When Biden took office, one of his first acts was the elimination of our border security. Like a power-hungry dictator, Biden simply decided to ignore our immigration laws. His catastrophic border policy resulted in untold millions of unidentified foreign citizens from around the world pouring into our country. Its impact is now being felt in cities across the country. The worst is yet to come. PETER LEMISKA - AND WE'RE ALREADY THERE!!!
Thursday, December 12, 2019
AMERICA, THE DUMPSTER - THIS IS WHAT THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S OPEN BORDERS HAVE DONE - HOUSING CRISIS, HOMELESS CRISIS, JOBS CRISIS, INNER CITY MURDER AND VIOLENCE
"But the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has been worsening for decades, making America the most unequal country in the developed world. The trend, which has persisted through recessions and recoveries, and under administrations of both parties, has put inequality at the center of U.S. politics."
Actor Liam Hemsworth attends the Spanish premiere of the film 'The Hunger Games - Catching Fire' in Madrid. (Photo: Oscar Gonzalez/NurPhoto/Corbis via Getty Images)
“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”
– Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison.
I pray everyone had a wonderful and Happy Thanksgiving gathered with their family and friends. And it’s hard to believe, Christmas is yet upon us again, seems that the year just flew by. And so, this past Saturday on my long six-mile run, I reflected on the past week.
Earlier this week I was contacted by a man here in Texas, who offered a very interesting proposal. His concern was that big cities were drowning out the voices of rural communities. He asked if it were possible to have an electoral college at the State level. All week long I have been pondering his proposal, and then, during my Saturday morning run, it hit me.
We are living in a real “Hunger Games”.
I am quite sure you have heard the saying of “art imitating life”, that adage applies here. Think about the trilogy movie series called “The Hunger Games.” The premise of the film is that in America there had been a civil war. The resolution of that conflagration was that the government, described as “The Capitol,” divided the country into Districts. Each of those Districts were responsible for certain commodity production that served the purpose of The Capitol. The Capitol was the place where the elites resided, while the Districts were rural, and existed under the watchful eye of the tyrannical government…and yes, they were disarmed.
Consider what is happening in America if you examine the 2016 presidential electoral map as broken down by counties. Look at Oregon. It is primarily red save for two major places, Portland and Eugene. Washington State is red except for one major spot, King County – Seattle and Tacoma. Nevada is the same, red except for Las Vegas (Clarke County) and Reno. New Mexico, the same is repeated, most red save for Santa Fe and Albuquerque.
Colorado was once a strong red state, but due to Denver and Boulder, it went from purple to blue. Virginia was flipped from blue to red because of the major population counties in Northern Virginia of Fairfax and Prince William. And down south traditionally conservative, red, States such as Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida are watching its major cities, population centers, trend to the progressive socialist left…potentially placing these states in danger of flipping.
As well, consider major Democrat [Socialist] controlled States such as New York, California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. Many describe Pennsylvania as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between. In Illinois, save for Chicago (Cook County), the Land of Lincoln is quite conservative. It is no surprise to anyone that New York City dominates the political atmosphere of the State of New York, upstate New York has little in common with the five boroughs, especially Manhattan. As for California, once outside of the coastal population centers, you will find dedicated, strong conservative regions.
Here in my home state of Texas, the same is being exemplified. Texas possesses three of the top ten largest population centers in America…Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio. The I-35 corridor of Texas is dominated by progressive socialist control from Denton down to San Antonio. In the Houston city limits last year, every single elected Republican was defeated. And El Paso can boast that it is home to Robert Francis O’Rourke.
It is as Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence and third president, stated. America is becoming divided between the major population centers, “The Capitol”, and the rural areas, “The Districts.” And it is in these population centers where the elitists reside, and as Jefferson asserted, the corruption exists. We must be honest, the greatest failures of governance in America is found in these urban population centers…controlled by the progressive socialist left.
In Texas we are witnessing the migration of many businesses and corporations, such as Toyota N.A. from California, fleeing the onerous and intrusive failed big government policies. These businesses and individuals are escaping the tax, regulatory, and tyrannical that have been associated with progressive socialism throughout history. It is the reason why so many fled other countries where this philosophy of governance has driven them to the shores of America.
And, when one considers Jefferson’s quote in his letter to James Madison, you can understand why we have the US Senate and the Electoral College. This was established to give the smaller states, more rural areas, an equal voice to the larger more populated centers, areas, States. Yes, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 election, translating to some 12-13 states. In the Electoral College, it was a landslide victory for Donald Trump, who won close to 38 states. Now, what do we hear from the progressive socialist left? Yes, end the Electoral College, they prefer the tyranny of a pure democracy…the rule of “The Capitol” over the Districts.
