This assumes low to middle income people are single issue voters and that issue happens to be the effective tax rate of billionaires. What's dumbfounding is that there are people who believe that wealth is zero-sum, and that by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, "justice" would be done, never taking into account what produces wealth or the fact that living standards have improved despite the rich getting richer. 99.9% of us will never become billionaires, but so what? If my neighbor has a nicer car than me, should I try to get the government to raise his taxes and decrease mine? Why not? Here's a possible reason: The conditions that permit my neighbor to drive a nice car are the same conditions that produce billionaires.
Just because I want Warren Buffet to be able to keep most of what he produces doesn't mean I believe I will be in his shoes one day, it just means that I don't trust people who are trying to take more of his money in order to improve my life. Warren may trust those people, but his life really doesn't need much improvement now, does it?
living standards have improved despite the rich getting richer.
Citation needed. Please explain how the living standard in the US can have improved if real wages have fallen. Oh wait, the answer is an incredible increase in consumer debt. That seems to be working out.
Please explain how the living standard in the US can have improved if real wages have fallen.
If by "real wages", you mean "wages adjusted for chained CPI" (this is what most people mean), the answer is because the basket of goods used to compute CPI has become larger.
I.e., consider the following scenario. In year 0, there is one good - food. A basket of food costs $100. In year 1, medicine is invented, and the cost of food goes up to $101. Inflation is 1%.
The basket of goods is modified to reflect the invention of medicine, and is now comprised of 50% food, 50% medicine. In year 2, the cost of medicine increases 10%, and food decreases by 2%. Chained CPI now reports an inflation rate of 3.45%. Is life worse in year 2 than in year 0? (This is a combined 2-year inflation rate of 4.5%.)
Of course not. In year 2, you are paying $99 for a basket of food. In year 0, you are paying $100 for food and Medicine doesn't exist.
I have yet to see anyone construct an inflation measurement based on a fixed basket of goods (which is held constant over the years) that shows real wages have gone down.
thanks for your response - do you have a link to any data that shows the outcome of holding the basket of goods fixed? i will try to find some as well, just thought you might have some data handy.
Data from 1970 - 2009, detailing living conditions for Americans as a whole. In recent years, many data tables have a column for Americans below the poverty line. Compare the data for living standards for the poor in 2009 to the overall population in 1973. By any reasonable measure of "living standards" I've been able to come up with, the data shows the poor in 2009 are doing well in comparison to the overall population in 1973.
I can't believe it either. Some even believe in the economists' equivalent of a cosmological constant: PPP, which when employed miraculously turns Louisiana into a richer place than Switzerland.
"Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made on the basis of nominal GDP, which does not reflect differences in the cost of living in different countries (See List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita). Using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing generalized differences in living standards on the whole between nations because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using just exchange rates which may distort the real differences in income."
The problem with Economics is that, in trying to get a handle on the enormous complexity of its field, they constantly over-simplify. GDP, for example, is in itself a poor indicator of wealth.
If I sell you something for $10, you sell it back to me for $20, and I sell it back to you for $30, GDP is up $60.
But in all of Stupidtown, PPP is the village idiot. First, which basket of goods do you choose? Whatever you select will favor some cultures over others. Second, what about the quality of goods? Butter might be cost the same in terms of hours worked, but for that same amount, the Swiss get pure, mountain-made butter, whereas in LA they get corn-oil margarine. Then there's the flattened world. It used to be that you would earn more in Switzerland, but a couch, for example, would cost more. But now, both go to IKEA and the costs are nearly identical. A tablet computer? Flat-screen TV? Car? Those things essentially cost the same everywhere. When the Swiss go on vacation, their better income means they get a lot more and they go to much nicer places. Then there's taxes. The Swiss pay about the same percentage as in LA, but for that they get amazing things: free university, guaranteed health care, etc.
Finally, there's the wet-finger test. If the weather models show that it should be sunny and you step outside and it's wet, please consider that despite what you read: it's raining. I'm American but I've lived in Switzerland, and I must humbly admit that there's nowhere in America that comes close to being as wealthy as Switzerland.
Visit Baton Rouge and then visit Zurich. You will laugh your ass off at the notion that LA is 10% off of Switzerland's wealth. You will then laugh at economists themselves as the poorest of weather scientists who simply don't know how to walk outside.
That's interesting. From my subjective observations while traveling in Louisiana and in Switzerland I'd say people in Switzerland are living much better. Where does all that GDP go?
i don't think you can really make an argument that the GDP graph given in the google link is applicable to what i said. but if you can, i'd be interested to hear it.
Look at the amount of time the average American has to work in order to by food. It's much less than it used to be. The only reason it feels like we have less money is because we have more stuff to spend it on.
That just proves my point. Once again, we feel poor because we have so much more stuff to spend money on. Houses in America today are HUGE compared to what was acceptable in the past. A nice house today would have been considered outrageously opulent 40 years ago.
This was also primarily caused by a housing bubble. A bubble that was created in part because of government intervention causing increased demand for houses (mortgage interest deduction, low interest rates).
I think there is a point about fairness as well. Taxes are progressive for a reason. Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greater burden.
Warrent Buffet is perhaps giving away a lot of what he maybe would have given in taxes but plenty of billionaires or super rich just spend it on their spoiled sons and daughters, some who end up in rehab, spent a tremendous amount of resources to create a parallel society where meritocracy applies only to some people and/or just waste it in obscene luxuries such as a 10k bottle of champaign, etc and to boot it all, at the end of the day, they are rich only because they are in many ways not paying the working people the proper wages so that they can pay themselves obscene amounts. I mean, how much more smart are the bank CEOs who got us in this mess to start with to justify a salary 100 times more than others working there.
But even on a practical rather that political level, for most of these supper rich, the difference between 1 million or 2 million does not mater but in some silly psychological keeping up with the jones nonsense and for many even the keeping up with the jones does not apply because they are the jones. But for a lot of "working poor" lowering the taxes from 25% to 17% makes a real difference, a difference of a kind which may mean that their children will properly be looked after and have all the support to say study and do well in school.
Finally, you say you want Warrent Buffet to keep the money and you don't want people to take it away from him. Well, I don't want people to take my money away through taxes either. No one does. Its not about want, or even opinion, its about fairness. Some of the deficit was built up because the rich pay so little and to ask the non rich to bear all the burden is a double wammy. No wonder you have 250k people protesting in Israel and kids burning chain stores in London.
1) the rich (top 10%) pay almost 70% of taxes. I wouldn't call that "so little"
2) you can't just take property from people based on a such wildly misused and subjective term as "fairness". Running a government is necessary for society to function. Everybody benefits, especially free-riders, crony corporations, politicians, and bureaucrats. The rich have the resources to fund a big chunk of the government, and they get a lot out of it too, sometimes to our detriment.
3) what does our deficit have to do with protest and riots in other countries?
Just because I want Warren Buffet to be able to keep most of what he produces doesn't mean I believe I will be in his shoes one day, it just means that I don't trust people who are trying to take more of his money in order to improve my life. Warren may trust those people, but his life really doesn't need much improvement now, does it?