Since the financial collapse a few years ago, there have been a number of topics that have dominated political discourse: income inequality, the rich paying their fair share, the welfare system and a greater redistribution of wealth. These have been talked about incessantly, and a viable solution has not been put forward.
Both income classes have their opinions of each other: the poor may find the affluent in society have it easy because they have plenty of money, they can find the loopholes in the tax system to pay less taxes and they don’t have to deal with the common problems of the day; the rich may say the poor don’t work hard enough, they are being coddled by government and all they do is complain about not having what the rich have.
This may be presumptuous to write, but a new study has shed some light on these opinions.
According to a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center (PRC), a majority of the wealthy in the United States today purport that the impecunious don’t need to be pitied because they “have it easy.”
Here is what the study found: 54 percent of the richest people maintain the idea that “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.” Meanwhile, 36 percent of the affluent believe that “poor people have hard lives because government benefits don’t go far enough to help them live decently.”
On the other side of the coin, just 29 percent of the poorest adhere to that notion, while two-thirds say the government doesn’t do enough to assist the country’s most vulnerable.
Furthermore, the wealthiest of Americans present the case that the government can’t afford to enhance the welfare system and aid the poor. The least wealthy argue that the government should do more for the poor even if it means to go deeper into debt.
When it comes to most issues of the day, the rich and poor are on opposite sides, except on the topics of immigration, race and war. For instance, the rich disagree with the statement that “business corporations make too much profit,” while the poor agree. Also, the rich disagree with the idea that governmental regulation is necessary to protect the public’s interest, while the poor agree.
In terms of understanding how the government works and who controls the House and Senate, the affluent are a lot more knowledgeable than the impoverished. For example, 62 percent of the wealthiest know what party is in charge of the House and Senate, while 26 percent of the least wealthy know this information.
A great number of the poor were also either Democratic voters or unspecified/refused/unsure.
One of the most common solutions put forward to the matter of income inequality is to take the wealth away from rich people and divide it to assist those who are least financially secure. Harvard economist Jeff Frankel disagrees with this premise.
“Pursuing the anti-oligarchy argument is not the best way to reduce inequality,” he wrote on Project Syndicate last year. “Rather, we should work from the premise that poverty in particular, and inequality in general, is simply undesirable.”
Here is what economist Robert Murphy wrote on the proposal of introducing higher taxes on the rich in 2010:
“Tax hikes on ‘the rich,’ especially at the state level, are not nearly as effective at raising revenue as most people think. High-income earners and businesses really do take into account a state’s tax policies when deciding where to locate. It’s true, any particular individual might not sell his house and leave just because of a new tax. But on the margin, a new tax will push more people over the edge. (Or, going the other way, a new tax hike will deter people from moving into the state who otherwise would have.)”
With the 2016 presidential election looming, the issue will make it to the forefront of the debate, again.
