The Party of Income Inequality Is?

The Democratic Party!  For all of its huffing and puffing that it is the party of income equality, the Democratic Party has political control of by far the most areas of the US with high income inequality.  That party likes to claim that the middle class and low wage industry workers have been left behind in income growth over the years.  Let us look at a very interesting graph of the income growth in high wage, middle wage, and low wage industries since 2007:

The high wage industries wage growth over the years from 2007 into 2019 has been relatively steady.  The middle wage industries pay growth had some significant dips in 2010 and 2014 under Obama's administration.  The low wage industry wage growth rate hit lower rates of increase in 2010 and 2012 under Obama.  The Democrats will point out that after that low in 2012, the low wage industry wage growth began to get better until it was about the same rate of growth as that of the high wage industry wage growth rate in 2014.  By 2015, the wage growth rates were pretty close for all three industry groups.  However, in early 2018 wage growth for the low wage industries took off, achieving far faster rates of growth compared to the middle and high wage industry wage growth rates.  Apparently, the economic policies of the Trump administration are quite favorable to wage growth on the part of the low wage industries.

So, just as those areas of the country represented by Republicans in Congress tend to have less income inequality, Republican economic policies under Trump are enabling low wage earners to catch up with higher wage earners while in many of the years under Obama they were falling behind more and more.

Michael Strain of AEI notes that the median wages of all workers increased by 25% over the past 30 years corrected for inflation.  The wages of the poorest paid 20% of workers grew by more than one-third.  The poorest paid workers have actually been catching up in wage income therefore.  Income inequality has decreased.  Applying a broader income measure that takes into account income from fringe benefits, capital gains and dividends, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare benefits, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and federal tax payments, this reduction of total income inequality remains substantial.  The median household income by this measure increased by 43% from 1990 to 2015.  In comparison, the households in the bottom 20% had an increase in income of 62%.  As the American economy has grown since 1990, the bottom 20% of households on the total income scale have benefited even more than the median household has.

The common claim of the Democrat Party that the poor and the middle class are falling behind and somehow suffering does not hold up.  It is true that they could have benefited more had government policies been different.  The economy overall could have grown more rapidly with policies more friendly to the free, voluntary private sector.  Had that extra growth path been chosen, median and poorer households would have had greater increases in income.  We see evidence of how that would have been the case in the recent surge in income of the low wage industries under the Trump administration with its decreased cost of regulations, its signalling of fewer arbitrary and expensive future regulations, and its tax cuts favoring business investments to increase business productivity.  The Obama regulatory chaos and extreme uncertainty with a will to wipe out entire industries extended the Great Recession period of slow economic growth, much like Franklin D. Roosevelt's capricious federal management of the economy that greatly prolonged the Great Depression and the later uncertainty caused by LBJ, Nixon, and Carter offer lessons in how to slow economic growth and with it to deny most of us the benefits of an improved standard of living relative to what the Democrats will generally allow us.

The free markets of a Capitalist society unleashed would benefit most Americans greatly and that would most definitely include most low wage Americans!

Steven Allen on Hillary Clinton as Thief and Liar

Dr. Steven Allen, the Vice President and Chief Investigative Officer of the Capital Research Center, has written a clever article on Hillary Clinton describing what she has accomplished in matching the record for corruption of many a male politician.  He goes on to quote a number of progressives about why her lack of honesty and trustworthiness is a positive attribute or at least not a negative one.

