According to a recent study by Michael I. Norton of the Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, Americans overwhelmingly support a more just distribution of income in the United States. In fact, when respondents in the study were asked to pick their ideal income distribution in a blind comparison comparing income distributions in Sweden, the U.S. and a completely equal income distribution, respondents overwhelming chose either Sweden (47%) or an equal income distribution (43%). Only 10% of respondents chose the current income distribution in the U.S. When asked to compare Sweden, where the wealthiest 20% control 36% of the wealth, to the U.S., where the same 20% control 84% of the wealth, respondents (again in a blind comparison) chose Sweden over the U.S. 92% to 8%.
The study also had some other interesting results. First the majority of respondents vastly underestimated the actual level of wealth inequality in the U.S., most believing that the wealthiest 20% control 59% of the wealth (as noted above the actual number is 84%). When asked to construct their own ideal distributions of wealth the majority of respondents assigned 32% of wealth to the top quintile. To construct this more equitable system respondents favored moving wealth from the top quintile to the bottom three, leaving the second untouched, and evidencing a greater concern for the less fortunate than the more fortunate. More startling, these views held across political, gender, and economic lines. Meaning that Americans of all different levels of income, genders, and political persuasions favor a more equitable model along the lines of Sweden and not the current distribution.
What this suggests to me is that the question we should be asking ourselves is not whether or not income redistribution is a good thing, since Americans are overwhelmingly in favor of it, but what is the best way to go about it. Here is where I suspect to find the most disagreement, probably because people who ascribe to different political ideologies understand the causes of such inequality differently. I also think, however, that some of this disagreement could be solved simply by educating people about what the actual wealth distribution is the U.S. is, something that people seem woefully ignorant of.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
A reprehensibly misleading approach to this topic. The problem with the survey you cite is that it's a very deceptive approach to the topic. It's structured to produce the result the researchers want. If they had asked people if they wanted THEIR wealth redistributed to someone else to achieve equalization the responses would have been overwhelmingly negative, especially if the researchers were truly honest and admitted that the only way to do that would be to lower the income levels of the population across the board.
Redistributionism is an illusion and the equality which it produces is slavery. The US deserves better.
2 - Baronius
Dave's right. "Reprehensible" is the best word for this article. It's easy to imagine what a just system would look like, but when you apply it to the real world you see how much injustice would be required to implement it. That's not to say that government doesn't have a role in protecting its people, but inequality isn't the cause of poverty, and any attempt to cure poverty by reducing inequality is doomed to fail.
Inequality is a statistical artifact. It doesn't cause anything, but it can be caused by any number of things. If your car isn't moving, the problem may be a busted transmission or a lack of gasoline. The problem isn't that your car isn't moving. You could fix your car's lack of movement by towing it to the top of a hill and releasing the emergency brake, but that can't be called an improvement.
If there is a problem, it's poverty. Wealth transfer doesn't seem to be able to cure poverty. If we want to cure poverty, we need to ask ourselves what would work.
3 - No It's Not
Dave and Baronius fail to acknowledge the actual redistribution scheme that exists and yes, it does produce slavery. Therefore, they lack credibility and would like to unfairly apply their distortions to everyone.
A society gets to decide how to handle wealth. This one decided that the wealthy would enslave the worker. We have every right to change that and allow labor, which has primacy to capital, to become supreme in importance.
4 - Baronius
NIN, there's a difference between slavery and labor. Slaves don't choose their jobs, negotiate terms, or leave when they get a better offer. Labor is just; slavery is unjust. By confusing the two, you mock both the dignity of work and the indignity of compulsion.
5 - Cannonshop
We've SEEN a Redistributionist model at work before-the Soviet Union, and the outcome of that system. No thanks.
6 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave and Baronius -
"Wealth redistribution" - such a bugaboo phrase among conservatives...
...but what not a single conservative I've ever heard will admit is that since Reaganomics took effect, the real wages of the top 1%, have skyrocketed, while the real wages of the bottom 79% have stayed stagnant, repeat, stagnant. As a result, the top one percent have an average household income of over $27M, yet the bottom 90% have an average income of slightly over $31,000. Vanity Fair provides an enlightening article - Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1% - that shows how we got to this point, and how it has adversely affected American society as a whole.