Sadly, this is happening in many of the States in our Constitutional Republic, and I do not find it by coincidence. If there is one thing about the left in America, they are highly strategic. They are relocating into economically successful and strong conservative States and turning them blue, based upon the concept of “The Hunger Games”. They are fortifying themselves within the cities, the population centers, which are often strengthened by the academic, media, entertainment, cultural, and political elites.
The greatest amount of despair, despondency, death, crime, pestilence, and corruption is found in our large American cities…and we know who controls them. Thomas Jefferson was so very prescient, and correct, with this assertion. And isn’t it rather interesting that the left wants more public transportation and electric vehicles which regulate, constrain, the movement of Americans?
We are living in the real Hunger Games.
Another line they
cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so
many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free
public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated,
unskilled, and largely unemployable.Those
are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier.
Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold
awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these
emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants
- Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a
connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban
Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals
prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do
it yesterday.
The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal
immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing
have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all
applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE)
database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other
welfare programs.
Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification,
though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our
citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of
past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public
housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens
attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off
of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and
some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member
being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner
who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to
have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets
that free ride on government housing. Plus lots
of cheesy news coverage about how
heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to
find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these
programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact
being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the
virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice"
for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are
stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal
technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law.
But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as
they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the
impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed
by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the
media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.
Los Angeles County Pays
Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years
In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid
nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That
figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy
population, according to Fox News.
The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other
state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in
California, Pew reported.
Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants
reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with
children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.
The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los
Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food
stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9
billion in 2016.
The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than
60,000 families received a total of $181 million.
Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in
2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.
Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior
fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration, told Fox the costs represent “the tip of
the iceberg.”
“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can
cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things
like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.
In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution
making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal
protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.
In October 2017, former California governor
Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made
California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice
Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A
federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan.
1, 2018.
According to Center for
Immigration Studies, “The new law
does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer
notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the
popular 287(g) program, and it prevents state and local police
from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”
Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined
the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.
California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants
did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is
just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the
expense of California taxpayers.
California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One
California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens,
including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities
easier for illegal-alien students to attend.
According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal
Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report, for the estimated 12.5 million illegal
immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116
billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after
deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.
BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF
ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY,
THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY
LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million
non-citizens now live in the United States.
However, the last half century of counterrevolution waged against the working class makes the parasitic nature of the ruling elite absolutely clear, and underscores the well-known fact that the US is ruled by an oligarchy that controls the political system.
De Blasio Deports Thousands of Homeless Families Across America
Jeenah Moon/Getty Images
3:31
Cities across the United States are grappling with large homeless populations, but New York City decided to deal with the problem by relocating those sleeping in the streets or in shelters to other American cities.
The New York Postreported that city records show that homeless people have been sent to 373 American cities.
The Post also reported that since the program started in 2017, New York has relocated 5,074 families, or 12,482 people, to other areas in the city, the state, and around the country.
Cities selected for homeless relocation include several in New Jersey and Georgia, according the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
A New York City program that relocates its homeless to other cities around the country is drawing fire from Marietta leaders who say they learned it was happening from a newspaper article.
Marietta city councilmembers say they want answers about how New York runs its Special One-Time Assistance program, which provides one year’s rent for eligible clients to relocate within the city, other New York state cities or other states.
The program is the subject of a lawsuit filed Dec. 1 by the city of Newark, New Jersey, which is one of the destination cities for New York’s homeless. The lawsuit argues the program pressures desperate homeless to accept substandard housing conditions and that slumlords benefit from the city’s program that pays for a year’s rent with no checks on the living conditions.
AJC reported that Marietta City Councilwoman Michelle Cooper Kelly said she was “astonished” when she read of the NYC program in the Post.
The Post reported on the extent of the program across the country:
From the tropical shores of Honolulu and Puerto Rico, to the badlands of Utah and backwaters of Louisiana, the Big Apple has sent local homeless families to 373 cities across the country with a full year of rent in their pockets as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Special One-Time Assistance Program.” Usually, the receiving city knows nothing about it.
City taxpayers have spent $89 million on rent alone since the program’s August 2017 inception to export 5,074 homeless families — 12,482 individuals — to places as close as Newark and as far as the South Pacific, according to Department of Homeless Services data obtained by The Post. Families who once lived in city shelters decamped to 32 states and Puerto Rico.
The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800. Not only are officials in towns where the city’s homeless land up in arms, but hundreds of the homeless families are returning to the five boroughs — and some are even suing NYC over being abandoned in barely livable conditions.
Sade Collington, her husband, and two children returned to a Bronx shelter after being relocated to an East Orange, New Jersey, apartment that lacked water, heat, or electricity.
