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The article begins (just a teaser so I don't violate C-D copyright rules):
Quote:
Frenzied rhetoric about income inequality was a larger theme in Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign than in any previous American election. When the ballots were counted, however, not only did income inequality fail to move voters, but a massive shift in voting preference among lower-middle and middle-income Americans led to the election of the wealthiest president since George Washington. Now, startling new data on government spending and taxes suggests a novel explanation for this voter shift: It was a backlash against rising income equality among the bottom 60% of American household earners.
The above bolded item is not a typo. Rising income equality has been causing a backlash fueled by the explosion of social-welfare spending and the economic coupled with the wage stagnation during the Obama era.
Hardworking middle-income and lower-middle-income families apparently recognized that their efforts left them little better off than the growing number of recipients of government transfers. The perceived injustice of this equality helped drive the political shift among blue-collar workers.
The article begins (just a teaser so I don't violate C-D copyright rules):
The above bolded item is not a typo. Rising income equality has been causing a backlash fueled by the explosion of social-welfare spending and the economic coupled with the wage stagnation during the Obama era.
Hardworking middle-income and lower-middle-income families apparently recognized that their efforts left them little better off than the growing number of recipients of government transfers. The perceived injustice of this equality helped drive the political shift among blue-collar workers.
It's a good piece & worth a read.
It looks like a good article, but there's a paywall. Please don't torture us with articles that have paywalls.
The article begins (just a teaser so I don't violate C-D copyright rules):
The above bolded item is not a typo. Rising income equality has been causing a backlash fueled by the explosion of social-welfare spending and the economic coupled with the wage stagnation during the Obama era.
Hardworking middle-income and lower-middle-income families apparently recognized that their efforts left them little better off than the growing number of recipients of government transfers. The perceived injustice of this equality helped drive the political shift among blue-collar workers.
I think absolutely taxes are a disincentive to work hard because they make it incrementally more difficult to amass wealth. I mean when my passive income gets taxed, somehow I still feel better about it than when I'm losing money on hours of work I put into actually working. There's a difference, one of the revenue streams I sat on my butt and money flowed in, yay, and if I pay some taxes, well that stinks still, but it's less soul-crushing. When you actually work hard and at the end of the day there's a bunch of money gone from your paycheck, it's not exactly motivating. Especially because I don't think the average person can see the value of their tax dollars. There are WAY too many programs and bureaus for absolutely everything. Imagine the smallest little thing and someone created a government organization to deal with it.
I want to know what ever happened to the Fair Tax that both republicans and democrats had talked about. I don't care if 200,000 IRS workers would lose their jobs, GOOD! The tax system is way too complex. Reduce taxes but close all of the loopholes so that everyone pays something who makes above X amount of money or whatever, I'm ok with losing loophole advantages if the rate goes down and you can just do the math on what you're going to make. Having a huge bureaucracy to deal with complex taxes is a huge headache. That's why sales taxes are so great overall, they are just collected and remitted pretty much electronically. Sure, you may need a couple of people to make sure businesses are sending in their taxes, I guess, but it's not that complicated.
I do believe that the Trump vote was to a large degree motivated by resentment against those perceived as less deserving. ALTHOUGH it may not be objectively true that the "undeserving" get much from government aid. Resentment does not need to be justified by facts.
It IS quite ironic that there seems to be little resentment for the truly wealthy, who have accumulated an increasingly large percentage of the national wealth in recent years. The numbers do clearly and unambiguously show this.
But Trump voters don't know any rich people. They resent the brown person in the grocery store buying a steak because they never see the rich person buying a yacht.
Most wealthy people worked for their money, and the solution isn't to punish them for success. That's unAmerican and people with that attitude really belong in a different country. It's not a zero-sum game, there is more money in the world now, and the wealthy in America are selling products or services worldwide, so of course they're going to be wealthier than ever before. Back 100 years ago most people sold their products or services to a regional area, at best, or a city, and a few people made a fortune on things like railroads and oil. But now you have a worldwide marketplace of 7 billion people. It shouldn't be surprising that you can make a lot more money if you succeed in today's world than if you did in a world of 1 billion people without the Internet or airplane transportation.
My dad has a yacht, two actually right now, but he started life with $0 and built his business empire over the past 40 years. He deserves every luxury that he can afford. He worked for it.
Most wealthy people worked for their money, and the solution isn't to punish them for success. That's unAmerican and people with that attitude really belong in a different country. It's not a zero-sum game, there is more money in the world now, and the wealthy in America are selling products or services worldwide, so of course they're going to be wealthier than ever before. Back 100 years ago most people sold their products or services to a regional area, at best, or a city, and a few people made a fortune on things like railroads and oil. But now you have a worldwide marketplace of 7 billion people. It shouldn't be surprising that you can make a lot more money if you succeed in today's world than if you did in a world of 1 billion people without the Internet or airplane transportation.
My dad has a yacht, two actually right now, but he started life with $0 and built his business empire over the past 40 years. He deserves every luxury that he can afford. He worked for it.
Sorry - nobody needs 2 yachts, I don't care how hard your dad worked.
This article was pretty good and yes it raises some good points -- middle class is barely better off than the welfare collectors who are becoming an increasing percentage of society.
I do believe that the Trump vote was to a large degree motivated by resentment against those perceived as less deserving. ALTHOUGH it may not be objectively true that the "undeserving" get much from government aid. Resentment does not need to be justified by facts.
It IS quite ironic that there seems to be little resentment for the truly wealthy, who have accumulated an increasingly large percentage of the national wealth in recent years. The numbers do clearly and unambiguously show this.
But Trump voters don't know any rich people. They resent the brown person in the grocery store buying a steak because they never see the rich person buying a yacht.
lol, the reason for the Trump vote was Hillary Clinton, the rest is gibberish.
Most wealthy people worked for their money, and the solution isn't to punish them for success. That's unAmerican and people with that attitude really belong in a different country. It's not a zero-sum game, there is more money in the world now, and the wealthy in America are selling products or services worldwide, so of course they're going to be wealthier than ever before. Back 100 years ago most people sold their products or services to a regional area, at best, or a city, and a few people made a fortune on things like railroads and oil. But now you have a worldwide marketplace of 7 billion people. It shouldn't be surprising that you can make a lot more money if you succeed in today's world than if you did in a world of 1 billion people without the Internet or airplane transportation.
My dad has a yacht, two actually right now, but he started life with $0 and built his business empire over the past 40 years. He deserves every luxury that he can afford. He worked for it.
Good for him. That should inspire people, instead it causes resentment. This is what America has become.
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