE3 was a huge part of that later uptick.
its no surprise to me that if you juice the markets and inflate asset prices (mostly stock), that the richest benefit most. what was surprising to me is how bad actually making stuff did. I understand that juicing the markets might not benefit that, but it seemed as though QE3 actually hurt producing tangible things.
Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#15"Most Americans would look at these charts and conclude that inequality is out of control. The president, on the other hand, seems to think that inequality isn’t big enough." Would nobody else reading this want some further information to back up this statement? Its a shame it wasn't nearer the beginning of the article as I could have stopped reading earlier.
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Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#16It's an interesting question. Most of peoples incomes are rising, it's just whose incomes are rising more than others. Is that still fair?
No, it's not fair. If you're an anarcho-capitalist, "what is this minimum wage thing?," if you're a communist "seize the means of production!"
Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#17When inequality grows, empires shrink and eventually disappear: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/feb/05/inequality-...
And let's not kid ourselves. Those on top intend on staying there by growing the gap.
Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#18If everyone gets 2x as much tomorrow as today, income inequality rises. Ask people if they would support everyone getting 2x their income tomorrow.
Did you not understand the chart? Its a chart based on percent growth. ×2 across the board would be a flat line. Instead, the income of the ultra rich is vastly up, while for everyone else it is much smaller, not in terms of absolute numbers, but percentage.
Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#19"Most Americans would look at these charts and conclude that inequality is out of control. The president, on the other hand, seems to think that inequality isn’t big enough." Would nobody else reading this want some further information to back up this statement? Its a shame it wasn't nearer the beginning of the article as I could have stopped reading earlier.
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Re: US Income Inequality: All for the Top 1%
#20If everyone gets 2x as much tomorrow as today, income inequality rises. Ask people if they would support everyone getting 2x their income tomorrow.
That is not, however, what the chart in TFA shows. It shows the bottom 5th percentile with income going down, and income gains increasing in relative (as well as absolute) terms as you get higher up the income percentiles.
FWIW income inequality is normally reported proportionally (using the Gini coefficient or something similar) so even in your hypothetical case inequality would be reported as constant rather than increasing.