I have been
reading an article the other day in the Ny-times and it talks about the income
inequality in the United States. I thought you might be interested because it
is a special topic and it’s a good question, why the Americans don’t feel the
need to have more equal incomes.
With rising
income inequality in the United States, you might expect more and more people
to decide that it’s time to soak the rich. Here’s a puzzle: Over the last
several years, the opposite has happened. Since the 1970s the middle class
incomes have been low, while the wealthy have done very well; inequality of
wealth and income has risen. Americans’ desire to soak the rich has decreased
even as the rich have more money available that could, theoretically, be
soaked.
What interested
me most was that the author of the article demonstrated two different ways of
possible causes for the ideological background of the Americans:
Ø
If
you’re conservative, an answer might be this: Americans don’t feel the need of
more redistribution (Neuverteilung) because they realized that low taxes on the
rich is a reason for faster economic growth that ultimately made everybody
better off.
Ø If you’re a liberal, the answer might be more
like this: Americans have been cheated by conservative politicians and media
outlets, and have come to view redistribution as a dirty word because they
don’t recognize the ways it benefits them.
How you make
sense of rising inequality depends on your ideological sense. So, what is your
opinion about this topic?
