Hi duke,
I am not snackman! And you are not on WAVX DD. Deletions are therefore unnecessary. :-)
By the way, the US has been moving away from the so-called American Dream even as inequality has been exacerbated by lowered tax rates on very high income earners.
You have a better chance of climbing the social ladder in countries like Norway with higher tax regimes and stronger support for people lower on the income scale. Indeed, US social strata are increasingly ossified.
http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=31110
See page 13 of the link below which shows that tax rates on the very wealthy have halved since 1960.
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/piketty-saezJEP07taxprog.pdf
The wealthy pay more as a proportion of total taxes because they have received a larger share of the total pie. The growth of income amongst the wealthy has increased faster than the rate of growth of their taxes. So there's been a net wealth transfer in favour of the top 1% in US society at the same time as a relative reduction in support for public goods. And at a cost of less mobility.
I'm sure the 99% would happily pay more taxes if they could get a bigger share of the pie. Or even the same share as they had 30 years ago.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/26/nyregion/the-new-gilded-age.html
In sum, the US economy has done better when the slope of inequality is less extreme. And it has done catastrophically badly when the top 1% corral most of the rewards of US productivity.
So a less extreme net rewards curve is likely to result in a more fluid society and a higher growth economy.
In short, raise taxes on the 1% for a healthier society.
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