THE LEFTISTS ARE AMERICA'S PROBLEM AND THEY KNOW IT!

Ah, The Left Admits Where The Problem Lies!

Oh folks, now they’ve gone and done it – but you’re going to have to read very carefully for content to catch it.  Incidentally, if you wait long enough folks of political persuasion, when they’re BSing you, will usually do this — patience is a virtue! Liberals talk about booming incomes at the top while lower-income households barely see benefits from economic growth. Conservatives talk about a rising share of the population that depends on government benefits and a shrinking share that pays income tax. Though the frames are different, these are descriptions of the same economic phenomenon: rising inequality of pre-tax incomes. But only liberals are advancing a semblance of an agenda to address it. The main liberal reaction to this phenomenon is to call for more progressive fiscal policy: higher taxes on the rich people who have benefited most from the last 30 years’ gains in gross domestic product to pay for programs that raise low- and middle-income people’s after-tax incomes. Ah, yes, the old argument that “the rich” benefited so much. There’s one problem with that, of course — when someone becomes rich (or richer) they tend to buy things with the money, directly and indirectly.  This in turn tends to boost economic activity (someone has to build the yacht, Lear Jet, etc) in the general case. This is the premise the right tries to advance, and there’s a clean logical argument for it. So why does the claimed disparity advance (and it does) if wealth is of no value simply in accumulation, but rather only is of value to a person when used in some form or fashion? That’s the $64,000 question, and our author here unfortunately blows his own argument’s brains out when he pinpoints what I’ve been saying now for years: