DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - CBO: The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer

**bataovady** · 11-02-2011, 06:29 PM

Here's a paradox for you...

The income of low millionaires (people making between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000), adjusted for inflation dropped nearly 70% between 1979 and 2007...

What is the point of arguing the nuance of income disparity? It is a fact that the income distribution of United States has become much more unequal over the past 30 years. It's not just the CBO's methodology that supports this, but the OECD's Gini coefficient studies. Not only that, the US has much less income mobility than it used to (in both directions--the rich are less likely to become not rich) We are less mobile than many European countries. The income disparity thing wasn't a huge deal when people felt they had upward mobility. But people are waking up to the fact that we are not as upwardly mobile as we thought. Combine that with declining job prospects for the lower and middle classes and you have a large segment of the population that sees a bleak future.

An interesting article on the psychological effects of high income inequality: Inequality: Unbottled Gini | The Economist

Income inequality may not itself be bad for the economy, but the effect that it has on the losers can't be ignored. Also note that "We are the 99.9%" may be a more apt slogan for the Occupy folks, because it's the top 0.1% that has really been raking in an increasingly disproportionate share of income.

11-02-2011, 06:29 PM	#34
bataovady Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 423 Senior Member	Here's a paradox for you... The income of low millionaires (people making between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000), adjusted for inflation dropped nearly 70% between 1979 and 2007... What is the point of arguing the nuance of income disparity? It is a fact that the income distribution of United States has become much more unequal over the past 30 years. It's not just the CBO's methodology that supports this, but the OECD's Gini coefficient studies. Not only that, the US has much less income mobility than it used to (in both directions--the rich are less likely to become not rich) We are less mobile than many European countries. The income disparity thing wasn't a huge deal when people felt they had upward mobility. But people are waking up to the fact that we are not as upwardly mobile as we thought. Combine that with declining job prospects for the lower and middle classes and you have a large segment of the population that sees a bleak future. An interesting article on the psychological effects of high income inequality: Inequality: Unbottled Gini \| The Economist Income inequality may not itself be bad for the economy, but the effect that it has on the losers can't be ignored. Also note that "We are the 99.9%" may be a more apt slogan for the Occupy folks, because it's the top 0.1% that has really been raking in an increasingly disproportionate share of income.
	Quote