Facebook is a great form of social media if used correctly. It can be used for ‘reconnecting’ or making new friends. It can be used to share events in our lives that we feel are important to us. It can be used or abused as a ‘bully’ pulpit to make our positions known on a particular subject. Recently, those of us with strong political feelings have turned our Facebook pages into campaign ads for our favorite party or candidates. Just like many of the authorities from where we draw or information, bias is substituted for fact to support a particular position. Often, many of them are not true economists, but, like us, these pseudo-economists grab facts and numbers to shore up their already existing bias. After my last series of postings on entitlements similar to this one listed below, I thought that it might be time for us, who enter into these debates, to hold ourselves to a higher standard of veracity. To accomplish this, we must understand both sides of an issue by exploring the viewpoints of the real authorities. In the area that I find most interesting and crucial to preserving ‘my’ American Dream are: on the far left is Paul Krugman from the New York Times and on the right is Dr. John Goodman, President of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nationally recognized Conservative leaning think-tank. Wanda Meirs and others, myself included, owe it to those who take the time to read our postings, to be informed on the issues we discuss and not regurgitate the ‘talking-points’ fabricated by a particular political party. (*Otherwise we should put in a disclaimer with each of our postings) Why Are The Poor, Poor? By John Goodman Filed under Health Alerts on April 16, 2014 with 13 comments Have you ever wondered why poor people are poor? It’s not as though there aren’t plenty of role models around. Millions of people live highly successful, productive lives in this country. So why don’t people at the bottom of the income ladder copy the behavior of those several rungs above them and better their lot in life? If this question doesn’t really interest you, that’s understandable. What’s not understandable is why it is not an interesting question for those who regard inequality of income the burning issue of the day. For example, when is the last time you saw a Paul Krugman column on why poor people are poor? When Krugman writes about poverty, he can’t get more than a few sentences into the piece without launching into an attack on Republicans for being racists and indifferent to the plight of the poor. And that’s on a good day. When he’s in a bad mood, he depicts Republicans as actually delighting in the suffering of the poor. What motivates Krugman more: Concern for the poor? Or hatred of Republicans? You decide. Okay. What about the rest of the paper? When is the last time you saw a New York Times unsigned editorial on why the poor are poor? How about any editorial in The New York Times? Actually, there was one — just a few days ago. Under the heading “Where The GOP Gets It Right,” Nicholas Kristof writes that Republicans have been right all along — especially in stressing the role of strong families, job creation and education reform. (You wonder if Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof ever talk to each other.) Yet good as it is, the Kristof column has one gaping hole: it totally neglects the role of incentives. As I wrote previously, the federal government’s own pilot programs established conclusively from the very early days of the War on Poverty that the welfare state encourages people not to be married, not to work and not to invest in human capital. This is Gene Steuerle before a House Ways and Means subcommittee: The chart below shows a hypothetical example whereby a family (single parent and two children) can receive nearly $30,000 in government benefits with no household earnings, but only about $10,000 in government benefits with $35,000 in household earnings. So if the mother earns, say, $35,000 she loses about two-thirds of that amount in lost welfare benefits, and that’s not even counting what the government will take in income and payroll taxes. Steuerle’s chart shows what incentives look like at a point in time. But activities today affect benefits tomorrow. For example, working and earning wages produces Social Security benefits and perhaps a private pension at the time of retirement. What do the incentives look like when we look at the lifetime effects of earning wages today? That question was addressed in a study for the National Center for Policy Analysis by Jagadeesh Gokhale, Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Alexi Sluchynsky (NBER version here.) The authors explicitly incorporate future Social Security benefits as well as current payroll taxes to calculate lifetime marginal tax rates. They conclude that: • Americans at every income level face a lifetime marginal net tax rate greater than 50 percent. • That is, for every dollar they earn, they will lose more than 50 cents in higher taxes and reduced transfer benefits. Furthermore, the highest marginal net tax rates are not imposed on the highest-income families. They are imposed on those with the lowest earnings. For example: • At two times the minimum wage ($42,800), working couples get to keep less than 30 cents out of each dollar they earn. • At 1.5 times the minimum wage ($32,100), they get to keep less than 20 cents out of each dollar they earn. • By contrast, a couple earning $200,000 a year gets to keep 44 cents. In a follow up study, Kotlikoff and coauthor David S. Rapson calculate the effects of working more hours for people at different income levels. They conclude that effective marginal tax rates are generally and substantially higher for lower-income households than for high-income households. • For 30-year-old couples earning $20,000 the marginal tax rate on an additional dollar earned is 42.5 percent; yet those earning $50,000 a year face a marginal tax rate of only 24.4 percent. • At age 45, couples earning $30,000 a year face a higher marginal tax rate (41.9 percent) than do those earning $200,000 a year (35.9 percent). • At age 60, couples earning $10,000 a year face a marginal tax rate of 50.9 percent, compared to a 43.2 percent marginal tax rate for those earning $200,000! Moreover, single-parent households who qualify for more benefit programs than do couples face astonishingly high marginal tax rates beginning at lower incomes. For example: • At age 30, a single parent earning $10,000 a year faces a 72.3 percent marginal tax rate on an additional dollar earned due to their loss of welfare benefits; this rate is substantially higher than the 36.9 percent tax rate on the single parent earning $200,000. • At 45 years of age, a single parent earning $20,000 faces a marginal tax rate of 42.9 percent; higher than a single parent earning $200,000. • A 60-year-old single parent earning $10,000 a year faces a 50.9 percent marginal tax rate, while those earning $200,000 face a rate of 43.2 percent. - See more at: healthblog.ncpa.org/why-are-the-poor-poor/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HA#more-37240
Posted on: Wed, 16 Apr 2014 18:05:46 +0000
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