You Are What You Spend

New York Times via SeekerBlog ^ | February 10, 2008 | By W. MICHAEL COX and RICHARD ALM and Steve Darden

[JerseyHighlander]

Michael Cox and Richard Alm of the Federal Reserve of Dallas

[JerseyHighlander]

And the NYTimes article related to this: February 10, 2008 Op-Ed Contributors You Are What You Spend By W. MICHAEL COX and RICHARD ALM

[RC2]

Do we really pay people to do this type of stuff? Who cares?????

[ovrtaxt]

Consumption vs. income ping...

[Uncle Miltie]

I keep seeing stories about the poor woman on welfare (52” Plasma in the picture) and the guy who had to dig into his 401K to fund his credit cards (beautiful granite countertops in the picture.)

Why is it that every sob story comes with more stuff than I have?

Answer: Because they are stupid spendthrifts. There is no cure for stupid.

[ovrtaxt]

…So, bearing this in mind, if we compare the incomes of the top and bottom fifths, we see a ratio of 15 to 1. If we turn to consumption, the gap declines to around 4 to 1. A similar narrowing takes place throughout all levels of income distribution. The middle 20 percent of families had incomes more than four times the bottom fifth. Yet their edge in consumption fell to about 2 to 1.

This proves that the control freaks' mechanism of progressive taxation works. It's nearly impossible to rise to the level of becoming a serious monetary threat to the entrenched political elites in DC.

[mjp]

A division of labor society depends on economic inequality in the sense that it depends on individuals being free and motivated to produce. The abolition of economic inequality would mean the abolition of all connection between an individual’s efforts and his income. It would be tantamount to the abolition of causality in the receipt of income.

[PeteB570]

I read your post and think about how well my little Ford Focus gets me around town.

As I saw - Never drive anything with a higher monthly payment than your house.