Re:To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
by ericd on Sunday September 03, 2017 @02:49PM
(#15163105)
I would suggest that we currently don't do nearly enough saving as a nation, on average, and probably shouldn't further disincentivize that.
Re:To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
by dlp211 on Sunday September 03, 2017 @03:40PM
(#15163406)
Those who can afford to save do, those who can't don't. There isn't someone out there making $50k/yr raising a family saying "if capital gains rates were just a little lower I would save so much of my paycheck". I on the other hand am going to put my money in the markets whether the capital gains rate is 15% or 30% because I have used up all my tax-advantaged account space and still have extra money.
Re:To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
by ericd on Sunday September 03, 2017 @05:20PM
(#15163988)
It's not as simple as "those who can afford to save, do". There are also a huge number of people living well above their means, and the percentage of people with no savings is much, much higher than the percentage of people who don't make enough to save.
The F-150 is the best selling vehicle in the US, and they're certainly not all going to people in the construction industry.
And $50k/yr is more than enough to save money in most parts of the country. That's a good salary.
Re:To Understand Rising Inequality, Consider Janitors
by humanrebar on Sunday September 03, 2017 @05:14PM
(#15163963)
> ...there will always be inequality in a capitalist economy
What economy doesn't have inequality?
But you can have varying levels of inequality and the extremes are probably not healthy. My suggestion above wouldn't create perfect equality, it just fixes the broken incentives we currently have that reward us for hoarding wealth and penalize us for earning it.