"Nine New Findings About Inequality in the United States"
By JEREMY ASHKENAS DEC. 16, 2016
[In a paper published last week, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman expand their earlier work, examining how taxes and government spending affect income inequality. Related Article ]
"The bottom half of the country has been shut out from income growth for 40 years.
The average pretax earnings of an American in the bottom 50 percent by income was $16,197 in 2014, a nearly invisible 2.6 percent gain over 40 years. Over the same period, the top 10 percent of Americans saw their pretax incomes grow by 231 percent."
"Government spending has helped lift lower incomes, but only a little.
The study subtracts taxes, and then adds back the benefits of both direct (Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps) and indirect (infrastructure, defense, education) government spending to arrive at an after-tax measure of income.
By comparing pretax income to income after accounting for taxes and government spending, we can see a clearer picture of how government policy has affected income inequality in the United States."
"The top 1% and the bottom 50% have swapped their relative shares of the national income.
Forty years ago, the top 1 percent of earners took home 10.5 percent of the total national income, and the bottom half earned 20 percent of it. By 2014, those percentages effectively flipped, with the top 1 percent earning a 20 percent share and the bottom half dropping to 12.5 percent."
Yes, richer people can afford more and probably deserve to keep it. They can have several homes and cars if they want, that is true.
Jut know some people want to work hard and get ahead, not on your dole, but with a fair chance to earn. And it seems too ironic that so many ethnics do not somehow grab that brass ring. There are some symbolic TOKEN,talking heads on Fox and other cable news shows brag that if they can do it, any ethnic can.
"5 key takeaways about views of race and inequality in America"
By Renee Stepler
27 June 2016
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/06/27/key-takeaways-race-and-inequality/
Five listed:
"Whites and blacks are split over the current state of race relations and what progress Obama has made on the issue
About six-in-ten Americans (61%) say more changes are needed to achieve racial equality; 30% say the country has already made enough changes.
By large margins, black adults are more likely than whites to say that blacks are treated less fairly than whites across key areas of American life.
About four-in-ten Americans express support for the Black Lives Matter movement, but blacks are considerably more likely to do so than whites or Hispanics.
Across several measures, black-white gaps in social and economic well-being persist."
Be aware! Beware!