“It was completely unlivable,” said Collington, who added she planned to sue the city.
"The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate the impact of President
Donald Trump’s end-2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy."
Bloomberg - Tax the Poor for Their Own Good
Here's why a leftist billionaire is wasting his money running for president.
Larry Elder
Let's examine some of the many reasons why billionaire Michael Bloomberg is wasting his money on his bid to win the Democratic nomination for president.
First, none of the Democratic candidates can win the nomination without the black vote. That means the former New York City mayor needs to pry black voters from former vice president Joe Biden, who owes his front-runner status to the black voters who embrace him, given his eight years as a loyal second-in-command to the extremely popular former President Barack Obama. Bloomberg has his work cut out for him. Consider the recent New York Times op-ed by a Times black columnist, Charles M. Blow, who said, "No black person — or Hispanic person or ally of people of color — should ever even consider voting for Michael Bloomberg in the primary." Blow urged blacks, Hispanics and their "allies" to reject Bloomberg because of his allegedly "racist" stop-and-frisk policy. Bloomberg recently apologized for the policy, after defending it only months ago.
Second, Bloomberg, despite an estimated net worth of over $50 billion, is still an old, white male in a gender/race/ethnicity identity-obsessed party where being an old, white, male presidential candidate — Biden excepted — is an increasingly tough sell. Bloomberg's a determined gun controller, although unlike former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke, Bloomberg does not — at least not yet — push a "mandatory buy-back" plan. But, like O'Rouke, Bloomberg never bothers to ask how many Americans defend themselves every year with a firearm.
Third, then-Mayor Bloomberg, even beyond the typical "progressive" Democrat, attempted to take the nanny state to a level that New York state's highest court rejected as an overreach. After placing restrictions on smoking in parks and bars, regulating tanning salons, banning the use of trans fats in restaurants and requiring chain restaurants to post meal calories, Bloomberg attempted to ban sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces in some restaurants, movie theaters and other businesses. The liberal New York high court said, "By choosing among competing policy goals, without any legislative delegation or guidance, the Board engaged in law-making and thus infringed upon the legislative jurisdiction of the City Council."
Bloomberg acknowledges that his sugary soda tax would have fallen disproportionately on the poor, who also disproportionately drink sugary drinks, just as cigarette taxes disproportionately fall on the poor who disproportionately smoke cigarettes. But Bloomberg easily justifies it: "Some people say, well, taxes are regressive. But in this case, yes they are. That's the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don't have a lot of money. And so, higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves. So, I listen to people saying, 'Oh, we don't want to tax the poor.' Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life. And that's why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don't want to do." So the "poor," according to Bloomberg, "can get an education" because they'll "live longer"?
All of this makes Bloomberg the very definition of the "moral busybody" scorned by respected writer C.S. Lewis, who said: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Why not levy taxes on the rich people to deter them from engaging in "unhealthy" behavior? Why not a wealth tax on luxury cars, diamonds, private air travel, five-star hotel suites, McMansions and pricey restaurants, you know, to help the spiritually empty rich curb their unhealthy consumerism? Through minimum wage laws, we forbid employees from earning below a certain amount. So why not a maximum wage law? After all, President Obama said, "I do think at a certain point you've made enough money."
As to Bloomberg's argument that the poor need to be coerced into making better, more healthful decisions, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
Freedom, by definition, means people can and will make choices others will not like. But to encourage people to make better decisions, one does not rob them of freedom of choice. One uses persuasion, not compulsion.
Good luck, Mr. Bloomberg.
Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host.
Richest 400 Americans paid lower taxes than everyone else in 2018
According to an analysis by noted economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, previewed this week by New York Times columnist David Leonhardt, the wealthiest American households paid a lower tax rate last year than every other income group for the first time in the country’s history.
Saez and Zucman, both professors at the University of California Berkeley, detail the phenomenon of declining taxes for the richest Americans in their soon-to-be released book, The Triumph of Injustice .
The pair compiled a historical database composed of the tax payments of households in various income percentiles spanning all the way back to 1913, when the federal income tax was first implemented. Their research uncovered that in the 2018 fiscal year the wealthiest 400 Americans paid a lower tax rate—accounting for federal, state, and local taxes—than anyone else.
The overall tax rate paid by the richest .01 percent was only 23 percent last year, while the bottom half of the population paid 24.2 percent. This contrasts starkly with the overall tax rates on the wealthy of 70 percent in 1950 and 47 percent in 1980.