Now I know that conservatives don't like looking at the big picture, at what's good for the people as a whole...they like instead to concentrate on what's good for the individual, and anything that they feel hinders the ability of the individual to prosper is wrong and unpatriotic and probably socialist. What they don't get, though, is that what the individual thinks is good for himself is often NOT good for America as a whole. But big-picture concepts are not popular among conservatives.
Such is conservative rhetoric - but rhetoric (backed by corporate donations and the political power that always follows) is ALL they have. They flatly ignore the overall results of Reaganomics, the economic theory that has enshrined the ability of the rich to get obscenely richer, while the middle- and lower-classes have seen ZERO improvement in terms of real income, and an increasingly smaller slice of the economic pie ever since Reaganomics took effect.
"Wealth redistribution" - that's the pejorative conservative term for taxing the rich, despite the fact that Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson both recognized its necessity, and such "wealth redistribution" (also known as "shared sacrifice") was part of what helped America nearly pay off our post-WWII federal debt.
Such wonderful rhetoric the conservatives have...but the HISTORICAL FACTS belie their error. Not that facts count for anything when political power and Precious Corporate Profits are at stake....
7 - troll
...the jump from a measurement of preferred ideals to policy proposals and claims of support involves a conceptual sleight of hands worthy of the Jesuits
8 - Glenn Contrarian
C-shop -
Using the Soviet Union as an example is comparing apples and oranges - you cannot use the wildly different tax structures of the Soviet Union and use them to argue about tax structures in America. As this article describes, in the Soviet Union, state-owned enterprises were taxed at a high level - meaning, the state was essentially taxing itself - and the individual was often not even aware of paying taxes since they were paid out at the enterprise level to begin with.
For smaller businesses, some items were significantly taxed - and if the selling price of an item was less than the expected price, then the state would essentially subsidize that item.
And property taxes were completely unknown.
So in other words, C-shop, you can't use a centrally-planned economy to make judgments about a decentralized capitalist economy - the comparisons simply don't work.
That said, is Reaganomics (which we are STILL using) a good thing since 90% of our population has seen at best stagnant growth in real wages since 1980, while the top one percent has seen their wages skyrocket? Has 'trickle-down' economics worked for the middle- and lower-class American people?
9 - Stephen DeWitt, OFM
Thanks to all for the comments.
Dave, to address your comment: the authors of the study I cited break down the responses they got by income level and even among the top quintile there was consistent support for a radically different distribution of income. Presumably people in that income bracket are smart enough to realize that putting their preferences into practice would require them to lose some wealth overall.
Baronius, I am not sure how a system that reduces the pooling of wealth at the top of our society would lead to slavery necessarily. You are correct, I think, in pointing out that inequality isn't a cause, but a symptom. As a symptom, however, it is a reliable indicator of the health of a society. What it says about our society is that we are in trouble and badly so. How we address this problem is a separate discussion. My point here was to identify the fact that a surprisingly consistent consensus exists that the current structure of wealth in our society is indicative that something is wrong.
I have some ideas about how to address the problem, but none of them involves the government simply taking money from the wealthy and giving it directly for the poor. As someone who is generally liberal in my social thinking, I tend to favor better schools, programs to strengthen and support families, and a higher minimum wage; but I think there are probably other good ideas that haven't occurred to me. A more progressive tax structure could create the money to fund such programs.
I also want to emphasize Glen Contrarian's point about the need to pay attention to the health of society as a whole. In the Catholic moral tradition, we call this the common good, and maintaining it is the primary responsibility of government. At minimum this means ensuring that all members of a society have access to what is necessary for a dignified life (food, shelter, clothing, health care, education, among others). A society in which the majority of wealth is concentrated in a relatively small number of people is one where the common good is not being sufficiently protected. In this situation, government not only has the right, but the duty to take corrective action. This is where we are now and this is the problem that needs urgent action.
10 - Baronius
"As a symptom, however, it is a reliable indicator of the health of a society. What it says about our society is that we are in trouble and badly so."
I don't think it is reliable. Inequality tends to go up with economic development and down during long declines. Inequality doesn't preclude economic growth among the among the poor - in fact, it can indicate massive economic growth among the poor. I just don't think it measures what you think it measures.
"How we address this problem is a separate discussion."
