Category Archives: inequality

Oligarchy is a Symptom, Not the Cause

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September 28, 2026 — The American political system is broken.  We should ask how it got that way and should hope that the answer could contain a clue as to how it might get back on track.

Of course, many factors are at play.   The long list includes things that cry out for reform, like gerrymandering of Congressional districts.  But most will not bear the weight of being identified as a single fundamental exogenous cause of all the others, nor explain why this has happened now, in the early decades of the 21st century. read more

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Six Practical Proposals for Progressive Tax Policy

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December 20, 2019 —  It was quite a surprise, three years ago, when Donald Trump won a majority in the US Electoral College, thus becoming the 45th president.  In the search for explanations, one immediately dominated:  Democrats had not been sufficiently aware of the problem of income inequality or had neglected to propose good solutions to it.

This is presumably the logic behind radical proposals coming from some of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, has proposed an annual tax on the wealth of the wealthiest Americans (originally to be 2 % per year, but now up to 6 %). read more

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Median income flattens

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Sept. 10, 2019 —    Median real household income is the most useful single measure of the extent to which the typical American family has shared in GDP gains.  The latest annual number, released today by the Census Bureau, confirms the answer that many had suspected: the typical family has not experienced a statistically significant rise in income.  The gains have, rather, gone to those at the top of the income distribution.  Median household income did rise during 1993-2000 (during the boom of the Clinton years) and again during 2012-2017 (as the recovery from the global financial crisis started to spread more widely).  But its level last year was statistically the same as in 2017 (despite respectable growth in total national income).  It was also virtually the same as in 2000, indicating that median income has been essentially flat since the turn of the century. read more

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