The taxes on the wealthy have been in precipitous decline since the latter half of the 20th century as successive presidential administrations enacted tax cuts for the rich, suggesting that they would result in economic prosperity for all. Taxes that mostly affect the wealthy, such as the estate tax and corporate tax, have been drastically cut and lawyers have been hard at work on the beliefs of their wealthy patrons planning out the best schemes for tax avoidance, seeking to drive tax rates as close to zero as possible. The impetus for the historical tipping point was the Trump Administration’s 2017 tax reform, which was a windfall for the super-rich.
Supported by both the Republican and Democratic Parties, the two parties of Wall Street, Trump’s tax cuts were specifically designed to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the working class to the ruling elite.
The corporate tax rate was permanently slashed from 35 percent to 21 percent, potentially increasing corporate revenues by more than $6 trillion in the next decade. The bill also reduced the individual federal income tax rate for the wealthy and included a number of other provisions to further ease their tax burden.
The story is different for many middle- and working-class Americans. According to multiple analyses of the 2017 tax reform, 83 percent of the tax benefits will go to the top 1 percent by 2027, while 53 percent of the population, or those making less than $75,000 annually, will pay higher taxes. At the same time, the reform will sharply increase budget deficits and the national debt, granting the pretense for the further destruction of domestic social programs.
Furthermore, a majority of Americans are paying higher payroll taxes, which cover Medicare and Social Security. The tax increased from 2 percent just after World War II, to 6 percent in 1960, to 15.3 percent in 1990, where it stands today. It has risen to become the largest tax that 62 percent of American households pay.
The result of the multitude of changes to the US tax system over the last three-quarters of a century is one that has become less progressive over time. The 2017 tax reform effectively set up the foundation for a regressive tax policy where the wealthy pay lower tax rates than the poor.
The implementation of a regressive tax structure has played a major role in engineering the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top that has brought social inequality in America to its highest level since the 1920s.
According to Leonhardt’s preliminary Times review of The Triumph of Injustice, Saez and Zucman offer a solution to the current unjust tax system in which the overall tax rate on the top 1 percent of income earners would rise to 60 percent. The pair claim that the tax increase would bring in approximately $750 billion in taxes. Their tax code also includes a wealth tax and a minimum global corporate tax of 25 percent, requiring corporations to pay taxes on profits made in the United States, even if their headquarters are overseas.
In an interview with Leonhardt, Zucman states that history shows that the US has raised tax rates on the wealthy before so therefore it should be possible to do so now.
However, the last half century of counterrevolution waged against the working class makes the parasitic nature of the ruling elite absolutely clear, and underscores the well-known fact that the US is ruled by an oligarchy that controls the political system. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, who both represent this oligarchy and bear responsibility for the tax system, will make any effort to implement Saez and Zucman’s modest proposal.
California became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became socialists, but because millions of socialists moved there. Immigration turned California blue, and immigration is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty level.
Economists: America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of economists reveals.
For the first time on record, the wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax rate than all of the income groups in the United States, research highlighted by the New York Times from University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman finds.
The analysis concludes that the country’s top economic elite are paying lower federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class. Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which the Times‘ op-ed columnist David Leonhardt notes is a combined tax payment of “less than one-quarter of their total income.”
This 23 percent tax rate for the rich means their rate has been slashed by 47 percentage points since 1950 when their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot via the New York Times)
The analysis finds that the 23 percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is less than every other income group in the U.S. — including those earning working and middle-class incomes, as a Times graphic shows.
Leonhardt writes:
For middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat. [Emphasis added]
The report comes as Americans increasingly see a growing divide between the rich and working class, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the leading economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned against the Left-Right coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and open borders, a plan that he has called an economy that works solely for the elite.
“The same consensus says that we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization and economic integration at all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade, open everything no matter whether it’s actually good for American national security or for American workers or for American families or for American principles … this is the elite consensus that has governed our politics for too long and what it has produced is a politics of elite ambition,” Hawley said in an August speech in the Senate.
That increasing worry of rapid income inequality is only further justified by economic research showing a rise in servant-class jobs, strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but not for working-class regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire class at 15 times the rate of other Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Census Says U.S. Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Income inequality in America widened “significantly” last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report published Thursday.
A measure of inequality known as the Gini index rose to 0.485 from 0.482 in 2017, according to the bureau’s survey of household finances. The measure compares incomes at the top and bottom of the distribution, and a score of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the first to incorporate the impact of President Donald Trump’s end- 2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many economists to be skewed in favor of the wealthy.
But the distribution of income and wealth in the U.S. has been worsening for decades, making America the most unequal country in the developed world. The trend, which has persisted through recessions and recoveries, and under administrations of both parties, has put inequality at the center of U.S. politics.
Leading candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, including senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, are promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich with measures such as taxes on wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states -- California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana and New York, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes higher than the national level, while the reading was lower in 36 states.
By Allen West | December 2, 2019 | 5:00am EST
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