How do you fix the growing gap between rich and poor? without "redistributing the wealth"?
ByI think we all agree that no one who works should be poor in America, but how does a country efficiently raise the earning potential among the lower classes? An even harder corollary question: How do you create fiscal policy that encourages saving in the lower classes and spending in the upper classes? How do you convince rich people it’s not in the country’s best interest for them to get much richer?
Not delusional. (Though admittedly and proudly progressive.)
Truly frightened by the shrinking middle class, and wondering what sorts of solutions normal people find fair. I recognize you can’t limit growth, but I also feel that those who have enjoyed success from this American experiment are obligated to ensure some measure of the class mobility for the poor (legal) immigrant with no cash on hand, for the children of drug addicts, and orphans, the terminally ill and all the other people who need help with what we can take for granted.
Fostering growth amongst the middle class is the only way to shorten the gap, and the US is currently facing a vanishing middle class. Offering incentives, tax breaks, and the like to this type of work and business is beneficial, as is offering assistance for college to lower class individuals.
Allowing the middle class to earn more money causes the economy to grow larger, as the middle class is the largest group with available funds in the US.
10 Comments
July 30th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Stop the governments War on the Middle Class.
Abort the FED not our future generations.
If you think that Obama is going to redistribute the wealth guess again it’s wealthy people like George Soros that put him in office.
The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.
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July 30th, 2010 at 5:32 pm
There will always be poor people, no matter what society you live in.
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July 30th, 2010 at 5:39 pm
If you find out please let me know, because I am POOR.
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July 30th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
Get the hell out of the way of business. The government intrusions is what caused these problems. There will always be poor people. People make bad decisions in their lives, chit happens, move on. I don’t need to save the lower class. If I want to get rich, it is nobody’s business. Jobs help the lower class, but apparently they aren’t good enough, so thus we now have the problem with the illegals. Perhaps its the laziness of the lower class that is creating all of our problems. Did you ever think of that?
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July 30th, 2010 at 6:38 pm
Why is it not in the best interest of the country? There will always be rich and poor. What is important is that there is a strong middle class. And there is in this country. Many people think that the current economic problem is a sign that there is something fundamentally wrong with America. Bull S**t. Recessions have come and gone many times and we are fine. This recession is mild compared to others in our history.
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July 30th, 2010 at 7:26 pm
Fostering growth amongst the middle class is the only way to shorten the gap, and the US is currently facing a vanishing middle class. Offering incentives, tax breaks, and the like to this type of work and business is beneficial, as is offering assistance for college to lower class individuals.
Allowing the middle class to earn more money causes the economy to grow larger, as the middle class is the largest group with available funds in the US.
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July 30th, 2010 at 8:03 pm
There is currently a massive redistribution of wealth going on right now. The US tax policies are specifically designed to take all the wealth that is generated in this country by the hard work of our citizens and give it to the very wealthiest. How do you convince a hog to stop eating? Smack him in the snout until he moves away from the trough. But Americans are too stupid to realize this because they haven’t been properly educated to think for themselves. That’s done on purpose also. That is why the wealthy are always complaining about teachers making too much money and how we have to underfund our schools even more.
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July 30th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
Beth, I won’t ask if you are delusional or anything, but…. you asked the following:"How do you convince rich people it’s not in the country’s best interest for them to get much richer?"
And who are you to say such a thing?
Let me put it another way:
Who are you to place limits on how much wealth anyone can put together?
Stated more precisely, no poor person ever created jobs for anyone. They simply do not have the financial capacity to do such a thing.
People with great wealth, however, DO have the ability to create jobs, and they do so 7 days a week by their investments in businesses. Those investments create jobs that would not have existed otherwise. Those jobs create tax revenue for various levels of government: Federal, state, and local.
If every wealthy person in America suddenly decided to stop investing their money, this country would be in worse shape than it is right now.
And yet, when those same people make those investments, they are entitled to a return on those investments. We call that return "profits", and profits are good! In the real world, there are no jobs without profits!
Interestingly enough, it is not usually Big Business that accounts for most of the new job creation in America. It is Small Business that does that task!
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Delegate to the 1986 White House Conference on Small Business.
Former representative of the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, and of what used to be known as the "National Small Business Association".
July 30th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
It would help if people would stop having kids they can’t afford. Some people are poor, uneducated, have medial jobs, and then pop out about four or more kiddies. Makes no sense to me ; puts a burden on everyone.
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July 30th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Let’s start with your assumption that wealth redistribution helps the poor. Does it? Wouldn’t the rich and powerful, with their ability to influence elections and bribe politicians alter the flow of wealth such that it landed in their pockets rather than that of the poor?
Why is it not in the best interest of the country for the rich to get richer. If someone owns a factory that employs 100 people and makes goods for 1000 people, how would them owning two factories that employee 200 people and makes goods for 2000 people be bad?
Third problem in your question. It isn’t fiscal policy that drives savings as much as it is culture. Some people save, some don’t.
The solutions are what they have always been.
1) Keep taxes of all kinds to a minimum, enough to pay for police, emergency services, courts, the stuff government ought to be doing.
2) Curtail public spending, much of it is waste anyways, but every dollar, whether by tax, loan, or printing press is dollar out of the productive economy
3) Rule of law. Everyone should have recourse to the law. Nobody should be above the law. Poverty and hard childhood should not be excuses and wealth and privilege should not be protections against justice.
4) Private property must be sacrosanct. We could start by taking every last penny from every judge who ruled against Suzette Kelo. Leaving David Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to scrap over a shopping cart on skid row would send a clear message.
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