On Hillary's mendacity and her advance of female equality:

She has advanced gender equality by proving that a woman in politics can be as corrupt as any man—with the “commodities deal” scheme for laundering payoffs from polluters… the Whitewater deal (selling people real estate they couldn’t afford, repossessing the properties, repeating the process)… the apparent mass collection of information, suitable for use in blackmail, from Republicans’ FBI files… Clinton flunkies’ role in the sale of missile technology to China… the granting of presidential pardons based apparently on political considerations and cash… the Benghazi deception (silencing critics of radical Islam while leading voters in 2012 to believe wrongly that Al Qaeda was “on the run”)… the theft of at least 66,000 government e-mails (and the storage of those e-mails, containing some of our country’s most precious life-or-death secrets, in a way that made them readily available to our country’s enemies)… and the “speaking fees” (ha!) that made Hillary and Bill and Chelsea ultra-rich. In the eight years prior to her presidential run, which included Hilary’s time as secretary of state, the Clintons raked it in at an average of almost $350,000 a week. Politico reported last September: “She earns more for a 20-minute speech to an industry trade group than a dozen fast-food workers make in a year.”

Indeed, it is clear that Hillary has surpassed any male politician's accomplishments for brazen theft and dishonesty that I know about.  Women should be proud!  And to imagine that she denounces income inequality even as she rakes in the cash for one of those 20-minute speeches that would remunerate a dozen fast-food workers for a year!  But she does advocate a minimum wage for them of $15/hour, to be paid by their employer, who manifestly is not a Clinton.  Hillary is such a good person, with money she has government's steal from others.

Max Ehrenfreund of the Washington Post says

For progressive voters looking for the candidate who could best advance their goals in the White House, personal traits other than honesty might be more relevant: skill in negotiation, say, or in managing the bureaucracy or the press.

Those who make a pretense of Progressivism, care only about their agenda 
Steve Allen responds:

Got that? You don’t want to elect an honest president, because he or she might not be an effective negotiator.

Because the most effective negotiator is someone whom no one trusts. Right?

It is interesting to note that the Progressive Obama is not off-put in negotiating with Iran, North Korea, China, or Putin in the least, despite their proven track records for mendacity.  Apparently, it is a trait of the Progressive that concern for the honesty of those with whom you reach agreements is of no interest.  Now anyone with a smidgen of knowledge of history would know better, but there is no one better at ignoring the lessons of history than a Progressive.  For them, it is easy to square Obama's oath of office to preserve and protect the Constitution from all enemies both foreign and domestic with his many violations of the Constitution. How well has the American Peoples' contract with Obama the Mendacious worked out?  Would that contract with Hillary the Mendacious work out any better?

Income Inequality and Government Policy

The very strongly socialist Democrat Party has made what it calls the problem of income inequality the cornerstone of their party platform.  It is the justification for calls for raising the minimum wage once again.  It justifies further and endless entitlement programs.

But is income inequality any more of a problem than are the inequality of the following characteristics of an individual?

• Intelligence
• Morality
• Energy
• Friendliness
• Athleticism
• Goal-Directedness
• Height
• Attractiveness
• Benevolence
• Sexual Prowess
• Humor
• Knowledge
• Loyalty
• Productivity
• Interest in movies and TV
• Interest in partying and drugs
• Interest in politics
• Interest in reading
• Interest in spending time with children

No.  A desire to reduce income inequality by the application of government force is very much similar to the desire to reduce the inequality of any of these other individual traits by the use of government force.  In all cases, the use of force for such a purpose is an attack upon individuality itself.  It is most certainly an attack on the freedom of the individual to make his own choices and to own and manage his own life.

Some people choose to work 30 hours a week and watch 40 hours of TV a week, while others choose to work 70 hours a week and watch little TV.  Perhaps instead of transferring the extra money earned by the 70-hour worker to the 30-hour worker, we should tax people for the income they did not earn while watching TV?  That is only fair, especially considering that the harder worker generally did more to improve the standard of living of his fellow Americans.

