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 Msg. #  Subject Posted by    Board    Date   
08929 Re: Goofy thoughts***
   Ha, excuse my intrusion. If I lived on a two person island and we sha...
waveduke   ALEA   09 Jul 2012
10:48 PM
08927 Re: Goofy thoughts***
   The really extraordinary thing is that the very wealthy have managed t...
Cactus Flower   ALEA   09 Jul 2012
9:24 PM

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Re: Goofy thoughts***

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA
Mon, 09 Jul 12 7:49 PM
Msg. 08922 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 08921 by waveduke)
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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.