I consider myself to be average in the ability to understand somewhat complex matters, but I must admit I cannot comprehend the connection between the multi-millionaire who rides the wave of the stock market since 2009, gains a few hundred million dollars and the Lakia Wilsons of the world. When she says, “The money is there, we need to demand it.â does she mean she is entitled to some of those millions just because someone else has it and she doesn’t? Is she saying she is in a low paying job in a bankrupt city because entrepeneurs and investors made a lot of money in the last decade? Is she saying her opportunities are blocked because someone else is rich?
Look at her actions as an example. She bought a house she could not afford and then screwed up her future retirement by cashing out her retirement funds (and no doubt paying a tax penalty) to keep the house she apparently still cannot afford.
Maybe it is all very simple. Regardless of how you earned and accumulated your money, when you have more than other people, they have a right to take what they deem excessive from you. And it matters not if these people are truly needy and deserving of assistance, it only matters that you have much more than they do.
A vibrant, upward mobile middle-class is essential, but is the problem inhibiting that, the financial success of a relatively few? Â It seems more like scapegoating to me which once again is keeping us from focusing on the real, less popular issues.
If you have a better grasp of all this, please explain with clear logic so I can understand. Is our only option to give up on the idea of opportunity and start playing Robin Hood? Here is a women with two degrees, an educated professional who could use food stamps. Apparently a good education is not the only answer … as if we didn’t know that.
Lakia Wilson, a guidance counselor in the public school system in Detroit, Mich., said that even though you hear on television that the economy is coming back, it hasnât come back for everyone.
“Iâm struggling, all of my counterparts in my profession are struggling and in other professions weâre still struggling, so the economy is only coming back for some,â said Wilson.
Wilson, a Detroit native, with no children and degrees in elementary education and counseling, said that she considers herself part of âthe working poor,â because sometimes she canât even afford gas money to get to work. In 2004, Wilson purchased home and used a part-time job at the community college to help cover her bills. When she lost that job, she also lost her house.
She rescued her house from foreclosure by cashing out her retirement account. Now Wilson said that sometimes she secretly envies people with food stamps at the grocery store.
âIâm counting out every penny for groceries and I realize that I donât have enough to make it,â said Wilson.
Wilson added that people of color need to know that the struggle is real and that all workers have to get involved from the pizza workers to the professionals.
âWe all have to join together to raise the wages,â said Wilson. âThe money is there, we need to demand it.â
The EPI report said that todayâs levels of inequality in the United States raise a ânew American Dilemma.â
It explained, âIn the next decade, something must give. Either America must accept that the American Dream of widespread economic mobility is dead, or new policies must emerge that will begin to restore broadly shared prosperity.â
via Income Inequality Rises In All 50 States | Milwaukee Courier Weekly Newspaper.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
The EPI? Don’t make me laugh. That is a front for the unions. Look at it’s members. It may as well read “this opinion bought and paid for with union ‘dues’.”
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Very helpful Jack. Unfortunately, it’s not what the left wants to hear because it doesn’t fit their populist agenda. Of particular note is the fact that there is not a static state for the distribution. Like you I started at the bottom earning the lowest hourly rate out of 15,000 employees and over the years advancing to the top 5%. It takes time and hard work and effort and I maintain still is available to anyone.
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One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, the 19th century British Prime Minister, in the autobiography of Mark Twain, âThere are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Anyway, Eugene Steuerle is the Richard B. Fisher chair and Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute, formerly serving in the Treasury Department, and a long, long distinguished resume as an economist and policy wonk – including championing the 1986 Tax Reform Act.
A few weeks ago, he released an analysis of average market incomes during the period 1979 through 2011. But, unlike other doom and gloom claims of widening income inequality, he decided to compare incomes before and after adjusting for government transfers. He found that average market incomes â that is, gross incomes before income taxes and government transfers â of the richest 20 percent of the population (or the top income quintile, top 1/5th ) grew from 20 times to 30 times the incomes of the poorest 20 percent (the bottom income quintile, the bottom 1/5th ). So, absent government intervention, taxes needed to fund the behemoth that is todayâs federal government, and the massive growth in government over the past 35 years, there is certainly plenty of income inequality.
However, he then examined income inequality for the same groups, for each year, 1979 through 2011, but he adjusted the data to reflect income taxes and government transfers. The first study, which before taxes and transfers, shows a growth in the differential from 20x to 30x â the highest fifth average income grew from 20x the average income of the lowest fifth, to 30x the income of the lowest fifth. As you would guess, and none too surprisingly, the second study shows a much smaller, and a much more stable relationship between the top and bottom income quintiles. In 1979, the ratio is reduced to 5.5:1 (taxes lower the top, transfers raise the bottom) and the ratio only increases very slightly to 6:1 by 2011.
So, Twain remains right. Keep this in mind and remember to challenge those would would use gross, unadjusted income numbers, numbers which distort reality, to drive further stupidity in the public and in the generation of public policy.
Also keep in mind two other considerations:
– Donât know about you, but I was probably in the lowest quintile, or awfully close to it, as late as 1973, when my income was just over $4,000 a year (at the end of my military service, again, just measuring taxable wages). Today, my income from various sources, retirement plan, wages, etc., puts me into that top quintile. The interim period showed 40+ years of continuous employment, four degrees, and many 12 â 16 hour days, and 80+ hour work weeks. My point, is only that we are not talking about a static distribution of the American population when we compare taxable incomes across quintiles.
– Further, income inequality â wealth inequality ⌠there, it should be noted that while taxes (income, estate, etc.) do negatively impact wealth accumulations among the top quintile, government transfers have not resulted in the lowest quintile accumulating measurable levels of wealth.
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