You can have other types of taxes which are more likely to “hit” the richer, such as inheritance tax or trade (sales) tax.
Income tax is a relatively modern thing, for example in the US it was introduced during the Civil War.
I think most people are ignoring this important point. If I understand you correctly, you are not asking if these places do things that they think or hope will reduce income inequality, but have they done things that can be shown to have actually don so? I would be very curious to see the answer as I don’t know.
As a corollary, it might be useful to look at other countries. Income inequality is a world-wide issue, not confined to the US. Obviously, many countries have less income inequality than the US, but we know of policies that are proven to make that difference? I suspect some form of universal healthcare would be high on the list.
There are two… directions, or maybe scales, in which a policy can affect income inequality. One is preventive: slow the growth. One is corrective: actually reduce differences which already exist.
I think access to basic services such as access to education or healthcare can have an impact that’s large enough to be in the second group when you start from a very low level. Investment there has a much greater ROI for countries which start from “people can’t even recognize their own name in writing” than in those where most people already have access to school at the K-12 level; that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t keep pushing to improve things, or that what was a small improvement for society in general wasn’t a huge step for a specific family.
Just because one party is in control doesn’t mean that all aspects of that community are “progressive” or that historical causes are easy to overturn.
The west cost in general has a serious NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) problem as demonstrated by both San Francisco and Seattle.
Seattle, and more correctly King County passed laws intended to control urban sprawl as a an example. But the political will to increase densities in existing neighborhoods was politically untenable as people who live in SFH neighborhoods generally are unwilling to have increased housing density in their neighborhoods.
As there was a century of racial restrictions, red-lining and straight up bigoted laws this produced islands of poverty and racial segregation which continues to produce unequal outcomes based on both socioeconomic and racial boundaries.
The neighborhoods with marginalized individuals were zoned to higher densities and the lower income but higher density areas were already zoned in a way that would support the needed denser developments that are required to support economic growth.
This has lead to a situation where individuals on fixed income or lower incomes living in areas where there housing was torn down and replaced and they were displaced while the SFH neighborhoods were mainly spared due to zoning restrictions.
This is just one example of how despite being “progressive” a community can fail to make meaningful movement toward equality and the unintended effects of regressive punitive laws like “sugary drink taxes” or other regressive taxes are also examples.
Remember that we all have beliefs that are a complex mesh of many view points and almost no single individual is “progressive” or “conservatives” on all topics and we almost universally ignore the unintended effects of causes we support.
Progress is being made but it is slowed or sometimes stopped and reversed due to the complexities and challenges. If the blue collar segments of society and minority groups reach a point where the single issue voting that effects all voters is judged as less important than their common goals progress would be much more rapid.
The kicker about “privilege” is that it rarely a visible advantage but rather is typically a difficult to see situation where fellow Americans are being thrown under the bus and due to our culture we all tend to believe that we are “self made” and this also poses a challenge.
Seattle is very “blue” on voting but you you watch the paper and see how people react to woman’s facilities being built near SFH neighborhoods or how parents will fight efforts to redistribute education resources or busing plans this is obvious.
This doesn’t mean that no progress is being made but it is slow. In some cases like San Francisco or Seattle this progress is probably too slow to be effective due to the rapid rate of displacement.
In regions like Minneapolis where there tends to be less of this “self made” myth they have been more successful in encouraging more diversity in zoning rules etc… and to be honest the methods of teaching inclusiveness and diversity are far better in the Eden Prairie school system than any place the Seattle area.
The kicker is that it is quite likely that the greed of a single mayor (Greg Nickels) who had a conflict in interest related to development and his administration may have more to do with this unfortunate end result more than even the Electorate.
But if I would put my money on any bet it is probably due to people who despite the best of intentions, are unwilling to make minor sacrifices for the betterment of the community.
This attitude, that owning a parcel of land gives a right to shape the world beyond its boundaries, is not just their fault but historical precedence here. Racial deed restrictions and other restrictive covenants were born on a huge scale on the West coast. I think that the culture CC&Rs and it’s tendency to both justify it’s existence and to almost exclusively target “home values” has lead to both codes and attitudes that divest individuals from a broader community duty that these individuals would probably feel in other situations.
While I will be dismissed as a “SJW” for using the term “fragile”, it is very hard to have these conversations because people do feel “fragile”.
