Hey Liberals… want to close the income gap? Fine. End social security and medicare:
Perhaps even more surprising, federal transfer payments have done much more to increase income inequality than federal taxes. That’s because, in Ryan’s words, “the distribution of government transfers has moved away from households in the lower part of the income scale. For instance, in 1979, households in the lowest income quintile received 54 percent of all transfer payments. In 2007, those households received just 36 percent of transfers.”
In effect, Social Security and Medicare have been transferring money from low-earning young people (who don’t pay income taxes but are hit by the payroll tax) to increasingly affluent old people.
The Democrats, perhaps following the polls and focus groups, have been protecting these entitlement programs, which have done more to increase income inequality than the Reagan and Bush tax cuts put together.Ryan makes three more points that may strike many as counterintuitive.
via Entitlements, Not Tax Cuts, Widen the Wealth Gap – Michael Barone – National Review Online.