It depends on whether the bottom end gets lower wage increases because business is bad while the top gets major wage increases and bonuses under the same conditions.

Personally, I think income inequality is perfectly fine, as long as the minimum standard of living is available to everyone. If everyone had access to healthcare, decent food, decent education, and a safe place to live, why shouldn't some people have diamond encrusted lamborghini demolition derbies if society is willing to pay for it?

Why would anyone want to not saying the rich are too rich and proposing a redsitribution of wealth? The US economy is a mess

Massive concentrations of wealth are terrible both politically and economically and need to be addressed. Not sure how you address the problem any other way. Massive inequality distorts the market such that it ceases to be efficient as an allocator of goods and services to meet needs, undermining the utility of capitalism. Also it trashed our political system such that the benefits of democracy are lost as well.

Of course nothing will be done because Americans are happy serfs

Either wealth gets redistributed voluntarily or with bloodshed. But it gets redistributed. The true holders of the monopoly on violence are the people.

I did some research.. and in an article by the Atlantic, it was found that if you took the whole population of the United States and divided every person into five buckets, with the first bucket being the poorest 20% and the 5th bucket being the wealthiest 20%
Apparently, the first two buckets (the poorest 40%) would have only .6% of the wealth while the last bucket (richest 20% would have 86% of the wealth)
I don't really know how one could justify that this gap is okay..

Interestingly if you aske Americans what distribution they think is best and what the US is, both are vastly more equal than what we have. Secretly, Americans are commies!

;)

WyattS14: Progressive taxation seems to be the go-to. Certainly better than nothing.

Indeed. And a solid estate tax, and solid capital gains taxes. This business of stacking the deck to make the wealthy wealthier on the other hand is the wrong way to go. Gotta love those folks who say we need to make American great again, when those same people played such a key role in pillaging it in the first place!

Sigh.. Hillary ruined the election. It's my personal belief that we'd have Bernie Sanders as president if Hillary wasn't in the primaries

Agh women, why do they just have to ruin everything??

for all of you desiring wealth redistribution, take everything you own sell it and give it to the poor. then you will be perfect.

Come now, DO ;)

Maybe Senator Warren would have had a better chance to win than Hillary? I'm sure the right still would have found a way to paint her as an "unfit" candidate as well.

@Capt, but there's always someone wealthier than them. And that guy is evil; he should go down! As long as there's anyone with more money than them, they'll consider themselves underprivileged.

A progressive tax system hardly limits rich people from being rich. People complain about the top tax brackets now, but they are still near all-time lows in US modern history. They will sink even lower under Trump. Not sure how we are going to improve the debt situation that way, but I'm sure it will work itself out.

unnatural income inequality is bad, and we have unnatural income inequality. tax them more until we gets laws breaking up monopolies, and fixing our market from the gluts we have in place now (gov't, talking to you too)

@matticus13

"A progressive tax system hardly limits rich people from being rich. People complain about the top tax brackets now, but they are still near all-time lows in US modern history. They will sink even lower under Trump. Not sure how we are going to improve the debt situation that way, but I'm sure it will work itself out."

those are the marginal tax rates, not the REAL tax rates (i.e., taxes collected)

in the 1950s people praise the massive 90% tax rates on millionaires, but the truth is, through deductions and exemptions. "all time lows" is a bit misleading

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-01-02/1950s-tax-fantasy-is-a-republican-nightmare

@Yanik, most monopolies are created by the government.

Microsoft, Google, Standard Oil, US Steel, Intel, eBay, Amazon, …. Trump

@Yanik

The wealthiest people don't pay 39.6% now either. Long-term capital gains are taxed at half of that.

@Zmaj

yup! though there are some natural monopolies i'm personally fine regulating.

in any situation, i think a progressive tax rate is a band aid, but we need something to treat worse wounds. once we have a fair system in place, and the government has a defined set of roles, i could easily see the implementation of a flat tax, with the only exemptions being dependents, and the only deductions being charitable donations.

At what rate would this flat tax be Yanik?

@Matticus

yes but capital gains isn't perfectly equivalent with income, because it's already been taxed. if the money spent in stocks or other investments is used, that money (when spent) is taxed. so when the profits are returned as the value of the investment appreciates, you are taxing money that already was taxed.

Here's the issue I have with a flat tax. 10% of $20K in earnings is much more important to someone's livelihood than 10% of $200K.

@Matticus

it depends on what the citizenry agrees the government functions should be. theoretically it could be anywhere between 10-30%, though one you start reaching the 50%+ side, you're looking at a more socialist system.

of course if we wish to maintain freedom and basic liberties, going to the collectivist end of the spectrum probably is a bad idea

@Matticus

yes though a flat tax is arguably the more moral of the two. everyone pays and equal portion of what they make: forgetting for a second that the rich are much less likely to receive the benefits of gov't programs as compared to the poor.

but i'm going into a VERY are market world scenario, rather than the clusterfuck we have now, which requires heavy gov't spending to keep millions alive - personally i'd rather have a society that isn't at the mercy of gov't

free* market

@zmaj, most monopolies are created by the private sector unless regulators step in to prevent it. Which is why every country prettymuch has anti-trust regulators. I'd be curious if you could name any government created monopoly that isn't a utility.

a flat tax isn't the most moral of anything, because marginal income is vastly more valuable to poor people than to rich people. Poor person can buy, say, health insurance so they don't die. Rich person buys a slightly smaller second yacht. Unless in your moral universe a rich person's yacht is worth as much as a poor person's life, they aren't morally remotely comparable

@Ogion, the post office?

@Ogion

i said in a hypothetical future free market: as things stand, i'm fine with progressive tax