gouchobob said:
Income distribution in the U.S. has always been unequal. This is the product of a dynamic capitalist system which for the most part rewards the innovators and risk takers. In the U.S. you get to keep what you make, other cultures believe your earnings should be capped and the excess redistributed to the less fortunate. I think if you look at the history of the world for the last 100 years you will quickly see the American approach produced far greater wealth and a higher standard of living for all compared to other approaches.
Your assertions are based upon what data?
See
http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266026:
"In a
survey of 27 nations conducted from 1998 to 2001, the country where the highest proportion agreed with the statement "people are rewarded for intelligence and skill" was, of course, the United States. (69 percent). But when it comes to
real as opposed to
imagined social mobility,
surveys find less in the United States than in much of (what we consider) the class-bound Old World. France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Spain—not to mention some newer nations like Canada and Australia—are all places where your chances of rising from the bottom are better than they are in the land of Horatio Alger's
Ragged Dick."
Many of those countries cited are considerably more socialistic societies than is the US.
Also, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/opinion/07kristof.html?_r=1 for why the current increase in income disparity in the US is harmful to the country.
For more on the harm of growing and exaggerated income disparity see:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/op...me&ref=general :
The bigger issue is whether the country can afford the systemic damage being done by the ever-growing income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else, whether poor, middle class or even rich. That burden is inflicted not just on the debt but on the very idea of America — our Horatio Alger faith in social mobility over plutocracy, our belief that our brand of can-do capitalism brings about innovation and growth, and our fundamental sense of fairness. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of Americans now have tax rates a third lower than the same top percentile had in 1970.
...Inequality is instead the result of specific policies, including tax policies, championed by Washington Democrats and Republicans alike as they conducted a bidding war for high-rolling donors in election after election.
...The G.O.P.’s arguments for extending the Bush tax cuts to this crowd[super-rich], usually wrapped in laughably hypocritical whining about “class warfare,” are easily batted down. The most constant refrain is that small-business owners who file in this bracket would be hit so hard they could no longer hire new employees. But the Tax Policy Center found in 2008, when checking out similar campaign claims by “Joe the Plumber,” that
only 2 percent of all Americans reporting small-business income, regardless of tax bracket, would see tax increases if Obama fulfilled his pledge to let the Bush tax cuts lapse for the top earners. The economist Dean Baker
calculated that the yearly tax increase at the lower end of that bracket, for those with earnings between $200,000 and $500,000, would amount to $700 — which “isn’t enough to hire anyone.”
