“Capitalists, Arise: We Need to Deal With Income Inequality” is a nytimes piece by an old rich guy who immigrated here from Romania in 1954 and ultimately became head of a big ad agency. Readers comment that they want inequality cured with 1954 income tax rates, e.g,. 94%. They want this to kick in for incomes above about $1 million (not sure that their favored presidential candidate will go along with this; as noted in this May 2015 post, the Clintons have been earning about $22 million per year).
The old rich guy writes about how he got into elite schools: “I was invited by the headmaster of Phillips Exeter Academy to attend his school. From there I went to Princeton and the Stanford Business School.”
Nobody seems interested in the fact that the U.S. population in 1954 was 163 million, half of the present number. Thus there was a lot less competition for getting into elite schools (this was prior to the Jet Age that opened up these schools to foreign students as well).
There was a lot less country to country competition. Romania would not have been a viable location for a new business in 1954. Today it is part of the EU and ranks higher than average on economic freedom (Heritage Foundation). Romania has a lower tax burden as a percentage of GDP than does the U.S. For at least some companies or individuals it might well be a reasonable place to do business.
What do readers think? Is this screed against income inequality really a nostalgic desire to go back to the good old days when the U.S. was more favorably situated compared to other countries and before immigrants forced native-born Americans to work for stuff that had previously been theirs by right?
Georgescu doesn’t seem to have had the typical immigrant experience.
“With the help of the American people and the intervention of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, we were reunited with our parents after five years in the camp. Through kindness and compassion, I was invited by the headmaster of Phillips Exeter Academy to attend his school. From there I went to Princeton and the Stanford Business School.”
The NY Times Op Ed page has been useless for decades, but you are on to something in pointing out the difference between a population of 163 million and a population of 321 million. Doubling a population in sixty years will produce more competition for resources -particularly if they can’t be increased such as land or elite schools placement- and likely result in more rich people and alot more poor people. This is exactly what happened.
During the same period the wold population went from 3 billion to somewhere over 7 billion. Its interesting that the US did so much better at keeping up with the world 150% population growth rate (the US managed 100%) as opposed to other “first world” countries.
If this is the courageous forefront of reform, maybe it’s time for the pitchforks.
Income inequality has mostly been eliminated. The bottom 99% is all equally poor. If it wasn’t forcing them to buy insurance instead of saving money, debasing all their money to equalize asset valuations, it was telling them how to start families in such a way that the only beneficiary of any marriage would be the legal industry.
The thing is whenever Americans vote for more laws under the pretense of enforcing equality, the laws are really another way to keep the bottom 99% from moving into the top 1%. Paradoxically, shrinking the gap between the bottom 99% & the top 1% would require more inequality in the bottom 99% rather than less. Some people have to accumulate more wealth than others by their own free will, the root of all evil in the American mind.