Yet it is also the case that we Americans are actually far richer than most other people in the world.  Consequently, if income inequality really were a problem that should be leveled by government, then it would have to be performed by ceding American governmental sovereignty to the United Nations.  Even poor Americans are too rich by world standards and should be deprived of much of their income to equalize the human condition with respect to income.  Look at the percentage of people in the world with higher incomes than the following incomes:

$1,400               48.1%
$20,000               3.6%
$25,000               2.0%
$32,400               1.0%
$35,000               0.81%
$51,939               0.28%, this is the median US household income in 2013, US Census Bureau
$75,000               0.11%
$100,000             0.08%
$125,000             0.07%

Only 0.28% of households in the world have incomes greater than the median household income in the USA.  So, let those who are serious about eliminating income inequality by a simple re-distribution of income give away almost all of their own income until that equality is achieved around the world.  As the income of the lower half, less than about $1400 a year is increased, the dividing line between the poorer half will rise and those Americans earning only $1400 a year will start to receive redistributed money.  But, those earning the outrageous sum of $20,000 a year will always be contributors in the self-sacrificial duty to raise the income of the poorer half of the world population.

Well, alright now, but many Americans are only thinking of income inequality as a problem within the confines of American, because its great usefulness as a political power tool is in the context of the Democrat Socialist and generally the Progressive Elitist effort to transform the USA.  Why would these people think of income inequality as a problem to be dealt with as a matter of principle.  No, it is just a convenient tool to increase the power of government and of those who wield great influence over the government.  The aim is not to achieve income equality even in the USA.  It is to pretend to redistribute some money in the name of reducing income inequality so the government can be made more powerful.  A more powerful government can do even more to make those who have pull in Washington still richer than the present special interest control over Big Governments makes these cronies of Big Government.  A real effort to eliminate income inequality would defeat the real purpose, just as offering a real education in government-run schools defeats the real purpose of having government and special interest control of the schools.

A very interesting study of income inequality was produced from U.S. Census Bureau data from 2012 which shows the Gini index of income inequality by congressional district in the US.  Those districts with Democrat representation are shown in blue, while those with Republican representation are shown in red.  The plot below shows the districts in order of Gini index, where a higher Gini index represents a greater income inequality:

It is immediately striking that congressional districts most dominated by Democrat Representatives are those with the highest income inequality.  At the lowest and highest levels of income inequality the rate of inequality changes the most.  Let us look at these two ends of the spectrum of American income inequality more closely:

Democrats represent 23 of the 25 most income unequal congressional districts, while Republicans represent 13 of the 25 districts with the least income inequality.  Republicans are predominant in those districts with more nearly normal distributions of income.  Now, we cannot immediately assume that Republican representation reduces income inequality.  But, we should at least be asking whether there are reasons why Democrat representation might be adding to income inequality.  The rational man wants to know.

We should attack this question with some knowledge of where Democrats hold representation in the House of Representatives.  The results of the 2012 election are shown in the map below:

The Democrats dominated the big cities of the Northeast and the Pacific coast, some highly Hispanic and Native American areas of the Southwest, the union strongholds in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri, a few concentrations of black voters in the Southeastern states, and a complete dominance of New England.

I am pretty sure the highly Hispanic and the highly black concentrated districts are responsible for many of the least income inequality districts the Democrats hold.  These districts are often uniformly poor, which is not a good thing.  It would be wonderfully good if these districts had more higher income people, to state the obvious.  Any district would benefit from more higher income people, provided that income was obtained in the private sector.

But most Democrat districts tend to be the high density population districts of cities and their nearby metropolitan areas.  Good fences and low population densities make good neighbors, but these conditions are lacking in cities.  As a result, there is a tendency for city dwellers to want more control over their neighbors.  They cannot achieve this on their own, so they enlist government with its monopoly on force to perform this function.  They therefore vote heavily for Democrats.  There are few exceptions to this rule.