This “Fragility” shuts down these conversations, and just as with race discussions the over-reaction and stress that blocks most honest discussion and communication also blocks the ability to share information with individuals, clear up misunderstandings and probably help homeowners probably move in a direction that better fits what their own world values are in the first place.
The same irrational emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence that arise during most attempted racial dialog happen here. Ironically the social forces that have lead to many of us adults being able to having real discussions on the topic are because we over-react as that isn’t our intent.
I don’t think that we will make rapid progress on the problem until we can figure out how to change that. Just as racism is not a practice not restricted ‘bad people’, neither are the actions that block movements to other types of equality. Until we can learn to listen and discuss these topics without those overreactions this will not change.
Just as with race, being ‘woke’ has nothing to being smarter or being educated and in fact it is the exact opposite. Being ‘woke’ is realizing you are not omnipotent and that you cannot possibly understand the experiences of others and realizing that fact doesn’t make you a bad person. Until we figure out how to teach our fellow Americans how to have rational dialog and to not feel attacked this will never change.
Most conservatives are pretty close to most progressives on these desires, it is our irrational sensitivity to simple dialog and discussions that block forward movement.
But yes, at least on the West coast most efforts towards income inequality have been rather ineffective because we are unable to have real dialog on the problem.
Washington State happens to have the most regressive tax system in the country. The states with the most progressive systems (eg Vermont and California)… aren’t progressive, insofar as the middle class pays a higher share of its income in taxes than the top 1% and top 20%. *
A lot of the so-called low tax states put a hefty burden on the poor and middle class.
Here’s a good report:
We-e-e-elllllll here are the figures. In CA some of the middle class pay less than the top 5%.
California Vermont Texas
Lowest 20% 10.5% 8.9% 12.5%
Second 20% 9.0% 9.5% 10.4%
Middle 20% 8.2% 10.5% 8.7%
Fourth 20% 7.7% 9.4% 7.4%
Next 15% 7.4% 8.7% 6.1%
Next 4% 8.7% 8.3% 4.7%
Next 1% 8.7% 7.7% 2.9%
Not in so many words, but I don’t think we should expect there to be such evidence yet. Most jurisdictions have only put these programs into place recently. And what we know from the literature is that it takes time to figure out and enforce adequate quality, to say nothing of the time it takes for the effects to be seen.
That said, one of the best studied programs is in Oklahoma (red state ftw), and the results have been pretty positive as to schooling outcomes. We don’t know whether that will translate to reduced income inequality, but it is a pretty reasonable hypothesis.
In the world of education policy, there are almost no uncontroversial propositions. But the importance of quality pre-K is as close as you can come to consensus among experts. The only real debate is whether it is possible to ensure minimum levels of quality and whether the cost-benefit ratio is worthwhile.
Ya, the lack of an income tax here in Washington state is a huge problem. It will take a constitutional amendment to change and the only way for localities to raise money is through regressive taxes.
10.1% sales tax here in Seattle is due to this.
The voters don’t trust the state to drop other taxes and have rejected income tax initiatives.
No state and local taxes are regressive regardless of which party dominates. Strongly Democratic states can be a less regressive because of a progressive income tax. There’s a big “but” though. They also tend to have higher sales and property taxes. Those are effectively regressive taxes because of the proportion of income spent by the poor that is subject to what nominally is a proportional tax. The net makes the total tax burden regressive.
Cite and a quote with my bolding added:
With regard to tax policy dep blue states and cities increase inequality.
In Seattle, someone who makes $25,000 pays $4,200 or 17% in state and local taxes.
Someone who makes $250,000 would pay $11,000 or 4.4%.
But before making assumptions on what party is to blame, Seattle typically votes for an income tax. The problem will only get worse without one due to state constitutional limits.
Washington’s Constitution wasn’t written by progressives last century and this demonstrates part of the reason the recent history blame game doesn’t fit reality much anyway. California and Washington is limited by the voter initiative process too.
Thank you Tim Fucking Eyman.
I am moderately familiar with programs like Head Start, if that is the sort of program you are talking about, and the effects on students tend to disappear - that is, they may start out better prepared for first grade, but by the sixth grade they are not distinguishable from non-Head Start students. It is hard to see that a program whose effects die away in five years is going to affect income inequalities experienced in adult life.
Your cite says -
See also post #9 by ITR Champion.
Regards,
Shodan
In CA, we have super high state income tax, and a > 10% sales tax! Just over here crying.
