Millionaires Are Also Worried About Rising Income Inequality

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Rising income inequality bothers me but as a poor person who is on disability, I have no idea what I can do about it. What can a person like me do about it?
 
stinkcat_14 said:
If millionaires are concerned about the distribution on income, they of all people have a simple solution right at their fingertips.
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They have control over wages of their own workers and over charitable giving but I am not sure that’s a real solution.
 
What can any government do about it? Unfortunately the solution never equals raising the poor out of poverty. It always involves knocking those nasty rich people down a peg instead.
 
Holly3278 said:
Rising income inequality bothers me but as a poor person who is on disability, I have no idea what I can do about it. What can a person like me do about it?
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I think you start by asking why income inequality bothers you. You need to answer that first.
 
Holly3278 said:
Rising income inequality bothers me but as a poor person who is on disability, I have no idea what I can do about it. What can a person like me do about it?
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Why should anyone do anything about it? Why is it a problem?
 
I’m not sure how to read this. Are the millionaires worried that their holdings in the asset inflations of the stock market, etc., are too high, courtesy of the Fed? I would think many would be complaining that, in the zero-interest rate environment, their reserves would soon be depleted. Or are they worried that the upper tax rates will be increased again? But then, they affect mostly incomes, not total assets.
 
DeniseNY said:
Thomas Sowell on income inequality

worldmag.com/2014/12/thomas_sowell_on_the_root_causes_of_income_inequality/page1
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I’ve read several of Sowell’s books and listened to his interviews. And with regard to this issue, he make a point in your link that he’s made in his books. And it’s a spectacular one:

The other thing too, getting back to the statistics, people talk about the top 10 percent being a group apart and playing a disproportionate role in the society. But 56 percent of all American households are going to be in the top 10 percent in some point in their lives, usually when they’re older. So when we talk about the top 10 percent in any given moment, that’s a moving group. And you talk about the famous top 1 percent, and they’re even more transient. In the course of a decade, most of the people in the top 1 percent will be there one year only. In other words, you have a spike in income, and that year you’re in the top. You might have inherited something, you might have sold off assets you’ve accumulated over the years, and that one year you’re in the top 1 percent—and the next year you’re not!
The rich–and the poor- are not the same people year in and year out. It isn’t like there are the same 3 million rich people (the 1%) every year. People move in and out of wealth–and poverty–all the time.
 
Suudy said:
I’ve read several of Sowell’s books and listened to his interviews. And with regard to this issue, he make a point in your link that he’s made in his books. And it’s a spectacular one:

The other thing too, getting back to the statistics, people talk about the top 10 percent being a group apart and playing a disproportionate role in the society. But 56 percent of all American households are going to be in the top 10 percent in some point in their lives, usually when they’re older. So when we talk about the top 10 percent in any given moment, that’s a moving group. And you talk about the famous top 1 percent, and they’re even more transient. In the course of a decade, most of the people in the top 1 percent will be there one year only. In other words, you have a spike in income, and that year you’re in the top. You might have inherited something, you might have sold off assets you’ve accumulated over the years, and that one year you’re in the top 1 percent—and the next year you’re not!
The rich–and the poor- are not the same people year in and year out. It isn’t like there are the same 3 million rich people (the 1%) every year. People move in and out of wealth–and poverty–all the time.
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I have read that elsewhere as well. But the “top” this or that makes a convenient bogeyman for an administration under which people are losing economic ground.
 
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