Well, I certainly would look to be on the side of working people, so I wouldn't go busting unions or giving tax cuts to people who don't need the money on the whimsical idea that crumbs will fall off their table...so I would look to undo these destructive initiatives...and I would place a lot of emphasis on education and training, infrastructure rebuilding, federal and state minimum wages.
But you understand that would not make a material difference in income disparity, right? Nothing at all. Would not move the needle.
None of the things you mentioned would have any meaningful impact on income or wealth disparity. If you spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure you're not going to see a detectable move in income disparity. If you did, it would last only as long as you're effectively redistributing taxpayer dollars.
I'm not trying to tedious. My point is that income disparity are products of the economic situation, not merely some transitory policy positions. If you increased the average tax rate for the wealthy by 10 percentage points, you might have SOME effect on it (depending on the nature of the increase) but it would certainly be muted. Maybe a tiny fraction of a point.
Wealth disparity, if you wanted to attack it, would be nearly impossible to deal with without killing economic growth. Because wealth is a lifetime cumulative thing, compounding of returns, etc. Of course, you could just take everyone's property when they died. But that will drive capital formation out of the country, not a desirable side effect.
Income disparity is transitory in a person's lifetime. While it is likely true that ~60 own as much as half the world's wealth, income depends on a person's living patterns and work situations and other things. Just about any person who owns a house outright in San Francisco could immediately join the top half of income classes by selling the house.
So, that's my point. It just isn't that easy to change either of these things in a meaningful way. The minimum wage would be obvious but for the fact it doesn't work (it is clearly a very racist law in that its victims tend to be persons of color).
I just don't agree there is much to be done about it, in any responsible sense. But I also don't agree that it would be desirable if you could do something about it. |
