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Income Disparities & Economic Policy
- Thread starter wageratio
- Start date
AdelanteGOP
Rookie
- Nov 1, 2013
- 16
- 1
- 1
Education. More access to education
I have a project for my AP English class where I can research anything I want, so I'm looking at how to reduce income disparities. Please answer my survey, I'd really appreciate it!
bit.ly/1ilyGBD
Ruthlessly high taxes on income over 100k. Generous benefits for anyone making under 30k. Do that and you'll erase income disparity. Just like Cuba and North Korea.
AdelanteGOP
Rookie
- Nov 1, 2013
- 16
- 1
- 1
Hmmm....
I don't want to live in Cuba or North Korea!
I don't want to live in Cuba or North Korea!
Hmmm....
I don't want to live in Cuba or North Korea!
No one with two funcitoning brain cells would. That's why progessives love those places and want to copy their policies.
I have a project for my AP English class where I can research anything I want, so I'm looking at how to reduce income disparities. Please answer my survey, I'd really appreciate it!
bit.ly/1ilyGBD
Why would you want to reduce income disparities? The only rationale I can come up with is if these disparities are due to the use of coercion.
- May 20, 2009
- 144,425
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I have a project for my AP English class where I can research anything I want, so I'm looking at how to reduce income disparities. Please answer my survey, I'd really appreciate it!
bit.ly/1ilyGBD
Easy. Move to a Socialist country! They reduces everybody's income
HelenaHandbag
Shoots back
Equality of squalor.I have a project for my AP English class where I can research anything I want, so I'm looking at how to reduce income disparities. Please answer my survey, I'd really appreciate it!
bit.ly/1ilyGBD
Easy. Move to a Socialist country! They reduces everybody's income
Like most economic phenomena, if you attack a "problem" with fixation you might solve that problem but in an infinitely dynamic economy it will be replaced by another problem, probably a worse one.
A good example is rent controls. After WWII there were millions of returning veterans who were starting families and looking for places to live. In big cities where most people were inclined to rent apartments (buying a house was prohibitively expensive), rents started increasing dramatically. Politicians who wanted to solve the "problem" of increasing rents introduced rent controls. Ultimately rent controls (amazingly still in existence in places like New York and SF) resulted in a steadily deteriorating stock of available rental housing (why would an owner put money into a building where the rents were dramatically below market?), huge discrepancies between the rents in older buildings and new ones, and people going to bizarre measures to avoid having to give up their apartments with ridiculously low rents.
Had the politicians done nothing, the higher rents would shortly have resulted in a building boom, with developers building rental apartments by the thousands, which would have the effect of tempering or eliminating the rent inflation.
Solving the "problem" of great income disparities would be simple (if not easy). Establish a guaranteed annual income per household (say, $30,000), and tax incomes over $100,000 at 90% to pay for it.
But clearly, doing so would create the much bigger problem of a large percentage of the population deciding not to work (to take advantage of the guaranteed income), and the high earners LEAVING IN DROVES, or changing their activities to ensure that their TAXABLE income never exceeded $100k. (It is an amazing fact that the income taxes of the top earners haven't changed much, historically, whether the top marginal tax rate was 28% (under Reagan for a short time), or 78%, as it was when RR was elected. They always seem to pay about 17-19% of their total income in federal income taxes).
Similar kinds of effects would follow the ill-advised move to increase the minimum wage significantly. The negative results would be that, at say $15/hour, no employer would ever hire a high school kid during the summer, or a school dropout, or even a HS grad with any stains on his employment background. At $15/hr minimum, there would be a lot more offshore sourcing, moves to automation, and a lot more of people "getting paid under the table" and paying no taxes at all. So solving the problem of people working for less than a "living wage" would entail putting many of them out of work entirely.
Nice solution, eh?
A good example is rent controls. After WWII there were millions of returning veterans who were starting families and looking for places to live. In big cities where most people were inclined to rent apartments (buying a house was prohibitively expensive), rents started increasing dramatically. Politicians who wanted to solve the "problem" of increasing rents introduced rent controls. Ultimately rent controls (amazingly still in existence in places like New York and SF) resulted in a steadily deteriorating stock of available rental housing (why would an owner put money into a building where the rents were dramatically below market?), huge discrepancies between the rents in older buildings and new ones, and people going to bizarre measures to avoid having to give up their apartments with ridiculously low rents.
Had the politicians done nothing, the higher rents would shortly have resulted in a building boom, with developers building rental apartments by the thousands, which would have the effect of tempering or eliminating the rent inflation.
Solving the "problem" of great income disparities would be simple (if not easy). Establish a guaranteed annual income per household (say, $30,000), and tax incomes over $100,000 at 90% to pay for it.
But clearly, doing so would create the much bigger problem of a large percentage of the population deciding not to work (to take advantage of the guaranteed income), and the high earners LEAVING IN DROVES, or changing their activities to ensure that their TAXABLE income never exceeded $100k. (It is an amazing fact that the income taxes of the top earners haven't changed much, historically, whether the top marginal tax rate was 28% (under Reagan for a short time), or 78%, as it was when RR was elected. They always seem to pay about 17-19% of their total income in federal income taxes).
Similar kinds of effects would follow the ill-advised move to increase the minimum wage significantly. The negative results would be that, at say $15/hour, no employer would ever hire a high school kid during the summer, or a school dropout, or even a HS grad with any stains on his employment background. At $15/hr minimum, there would be a lot more offshore sourcing, moves to automation, and a lot more of people "getting paid under the table" and paying no taxes at all. So solving the problem of people working for less than a "living wage" would entail putting many of them out of work entirely.
Nice solution, eh?
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