- I also take the question to at least include that aspect, are the policies actually doing that? But even before you get to that, a lot of the discussion about income inequality skips over what it’s even supposed to mean. (and it’s not just ‘the gini coefficient’
)
And this issue also interacts with the local policy issue. For example earlier it was noted than NY has a relatively low cost and extensive public transport system (for all its problems). I gave a larger example, rent stabilization. The latter is a matter of very large amounts of money in a NY context, but is not counted.
And I think there are two separate though perhaps overlapping goals. One is policies which even out people’s overall social welfare to some acceptable extent. That implies a measure of income inequality that is very inclusive of tax and social welfare payments. You would not want to exclude the monetary effect of free benefits to means test qualified applicants. You would want to include local benefits like rent stabilization where it caused below market rents. You’d certainly include SNAP (aka food stamps). But none of those things are included in current calcs which say the US gini coefficient post tax and transfer payments is higher than (basically) all other rich countries. There seems to be a real measurement issue there because the US is less centralized, and other reasons, see 2.
The alternative overlapping idea though would be collective policies that eventually make the pre tax, pre transfer payment gini come out lower. This is a naturally more unifying idea I think, have a lower gini without having to count, and sustain, high ‘welfare’ payments. The idea is more that the poor kid who gets free pre-K will make a higher income relative to better off kids in the future. More wholesome sounding, but whether it’s so realistic, in US conditions, I’m not as sure.
- On healthcare that could arguably be the other way around, depending how you fund it and how you count. In the current calculation of gini coefficient of the US by OECD, even post tax/post transfer, medicare, medicaid, CHIP and other health subsidies are not counted as transfer payments. But in the US only lower income people* are eligible. In fully public systems everyone is. It’s more of transfer in the US.
On the idea of creating a society with a lower ‘natural’ (pre tax and transfer) gini you might be right about health. On the idea of accurately counting the post tax and transfer gini, health programs are part of is arguably a significant overstatement of the US gini compared to other rich countries, post tax/post transfer.
*which isn’t true politically wrt to old people who ‘paid in’ to medicare. But just in terms of calculating a gini coefficient at a give time it is. Older people still tend to have lower incomes and are eligible for public health care in the US. Working age people with good incomes are not eligible for public health care. In most other countries everyone is.
Not to quibble with the rest of your post, which was as good as your posts usually are. And you are of course correct that Americans over 65 are almost universally covered by Medicare. But a further complication in this all might be conflating income inequality with wealth inequality. Older people might have lower incomes, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have less wealth.
A comment on your post, not an attempt to dispute it.
Regards,
Shodan
Yes, California is the common example on why Washington voters have refused to pass an income tax that doesn’t directly address that issue.
The only proposals have only offered a *“good faith” * claim that it would happen some day.
It could be argued that Proposition 13 caused your situation. While I am a fan of democracy the low-bar voter initiative issues are concrete evidence that the founding fathers were correct with their concerns about direct democracy.
OP and other interested parties can find US Census gini index values here: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml
Probably easier than their API for most users. You can get data down to the county/city, but only 2006-2017.
Let’s throw Washington state into my table. We have the data: why not?
California Vermont Texas and now Washington
Lowest 20% 10.5% 8.9% 12.5% 8.9%
Second 20% 9.0% 9.5% 10.4% 8.4%
Middle 20% 8.2% 10.5% 8.7% 8.4%
Fourth 20% 7.7% 9.4% 7.4% 8.1%
Next 15% 7.4% 8.7% 6.1% 7.0%
Next 4% 8.7% 8.3% 4.7% 6.8%
Next 1% 8.7% 7.7% 2.9% 5.1%
The lowest 40% of Californians can cry in their beer relative to Washington: they pay higher taxes in CA. The middle 20% pay slightly lower taxes in CA, but it’s pretty close. The next 20% pays… lower taxes in CA (7.7% vs. 8.1%).
The top 20% pays higher taxes in CA, by a hefty margin for the top 5%.
Still, it isn’t as bad as you would think, given CA’s 7.75-9.75% sales tax. To be fair, the numbers have probably shifted since the 2015 IBER report.
Quite. There’s a simple fix though. California’s initiative system was modeled on Switzerland. But the Swiss system is a little different.
You can pass laws via initiative in Switzerland. You can’t pass constitutional amendments. And a law passed can be replaced by another law passed in the legislature. In practice this means that initiative writers in Switzerland negotiated with parliament before submitting a plan to the voters. The plans tend to be better written. In contrast, California initiatives routinely go to court because of notoriously poor drafting.