It may be a separate discussion, but you do hint at your preferred answers in both this article and the one you linked to. You're clearly thinking in terms of governmentally-mandated income redistribution.
"My point here was to identify the fact that a surprisingly consistent consensus exists that the current structure of wealth in our society is indicative that something is wrong."
No, what you're identifying is that people believe in greater equality when personal input is removed from the equation. The study also highlights that most people can't do algebraic and statistical analysis in their heads, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
11 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
Inequality tends to go up with economic development and down during long declines. Inequality doesn't preclude economic growth among the among the poor - in fact, it can indicate massive economic growth among the poor.
I'd love to see you prove this with some kind of reliable reference...because the references I linked to in comment #6 show just the opposite. Not that the BC conservatives pay attention to the actual data, of course.
12 - Clavos
I find it very strange that a significant portion of the members of the top (or even the second and third) quintile would be so eager to part with their life's savings.
I emphatically am not.
13 - Clavos
...the jump from a measurement of preferred ideals to policy proposals and claims of support involves a conceptual sleight of hands worthy of the Jesuits
Bears repeating.
Troll, that bridge of yours is a wondrous place in my estimation.
14 - Cannonshop
Simple Question, Glenn, How do you intend to redistribute and apportion that wealth, if not by shifting to a central-planning economy, thus entering into such fine company as North Korea, Cuba, and the former soviet union? The core of the IDEA of Redistributing Wealth is Central Planning, as would be continuing to enforce that 'equality' afterward.
15 - Cannonshop
Typically, it has been shown, those who keep everyone equal tend to keep themselves, their families, and their close friends MORE equal, ala Orwell's Animal Farm.
16 - Christopher Rose
Whilst having an instinctive distrust of faithist notions, this writer does raise some interesting points.
Although to out and out capitalists, the idea of income re-distribution may seem unreasonable, perhaps we should bear in mind the countries undergoing such radical upheaval right now, in which the wealth imbalance is even more extreme than it is in the USA.
Without some degree of wealth re-distribution, countries tend to become unbalanced and the poorer people increasingly disenfranchised, which leads to resentment and, as we are seeing, eventually revolution.
Regrettable as wealth re-distribution may be to some on ideological grounds, it is effectively the price to be paid for social cohesion and order.
That's not to say that there couldn't be far better ways to do it than is currently being achieved, but that is a whole other subject for debate.
17 - Baronius
"Inequality tends to go up with economic development and down during long declines." - See the Kuznets Curve.
"Inequality doesn't preclude economic growth among the among the poor" - inequality can increase as long as the rich are growing richer faster than the poor are growing richer.
"in fact, it can indicate massive economic growth among the poor." - You can reason this out once you consider that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates started out in the bottom quintile.
18 - Glenn Contrarian
C-shop -
Simple Question, Glenn, How do you intend to redistribute and apportion that wealth, if not by shifting to a central-planning economy, thus entering into such fine company as North Korea, Cuba, and the former soviet union? The core of the IDEA of Redistributing Wealth is Central Planning, as would be continuing to enforce that 'equality' afterward.
There you go again, comparing apples and oranges. There is NO instance of Democrats and liberals wanting to 'reapportion wealth'.
All we're wanting is to have a sensible tax structure that includes a progressive tax as was supported by such noted Soviet sympathizers as Thomas Jefferson and Dwight Eisenhower. Our top marginal tax rate was at 70% until Reagan took over...but as it stands now, the very rich pay significantly less of a percentage of their income in taxes than do you or I, and major corporations often pay no tax at all!
Is this somehow fair, C-shop? Is wanting to go back to what we had under the several administrations before Reagan somehow instituting a centrally-planned economy? I'd love to hear how you arrived at that particular conclusion!
Good grief, C-shop, look again at that Kool-Aid that you're drinking!
19 - Boeke
One thing for certain, peoples perceptions of wealth gap greatly underestimate the actual gap. Perhaps if people properly estimated and appreciated the actual gap between rich and poor they would be in favor of significant re-adjustments toward equalisation.
So one can maintain that rightists have been successful in disguising the big gap between rich and poor. It's a big propaganda victory, suggesting that the Mianstream Media is rightist.
