Top 1% now owns more of the wealth than the remaining 99%

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfork...

But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day. Our country is rapidly becoming less a capitalist society and more a feudal society. Unless our policies change dramatically, the middle class will disappear, and we will be back to late 18th-century France. Before the revolution.

And so I have a message for my fellow filthy rich, for all of us who live in our gated bubble worlds: Wake up, people. It won’t last.

If we don’t do something to fix the glaring inequities in this economy, the pitchforks are going to come for us. No society can sustain this kind of rising inequality. In fact, there is no example in human history where wealth accumulated like this and the pitchforks didn’t eventually come out. You show me a highly unequal society, and I will show you a police state. Or an uprising. There are no counterexamples. None. It’s not if, it’s when.

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The thing about us businesspeople is that we love our customers rich and our employees poor. So for as long as there has been capitalism, capitalists have said the same thing about any effort to raise wages. We’ve had 75 years of complaints from big business—when the minimum wage was instituted, when women had to be paid equitable amounts, when child labor laws were created. Every time the capitalists said exactly the same thing in the same way: We’re all going to go bankrupt. I’ll have to close. I’ll have to lay everyone off. It hasn’t happened. In fact, the data show that when workers are better treated, business gets better.

> Who cares about socialist propaganda like this?

Discussing inequality in society isn't "socialist propaganda".

> There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons.

https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/...

> The evidence suggests that the channel through which inequality hurts growth is asset bubbles and financial-market instability, so policies that impose adequate oversight in that sector also flow from this research

http://www.oecd.org/social/Focus-Inequality-and-Growth-2014....

> The evidence is strongly in favour of one particular theory for how inequality affects growth: by hindering human capital accumulation income inequality undermines education opportunities for disadvantaged individuals, lowering social mobility and hampering skills development.

There is evidence that the current level of inequality contributes to toxic asset bubbles and the quality of human labor available to industry. I'm not sure how improving both those situations are "bad" for the average person?

> For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?

Yeah, that isn't how it works. Hint: The biggest gains are via education subsidization & shifting the tax burden.

Hell, it can be done with just shifting money from Defense -> Education and removing clauses in the tax code that primarily benefit those making 6 figures. [i.e. Capital gains tricks for multiple residences, mortgage interest exemptions]

No one says "get rid of inequality at any cost" but rather "How can we improve growth by reducing inequality?"

http://www.oecd.org/eco/growth/49421421.pdf

> Reforms to increase human capital are important for improving living standards, and are also likely to reduce labour income inequality. New analysis shows that a rise in the share of workers with upper secondary education is associated with a decline in labour earnings inequality (Fournier and Koske, 2012). Examples of policy initiatives to raise upper secondary education attainment include inter alia enhanced accountability for schools, better teacher recruitment and training, and special support for pupils at risk of dropping out.

> Raising social mobility by making educational outcomes less dependent on personal and social circumstances should boost GDP per capita by enhancing entrepreneurship, the overall quality and allocation of human capital and, ultimately, productivity.

> Taxes do not only affect the distribution of income; they also affect GDP per capita by influencing labour use and productivity, or both (Johansson et al., 2008). Some tax reforms appear to be win-win options – improving growth prospects while narrowing the distribution of income. Many, however, may imply trade-offs between these objectives. Following the same approach as for labour market, product market and education policies discussed above (Table 5.2), these complementarities and trade-offs are drawn out in

> Reduce distortions in taxing capital income. Tax relief – such as reduced taxation for capital gains from the sale of a principal or secondary residence – often distorts resource allocation without boosting aggregate savings and growth, and benefits mainly high-income groups. Specific tax relief may also provide tax avoidance instruments for top-income earners. In particular, there is little justification for tax breaks for stock options and carried interest. Raising such taxes would increase equity and allow a growth-enhancing cut in marginal labour income tax rates.

> Re-assess tax expenditures that benefit mainly high-income groups (e.g. tax relief on mortgage interest). Cutting back such tax expenditures is likely to be beneficial both for long-term GDP per capita, allowing a reduction in marginal tax rates, and for a more equitable distribution of income. Lowering tax expenditures would also reduce the complexity of the tax system, and thus tax compliance and collection costs.

"Economy" is the measurement of the movement of money.

Rich people hoarding money slows the movement, thereby slows the economy.

Any one wanting to help the economy would logically oppose the ever growing inequity.