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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (10451)	10/14/2009 2:17:34 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

I doubt that. You doubt that measures of income or income inequality exclude much of the government benefits people recieve? ----- ...And second, income inequality figures exclude both taxes and government benefits. Things like the EITC and Section 8 vouchers really have made a quite substantial improvement in the ability of the poor to consume... meganmcardle.theatlantic.com ...However, the Census data are marred by four problems that lead to an overstatement of the level of economic inequality. These problems are: * The conventional Census income figures are incomplete and omit many types of cash and non-cash income. * The conventional Census figures do not take into account the equalizing effects of taxation. * The Census quintiles actually contain unequal numbers of persons, a fact that greatly magnifies the apparent level of economic inequality... heritage.org ...Moreover, since the Census Bureau figures systematically exclude half of the cash and noncash benefits and the targeted social services provided by the government to low-income households, this comparison still understates the overall levelof income equality. If the true size and value of government transfer programs are included, the average after-tax per capita income among the lowest fifth of households would be closer to $5,000 or nearly 60 percent of the per capita income in the median income household... heritage.org ...Some analysts have suggested that the official poverty figures overstate the real extent of poverty because they measure only cash income and exclude certain government assistance programs such as Food Stamps, health care, and public housing... economics.about.com ...Also, more and more business income is shifted and realized on individual tax returns instead of business tax returns (to increase the apparent income of the rich, who are more likely to own businesses); and the use of reported income for tax purposes excludes transfer payments that are relatively more beneficial to the non-rich... britannica.com ---------- As for government benefits going down. For specific people they can, in general, even on a real per capita basis, they rarely do, and essentially never do for a sustained period of time. They go up not down, per person, adjusted for inflation.