WI Budget Project Examines the Growing Divide in Wealth and Income, and the Arguments Made for Widening that Gap

by Kids Forward | October 9, 2010

Home 9 Tax and Budget 9 WI Budget Project Examines the Growing Divide in Wealth and Income, and the Arguments Made for Widening that Gap ( Page 20 )

In the wake of new Census Bureau data released in late September, showing the widest gap ever measured between the rich and the poor, the Wisconsin Budget Project has posted a series of three blogs examining some of the policy issues related to the distribution of wealth in the U.S. and Wisconsin.

On Wednesday the Budget Project blogged about new data indicating that the rich don’t flee high tax states, they appear to be attracted to the amenities those states have to offer.  (Read more.)

A Thursday blog post critiques a proposal that Wisconsin should shift a larger share of taxes onto poorer state residents by relying more heavily on sales taxes, and it links to an op-ed column I wrote for the Oct. 3rd Milwaukee Journal Sentinel regarding conservatives’ arguments for more regressive taxes.

Friday’s Budget Project blog post examines the wealth gap, including the fact that the top fifth of Americans have 84 percent of the wealth.  It summarizes a soon-to-be-published study which found that most Americans “dramatically underestimated the current level of wealth inequality,” and they indicate a preference for “wealth distributions that were far more equitable than even their erroneously low estimates of the actual distribution.”
 
Jon Peacock, project director
Wisconsin Budget Project

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