Attention Economy


Saturday, December 16, 2023

Debating the Extent of US Inequality

Do we really live in an “age of inequality”?
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2024/1/11/23984135/inequality-auten-splinter-piketty-saez-zucman-tax-data
Why economists are reconsidering the scale of the rise in US inequality.

Clarifying America’s Great Inequality Debate
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/inequality-different-metrics-but-larger-trend-still-a-problem-by-daron-acemoglu-2024-01
Technical debates about the nature and scale of income inequality are important, but they should not obscure what matters most in the story of the US economy. The mitigating effects of taxes and transfers do not change the fact that the market economy has been malfunctioning for the past 40 years.

Why economists are at war over inequality
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/30/income-gaps-are-growing-inexorably-arent-they
Related:
https://gabriel-zucman.eu/files/as-response-2023.pdf
https://davidsplinter.com/AutenSplinter-Tax_Data_and_Inequality.pdf
 
Consumption and Income Inequality in the United States since the 1960s
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/721702
 
POLICY IMPLICATIONS:
Yes, Tax the Rich—and Also the Merely Affluent
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/yes-tax-the-rich-and-also-the-merely-affluent/
For years the left has rallied around taxing the 1 percent, but this group is too narrow.
 
Wealthy Americans and redistribution: The role of fairness preferences
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104977
Abstract
We examine the attitudes of the wealthy towards government redistribution using a large and diverse sample of individuals from the top 5% of the income and wealth distribution in the U.S., as well as the remaining 95%. Three results stand out: (1) wealthy Americans have distinct fairness preferences, with a greater willingness to accept inequalities relative to the general public, (2) individuals who self-report having experienced upward social mobility and became first-generation wealthy are particularly accepting of inequality, while those born into wealth have fairness preferences similar to the general population; (3) the disparity in fairness preferences between the rich and the general public is predictive of greater opposition to redistribution among the wealthy, resulting in more conservative voting behavior. These findings provide new insights into the reasons behind the wealthy’s opposition to government redistribution.