High population densities also lend themselves to making great fortunes.  The best CPA in Russell, Kansas will only have a very few well-off clients, while a CPA with no better ability in New York City might well have many wealthy clients.  A very good restaurant in Stilwell, Oklahoma, the Strawberry Capital of the World, with a population of 3,840 people, will make less money than will a restaurant of the same quality in many parts of Chicago or its suburbs.  The networking possibilities of a major metropolitan area and its financial institution advantages will lend themselves to extreme wealth creation for a least some people.  So, we cannot blame Democrats across the board for these advantages that contribute to income inequality, except where that networking is used to provide a greater than average influence to special interests over governments.  This is a big exception, because we know that this kind of pull is used to increase the fortunes of a few cronies at the expense of the many who have little or no such pull.

Among those who have no pull are those who live in the inner city and sometimes suburb school districts with notoriously bad decades-long Democrat control of the government-run schools.  These schools are run as holding pens for children, for the advantage of government employees who staff them and the labor unions that represent school employees, as indoctrination centers for the mythical wonders of Big Government, and very often for the advantage of cronies who provide excessively expensive services and goods to the school systems.

The child victims too commonly do not graduate from high school.  Those who do often read at the third grade level, cannot write a coherent sentence, and know nothing about history, economics, science, and math.  Wonder of wonders, these city school children commonly have little ability to earn decent incomes as adults.  Very high percentages cannot finds jobs.  Many turn to crime and/or become dependent on drugs and/or welfare programs.  All of these income depressing effects are aided and abetted by the Democrat-controlled governments.

The problems do not end here.  The cities are more likely to have severe licensing laws for professions and jobs, which greatly limit entry into these jobs.  Those who start poor are more likely to be kept from becoming more wealthy by these restrictions.  Cities also produce a plethora of regulations, which hit small businesses especially hard.  This makes it harder for a poor person to succeed by creating his own small business.  Democrat city governments commonly favor labor unions, whose members add to their income by depressing the income of larger numbers of non-union members.  Once again, the Big Government model adds to income inequality, this time by suppressing the income of the poor.

Yes, Democrats might be more concerned that income inequality is common in America because it is more common in their districts.  So, they make more of it.  But, their governmental principles, insofar as they have any, embrace many policies that make income inequality greater.  They increase the income of those favored by the government, who are commonly not those they imply are favored in their speeches aimed at the poor and minorities to gain their votes.  They depress the future and present incomes of the poor and the minorities they claim to champion.  The governments they control are not righting wrongs of the private sector.  They are not righting wrongs of the government sector. 

This will not change no matter how often they pose as champions of income equality, because the wrongs their Big Government model does are inevitable by the nature of Big Government's need to sustain itself.  In comparison, competition and individual choice are very effective in limiting any injustices created in the private sector.  In the Big Government model, the government sector is characterized by force and a disrespect for the individual.  That lack of respect for the individual reduces the probability of individuals increasing their wealth all across the spectrum of incomes, but seems to act as a more severe depressant of the incomes of the poor who have no real pull in Big Governments.

Increasing Mobility of Low Income People to Higher Incomes

I am going to comment on an article by W. Bradford Wilcox posted at the American Enterprise Institute on income mobility in the United States.  He has presented some data of Harvard economist Raj Chetty, a principal investigator at the Equality of Opportunity Project, based on local variations of local income growth, the share of single mother households locally, and local government spending.  The mobility is question here was actually one with a very high bar.  A child born into a lowest quintile household has to be a highest quintile earner by age 30.  Most highest quintile earners are well into their careers and tend to be much older 30.

Wilcox has fit these data sets with linear functions.  The data are interesting, though the linear fits are problematic for two of his three plots of the data.  In light of the recent renewal of Obama's redistributionist efforts, only partially and even falsely carried out by ObamaVaporCare, this is a good time to talk about what really affects income mobility.

The first plot, which is reasonably fit with a linear function, is:

This is not surprising.  Where income growth is strong in America, labor is more valued and those who want to work hard have many opportunities to make money.  Of course Obama's anti-business policies, high energy costs, excessive regulations, and the costs of ObamaVaporCare decrease income growth and are therefore likely to decrease income mobility on the national scale.  Nonetheless, local government efforts to suppress the free market will still leave a strong imprint on local mobility variations.  There is no question that it is much easier to start a business in some areas than in others, as an example with important affects on mobility.

