Who pays? More questions than answers
Edward N. Wolff, PhD authored a Levy Economics Institute paper, Recent Trends in Household Wealth in the United States: Rising Debt and the Middle-Class Squeeze – an Update to 2007. Working Paper No. 589, in March of 2010. (Google Wolff. He is quite the economist!)
If you prefer visual information, move down to page 45 where he begins a presentation of several tables comparing income and wealth growth/decay of the various income classes (upper, middle, etc.) of the United States. Realize this paper focuses on the information available only up to 2007, and as many of us have learned, this divide has only grown larger during the last few years.
Why this distribution of wealth is good or bad, healthy for our country or not, strengthening our country or not, is a discussion for another day.
However, as we are looking out our federal deficit, is re-defining how our government spends money a good idea? Absolutely. In my household, this re-defining takes place almost monthly! It is constant. Life changes and expenditure needs change.
My questions today are:
Should those that earn/own 80% or more of the wealth pay more proportionately? Or will we depend on those that earn the bottom 20% to clean up this mess? Will this plan actually be successful?
Tax loopholes or tax benefits – whatever we may call them – we all use them. Even those of us in the bottom 20% of earnings/wages take advantage of them. How long will it take for Congress to make the necessary tax code changes? (Both Democrats and Republicans agree that changes need to be made.) And what will those changes look like to each of us?
