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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Lane3 who wrote (15552)3/31/2006 9:06:52 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 541582
 
The New Yorker has an interesting (long) article on relative poverty.

"The conservative case against a relative-poverty line asserts that since some people will always earn less than others the relative-poverty rate will never go down. Fortunately, this isn’t necessarily true. If incomes were distributed more equally, fewer families would earn less than half the median income. Therefore, the way to reduce relative poverty is to reduce income inequality—perhaps by increasing the minimum wage and raising taxes on the rich. Between 1979 and 2000, the inflation-adjusted earnings of the poorest fifth of Americans increased just nine per cent; the earnings of the middle fifth rose fifteen per cent; and the earnings of the top fifth climbed sixty-eight per cent."
newyorker.com