richardhutnik said:
What do you think happens when you have the following? * High Gini Coefficient. * Reduce government social services, like no universal health care. * A society where there is a large degree of consumer debt held, and is driven by consumerism and pursuing getting rich, and thinking the poor are merely lazy?
Do you think such a society isn't going to have problems? Now look at New Zealand: It has government run health care:
Again, what kind of society do you think there will be if the idea of emergency room is health insurance ends up being the norm?
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You know, nice way to completely blow over my point. Which is "New Zealand is less progressive and spends less, yet still does a lot more with it."
Taxing the rich more and putting in capital gains taxes aren't going to help, they're going to hurt.
As for the countries with higher gini coefficents.
They're all pretty much lesser developed nations, or nations with high government involvement and high government corruption... and usually have pretty high fee's to do buisness and on capital gains if i remember correctly.
Like Brazil. Which also has unniversal healthcare.
Besides which, look at Individual State Gini-coefficents. It seems to have nothing to do with how liberal or conservative you are on your social saftey nets.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_Gini_coefficient
It just seems to be based on "Are rich people likely to live here."
Which makes sense, when you consider "Low end" jobs are just that. Low end. Easy to do, and a workforce is in plentiful supply. They're wages aren't going to change much no matter how many people are creating wealth on a high end level.
This can be somewhat shown in that the Gini coefficent briefly shrank.... during the economic crisis. As much as "mainstreet" was hit. The rich were hit harder. It was just a hit they could absorb better.
If we kicked out everyone who made over a million dollars, our gini coefficent would be smaller, as would the wealth gap, but would our country be better off?
Aside from which, unlike most countries, the US calculates before government benefits, so that shouldn't effect the calculations at all which tends to inflate our score a little.
As does immigration actually. We accept a lot more poor people via immigration then rich... and even more poor people come here illegally, and illegal immigrants are counted in census studies. It drags down our "upward mobility" numbers somewhat too, since illegal aliens pretty much can never leave the lowest quintile.