Another critical effect on income mobility is:

Clearly an increasing share of households run by a single mother has a very negative effect on income mobility for their children.  The linear fit here is nonsense.  The proper fit is with a hyperbolic curve, which indicates a much stronger impact of single mother households on income mobility than a linear effect.  It has long been understood that there was a strong effect, but this data makes it very clear how strong and dominant that effect is.  It is well-understood that entitlement programs tend to increase the number of single mother households, so most of Obama's likely efforts to decrease income inequality will likely make it worse.  One of the many impacts of his policies already has been to increase energy costs, which really hurts those with little income badly.  How local government welfare programs are run will have a big impact on the number of single mother households.  Generally, the more money spent on such programs, the more single mother households.

The third plot is:

The thought here was that local government spending supports education, so with better local education systems, income mobility would be increased.  There probably is some such effect in some school districts, but we also know that generally increased spending on schools does not really correlate well with greater learning.  In some school districts, the people do have a high regard for education, but in many other districts it is just another labor union entitlement program to gain the teachers union votes.  Many inner city school systems are well-funded, but horribly managed.  So it is not surprising that the data does not follow any definable dependence in this case.  The data more nearly resembles a hand print with the palm pressed firmly and the fingers splayed out and pressing lightly.  Indeed, the thumb is nearly straight up, indicating that one can get virtually any result from spending $2,000 per capita on income mobility.  Clearly, neither local government spending nor local education spending is the primary effect on income mobility.  This is not to say that real learning is not important.  That I am sure is a critical effect.  But, sad to say, real learning is not something Obama is interested in.

Income mobility depends upon the opportunity to earn a living, which is heavily dependent upon government policies not shutting down or over-regulating opportunities.  Because freedom of contract is heavily suppressed in the USA, many opportunities to earn are decreased.  One such egregious way to decrease opportunity to earn and to develop a career is to increase the minimum wage.  Doing so hurts the under-educated the most by keeping them from getting their first jobs.  This keeps them from acquiring skills and from establishing a record as a worthy employee.  It forces many to turn to crime.  The high costs of providing health insurance under ObamaCare and the minimum wage increases that took effect just before and during the start of the Great Socialist Recession have already had a disproportionate impact on ensuring the unemployment and part-time employment of those in the lowest quintile income households.  Obama has been no friend to the small businesses that often hire young people and give them their first opportunity to prove themselves.

It is another Obama farce to claim that he is going to do something to increase income mobility and to reduce income inequality.  As always, he will cause effects opposed to those he claims he will achieve.  Of course his main purpose in this income inequality rhetoric is to distract the American People from the disasters he has already caused in the economy and with our medical care.

Our Unfair, Discriminatory, Growth-Inhibiting Income Tax

Obama wants to have a discussion about income inequality and increasing the discriminatory nature of the income tax rate structure to reduce income inequality.  He claims he will win that debate.  He clearly believes the American People are merry thieves and covet their neighbor's income if not his wife, his house, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or his donkey, or anything else that is his.  I hope he is wrong and that most Americans will resist the Obama lure for free government goodies and services paid for by soaking the rich.

An increasing number of Americans, especially Tea Party Americans, do seem to think there is nothing wrong with others becoming rich and they even wish them the best.  Many have dreams of becoming rich themselves.  Unfortunately, the young Americans coming out of our government-run school systems have generally been indoctrinated in the idea that income inequality is a great social injustice that transcends such trends as a generally improving lifestyle for all income groups.  They have been taught that those with high incomes have somehow deprived the poor or that they must give back what they have created because, well they somehow could not have created it but for the poor?  Or, in some cases, the rich are pictured as actually having taken more of their share of the dwindling resources of the planet and added more than their share of pollution, so therefore they must be made to pay back the poor whose share of resources and clean air and water they took!  This is nonsense that comes from static thinking and environmental misconceptions I have discussed elsewhere.

