In what shouldn't be a surprise to anyone with a pulse Growth of Income Inequality Is Worse Under Obama than Bush ( http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/growth-of-income-inequality-is-worse-under-obama-than-bush.html)
Yesterday, the President gave a speech in which he demanded that Congress raise taxes on millionaires, as a way to somewhat recalibrate the nations wealth distribution. His advisors, like Gene Sperling, are giving speeches talking about the need for manufacturing. A common question in DC is whether this populist pose will help him win the election. Perhaps it will. Perhaps not. Romney is a weak candidate, cartoonishly wealthy and from what Ive seen, pretty inept. But on policy, theres a more interesting question. A better puzzle to wrestle with is why President Obama is able to continue to speak as if his administration has not presided over a significant expansion of income redistribution upward. The data on inequality shows that his policies are not incrementally better than those of his predecessor, or that were making progress too slowly, as liberal Democrats like to argue. It doesnt even show that the outcome is the same as Bushs. No, look at this table, from Emmanuel Saez (h/t Ian Welsh). Check out those two red circles I added. ... Chart here ... Yup, under Bush, the 1% captured a disproportionate share of the income gains from the Bush boom of 2002-2007. They got 65 cents of every dollar created in that boom, up 20 cents from when Clinton was President. Under Obama, the 1% got 93 cents of every dollar created in that boom. Thats not only more than under Bush, up 28 cents. In the transition from Bush to Obama, inequality got worse, faster, than under the transition from Clinton to Bush. Obama accelerated the growth of inequality. Income concentrations are relatively rare, but when they happen, sharp policy moves can retain a strong measure of equality. Its well-known at this point that President Obama did not want to make such moves. TARP, cramdown, and the foreclosure fraud settlement suggest that his interests lie in preserving the capital structure of the large banks. What about other policy priorities? Despite his recent speech, President Obama knows that his income tax proposal is going nowhere. So lets look at three recent policy choices that are going somewhere. 1) President Obama is on the verge of approving a Free Trade deal with Colombia, despite the murder of union organizers in that country. Not content with establishing similar deals with Panama (which has to do with enlarging tax havens) and South Korea, the administration is now embarking on a much vaster Trans-Pacific Partnership deal with countries all over Asia. And its being negotiated entirely in secret, with corporate and government officials the only ones allow to be in the room. Trade is a significant driver of lower wages. 2) President Obama just pushed for and signed the JOBS Act, which is a substantial relaxation of regulations and accounting requirements on corporations seeking to go public. Bill Black has many four letter words to describe this bill, but its basically a license for Wall Street to commit fraud in the equity markets. The SEC is beginning to promulgate instructions on how this will work. 3) President Obama just refused to issue an executive order forcing campaign spending disclosure by government contractors. President Obama actually criticized the Supreme Courts decision in Citizens United at a State of the Union address, but as with yesterdays speech on raising taxes on millionaires, there was actually no there there. Read more at the link. J - I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody. - B ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:349815 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