20 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
Okay...so according to your "Kuznets Curve", then, nearly every first-world democracy should have a huge income inequality gap, right? And most third-world countries should have a smaller income inequality gap, right?
SO WHY AIN'T IT THAT WAY IN THE REAL WORLD, if your "Kuznets Curve" is right? That one chart by itself - if you'll actually look at it - blows the "Kuznets Curve" out of the water!
That's what drives me nuts about you conservatives - you place SO much faith in your rhetoric...but you completely ignore the real-world facts that obviate the falsity of that rhetoric!
And you point out the success of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as proof of America's 'upward mobility'...but that's known as 'cherry picking', isn't it? I wonder what you would say of job growth in America since we started down this "trickle-down economics" path in 1980?
But instead of looking at just one or two people, how about looking at entire nations instead:
A new report from the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) finds that social mobility between generations is dramatically lower in the U.S. than in many other developed countries.
So if you want your children to climb the socioeconomic ladder higher than you did, move to Canada.
The report finds the U.S. ranking well below Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and Spain in terms of how freely citizens move up or down the social ladder. Only in Italy and Great Britain is the intensity of the relationship between individual and parental earnings even greater.
Here's another great resource that can help you remove some of the misconceptions you gained since you started on the conservatives' Kool-Aid diet.
So Baronius - willya PLEASE learn that while rhetoric may sound great, when that rhetoric does NOT work when compared to factual data in the real world, then maybe, just maybe, that rhetoric is WRONG.
21 - Andy Marsh
Glenn - In comment 18 you say, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. And you say it like it's no big deal! Read that number man! 70! SEVENTY%. I mean holy shit! That doesn't bother you?
I don't give a rats ass how much money a person makes, the govt has no right to SEVENTY PERCENT OF IT!!!
Do liberals really believe that it's cool for the govt to take that much from one person? If they do I'm absolutely positive I'll never become one!
22 - Baronius
Cannon - Wealth redistribution is different from central planning in principle. Central planning involves the allocation of resources before production, while wealth redistribution assigns the gains from production. As a practical matter, usually there's wealth distribution first, followed by regulation of industry, followed by control of industry. Once a politician has convinced himself that he's a benevolent master and economist, it's a short step to believing he can run a factory.
Christopher - I'm glad you pointed out that you're not a faithist. AGAIN. Because as soon as I saw you made a comment to an article about economic policy, I just assumed that you'd converted. You know, because the author is a Franciscan. I mean, that'd practically make you a pope or something. I'm glad you were there to clarify matters by declaring, AGAIN, that you're not a faithist.
23 - Christopher Rose
Baronius, perhaps that bee in your bonnet has finally driven you bonkers because I didn't say I wasn't a faithist, I said that I have "an instinctive distrust of faithist notions", which is a reasonable enough precaution...
I will add that you're not a comedian though - does that make you feel better?
24 - Glenn Contrarian
Andy -
Glenn - In comment 18 you say, the top marginal tax rate was 70%. And you say it like it's no big deal! Read that number man! 70! SEVENTY%. I mean holy shit! That doesn't bother you?
I don't give a rats ass how much money a person makes, the govt has no right to SEVENTY PERCENT OF IT!!!
Didja happen to notice how the Rockefellers were all lining up at Goodwill back in the 1970's? No? Could it be that there's more to it than what you think?
Yeah.
For one thing, the top marginal tax rate (which back during the Truman AND Eisenhower admins were at NINETY-ONE percent - which is how we nearly paid off our entire national debt which was greater in today's dollars than our current one)...
...the top marginal tax rate back then was ONLY on the wealthiest of American citizens...and most of them didn't pay out seventy or ninety percent of their annual income in taxes. Why? Because instead of paying out such outrageous sums, they instead tended to immediately reinvest said income into their businesses, and so were able to pay far less in taxes while simultaneously growing their businesses (and adding many more jobs).
Now doesn't that make a bit more sense than the super-rich of today building factories and resorts overseas and closing down factories stateside? And if you want a bit of supporting info, think about how much BETTER our employment rates were in the 1950's through the 1970's compared to today, now that Reaganomics has allowed so many of our factories to be sent overseas!
Think about it, Andy -
25 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
I notice you didn't say anything about how good income inequality is, and how the "Kuznets Curve" supports it, after I posted a link showing how false both concepts are.