By all means read the references. As for wealth transfer, those statistics that are cited by your referenced organization are based on census data (statistical categories) versus Treasury Dept data (real people) to support a solution in search of a problem. Households and people are not the same thing.

From 1967 – 2005 household income only rose by 31% but during that same time period per capita income rose by 122%. The reason is quite simple. As the Census Bureau concluded beginning in 1966, the number of households began to increase at a rate greater than the number of people because of an increase in the number of unrelated people choosing to maintain their own household (e.g. young persons getting their own apartment). That growth in the number of households as defined by the census further continued to grow as a result in declining marriage rates combined with increasing divorce rates and as a result of the growing tendency toward unwed motherhood (Baby’s Daddy don’t live with Baby’s Momma).

Once again they are using income data, and purposely skewed income data at that, which is not wealth… income earned at a point in time, is not wealth. Even the Treasury data based on real people and reported income does not include many transfer payments (e.g. welfare, food stamps, fuel assistance, housing assistance, govt provided medical services, etc). Those are types of “income in kind” that amount to at least hundreds of billions, if not over a trillion, of tax dollars annually that are not included in those income statistics.

It’s not that wealth doesn’t shift around for individuals and statistical groups but there are those that play with the numbers to support a predetermined conclusion and conclude that the shift that they choose to “prove” is a bad thing.

Each private jet equals a butt load of employment for ordinary folks like us… building ‘em, maintaining ‘em, servicing ‘em when they take off and land, and so on. One should seek out “wealthy” people if employment is of interest as the poor are not hiring. At least I don’t recall ever having a job offer from a poor person.

That’s really interesting. You’ll have to give me some time to read through all those links.

In the meantime, what about the fact that the share of total income going to the top 1 percent of earners, which stood at 8.9 percent in 1976, rose to 23.5 percent by 2007, but during the same period, the average inflation-adjusted hourly wage declined by more than 7 percent. (http://extremeinequality.org/?page_id=8)? That’s a massive, massive shifting of wealth, right?

That redistribution of wealth did not occur… that comes from an intentional and deceptive confusion of statistical categories and real people. The overwhelming majority of real people pass through a number of statistical categories over the course of their lives. That is, early in life a person will normally be in the lowest percentile in terms of income (Note: income and wealth are not the same thing) and overtime as they gain more experience and become more productive move up through a number of statistically higher income bands. Some may move back and forth between these bands and typically as you wind it down later in life you start heading back down through lower income bands. As it turns out I was reading about this very thing this morning (see Chapter 3 – Intellectuals and Economics in Intellectuals and Society by Dr. Thomas Sowell). He explains it so well and I would not do it justice.

You might also want to take a quick read of a very good little article that explains income and shifting through the brackets in a St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank – Inside The Vault, Spring 2010 – article titled “U.S. Income Inequality: It’s Not So Bad” at http://stlouisfed.org/publications/itv/articles/?id=1920. I came across this while researching for some articles I wrote concerning the state of the recession recovery referencing key economic charts maintained by the St. Louis Fed. Actually I have this Fed article on my ‘to do’ list for posts to this blog.

All of the statistical misinformation aside it comes down to a matter of property rights. Property rights are individual rights and you have no right to my property or anyone else’s property and the government has no rights (other than those surrendered to it by We the People) to any individual’s property (legally obtained property that is). It is the purpose of government to protect the rights of the individual. See James Madison on Property – http://www.ourfounderscompass.com/archives/537

De-populating and cutting CO2 with a market-based solution! Beauty..

I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog …

I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog …

Perhaps it wasn’t obvious in the words about the reason for this blog being started in the first place, but you may rest assured that yours truly has not voted for and will not be voting for Fast Eddie or any of his ilk. The danger for the Commonwealth is the skulldugery Fast Eddie and his minions pull with voting in the Philadelphia and Pittsburg areas. It takes a lot of votes in the mid state to overcome their army of voting zombies.