Monday, December 19, 2016

Fighting Inequality

The Obama administration's last Economic Report of the President is out, and Kevin Drum read through it looking for interesting tidbits. This chart shows the impact of Obama's tax law changes on the incomes of various groups; this includes the Affordable Care Act. As you can see, there has been some real impact. Maybe not enough for you, but there it is.

This was achieved by 1) raising taxes on the rich and 2) paying subsidies to the poor. This is the most straightforward to reduce inequality, and the only one the government really controls. It certainly is not enough to get inequality down to a level I would approve of, but nobody knows a non-Bolshevik way to do that.

1 comment:

leif said...

You should see if Drum runs this same article with new figs in a couple years.