The Progressive Socialist Elitist likes to point at the fact that the very wealthy are becoming wealthier at a faster rate than most Americans have been becoming wealthier.  He commonly claims this growing wealth on the part of the very rich is due to the Bush II tax cuts.  He does not point out that the rate of the increased share of total income going to the wealthiest 10% of Americans grew just as fast from 1994 to 2000 under Bill Clinton.  He does not point out that the share of total wealth of the top 10% has risen since 1978, which was back in Jimmy Carter's administration!  Let us look at the historical data of Piketty and Saez (2003) and the update by Saez through 2007 for the share of total income held by the top 10% of tax filers including wages and salaries, pensions received, profits from business, dividends, interest, rents, and capital gains, but excluding Social Security retirement benefits, unemployment payments, and other government transfer payments:

In 2007, the bottom income for the top 10% in income was $109,630, so we are hardly talking about really wealthy or really high income families here.  Saez' 2007 update provides a further breakdown on how the shares of those between the 90th and 95th percentiles ($109,630 and $155,400 in 2007), those between the 95th and 99th percentiles ($155,400 and $398,900 in 2007), and the top 1 percentile with annual income above $398,900 fared historically:

We see that those with incomes in the 90th to 95th percentile range actually lost share in the total national income from 2003 to 2007 following the Bush tax cut and overall had no greater share than they did in about 1970, though they were better off than in the 1940s and 1950s.  So, if income inequality actually were a legitimate issue of social justice, there is no reason to increase tax rates on this group.  If we then examine the group from 95% to 99% of income, we see they increased their share somewhat from 1982 to 1995, but have been rock steady ever since at the same fraction of the national income.  There sure is no reason to increase taxes on this group based on some specious argument that the Bush tax cuts caused them to become proportionately wealthier.  This would argue that tax rates for those earning up to about $400,000 should not be increased based on the specious argument that that would serve social justice by eliminating an increasing wealth inequality!  We are left with only the top 1% of income earners as the sole group of the "rich" whose share of the national income has increased.  They are the sole group making the entire top 10% of earners look as though they have increased their share of the national income.  Their income share has generally increased since 1978, though recessions cause sharp reductions in their share.

So, what is Obama talking about when he diatribes on the social justice need to increase tax rates for those families with incomes greater than $250,000 a year or those single filers with incomes above $200,000 per year?  Apparently, he just wants more of their money so he can exercise the power that comes with distributing it as he pleases for maximal political payback.  We can understand this greed and power lust, but we need not label it as virtue.  The Obama and the Progressive Socialist Elitist game is one of simple power lust.  It is an effort to dangle government goodies before a majority of the population who do not pay their fair share for the goodies they are to receive.  Indeed, let us examine the share of taxes paid compared to the share of national income earned by income groups to evaluate fairness on a more meaningful scale.

Now we can see that the top 1% of income earners had a 22.8% share of total income in 2007, but paid a far larger share of total income taxes at 40.4%.  The 95% to 99% group of top earners had a 14.6% share of total income, but also paid a share of income taxes which was much larger than that at 20.2%.  Our tax code clearly discriminates against them, even though we saw above that their share of total income has not increased since 1995 when Bill Clinton was President and still in his first term of office.  The group of earners between 90% and 95% had equal shares of total income and of total income taxes at 10.6% of each.  All but the top 10% of earners paid less into income taxes than their share of the national income!  In effect, they all received a subsidy paid for by the top 5% of income earners.  This was especially true for the bottom 50% of earners who paid only 2.9% of the total income tax amount in 2007!  Basically, they can vote for just about any wasteful and illegitimate government program because it will be using someone else's money.  They have no stake in the game.  This is by design and exactly how the Progressive Socialist Elitist wants it.  They want this half of the electorate to believe in free lunches, which is what this tax system gives them, except insofar as any of them may realize that hurting the higher income groups actually does hurt the economy.

