Growth and Inequality: 2010 (The Failure of Obama Redistrubtion Policies on Stark Display)

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 09/14/11

[MissesBush]

An abiding—make that the primary—goal of the Obama Administration has been to reduce income inequality. When the Affordable Care Act finally passed, White House economists and liberal pundits did a victory dance in their favorite publications boasting about how the bill would spread the wealth. So how's that inequality project working out?

One answer came yesterday with the Census Bureau's annual snapshot on living standards. The official poverty rate—defined as a family of four earning less than $22,314—rose to 15.1%. That's up from 14.3% in 2009 and 12.5% in 2007. The official rate significantly overstates poverty by missing government income transfers, but this increase is faster than during any three-year period since the early 1980s.

Meanwhile, the share of Americans without health insurance rose to 49.9 million, or 16.3%, from 48.99 million, or 16.1% in 2009. The share of Americans on private insurance continued to decline while those on Medicare and Medicaid rose. ObamaCare doesn't fully kick in until 2014, but we already know that it isn't reducing the cost of health insurance.

President Obama inherited a recession, and some increase in poverty was inevitable on his watch. But the magnitude of the increase underscores how feeble the current economic recovery has been, and how essential rapid economic growth is to lifting incomes for lower-income Americans in particular.

The lesson we draw is that politicians who support policies that make economic growth their top priority raise everybody's incomes even if some incomes rise more rapidly than others. Politicians who put income redistribution above overall economic growth do worse by everybody, especially the poor

[MissesBush]

Bush's fault /sarc

[freeangel]

Hussein is promoting class warfare on purpose. If he can start enough civil unrest, he will simply declare himself king forever after martial law is instituted.