The unfairness we are actually dealing with in America is the unfairness of stealing the earnings of those who have worked hard and effectively to create wealth, which allows them to be paid well or to use a part of that created wealth as income from their businesses and investments.  These activities do contribute greatly to the growth of the economy and to the decreasing cost of many necessary, or at least desired, goods and services.  With high taxes, we force the higher income earners to move their investments from the highest yielding investments into those with tax protections such as municipal bonds or we force them to hold unto their investments longer so they will pay capital gains taxes more infrequently.  Higher tax rates have always slowed down growth rates by making investment less efficient and by taking more of the time of the high earners due to their having to find ways to minimize loses to taxes.  The net result in tax revenues is that whatever the marginal tax rates are set at, the actual federal government revenues do not rise above about 19% of GDP.  This limit is called Hauser's Law.

Increasing tax rates on the wealthy may make a Progressive Socialist Elitist feel good, but it does not actually increase tax revenues.  This, in a rational society, would keep them from claiming they are increasing rates on the wealthy in order to do more to help the poor and the needy with additional government programs.  Interestingly enough, Obama seems to understand this at times and is more inclined to use the argument that he simply hates the wealthy having so much income and he is eager to do anything he can to take more of it from them.  He covets their income and thinks most voters do also.

Simple fairness would have tax marginal rates the same for everyone with income above about the 20% level.  Most of us are fine with the idea that government should not take food and other necessities out of the mouths of the poorest among us to fund government programs.  Of course those who are rational also want a much, much smaller government exercising only constitutional powers and serving only to protect individual rights.  With a legitimate government being about one-quarter its present size, the tax burden on everyone would be much lighter.  It would be easy to have no deficits and to pay off the national debt, thereby eliminating the interest payments on that debt.  It would be easy to eliminate business taxes, so businesses could much more readily compete internationally and hire many more Americans.  With lower taxes, everyone, most especially the hardest and most efficient earners would be able to create more wealth and grow the economy.  This would make it easier by far for every segment of the population to improve its standard of living, just as has clearly occurred in America from its founding and especially since after the Civil War.

It is important to remember that if you are truly interested in raising the general standard of living in the United States, that growth rates make a huge cumulative difference.  When governments do not interfere with the individual's effort to make his life better, the growth rate of the economy can be increased substantially.  Let us examine the effect on the size of the economy relative to its start size at the end of 20 years for the following growth rates:

2.0% growth yields an economy 1.49 times its initial size.

2.5% growth yields an economy 1.64 times its initial size.

3.0% growth yields an economy 1.81 times its initial size.

3.5% growth yields an economy 1.99 times its initial size.

4.0% growth yields an economy 2.19 times its initial size.

4.5% growth yields an economy 2.41 times its initial size.

5.0% growth yields an economy 2.65 times its initial size.

The only thing keeping the American economy from averaging 5% growth rates is the excessive size and interference of our local, state, and federal governments.  The excessive services and waste is a sad substitute for the robust economy we would otherwise have.  That economy would offer us many more choices tuned to our uniquely individual characters than does the retarded economy of a mixed socialist and capitalist system.  Free capital and entrepreneurial talent and we will prosper in ways that governments cannot compete with the private sector to provide.  What is more, we would then have a moral system allowing every individual to exercise the freedom of his own choices of values and exercising the personal control to manage his own life responsibly and in accordance with his personal values.

Substituting government coercion and threats of brutal force for the free individual choices of the free market and private sector is both immoral and impractical.  Wise men find that moral behavior is favorably linked to practical flourishing in life!  Some rational morality with respect to income tax fairness will yield a robustly growing economy and a better life for almost everyone.  The few left out by the economy will easily be handled by a more robust charitable concern by free men and women.