Free Republic

Seattle’s City Council made national headlines earlier this year when it enacted a city income tax aimed at “high earners.” Immediately, politicians crowed that they had planted a flag of “resistance” to the forces of “Trumpism.” In a court hearing last week, the city defended its war on wealth against several legal and constitutional challenges. The briefing from both sides exposes an inconvenient reality for the levy’s defenders: its real, ultimate victims aren’t necessarily the plutocrats they claim to be targeting. In fact, just the opposite. Some background: there are few precedents from other parts of the country for a...

During the online “Overtime” segment of Friday’s edition of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher stated that Obamacare did redistribute income and President Obama should have said so. Maher said, “Obamacare is not putting us into the red. No. It’s actually making a little money. Because, you know, it was a redistribution of income. When they accused him that, he should have said, ‘Yeah. F*ck yeah. Exactly. That’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re taking money from people who will never miss it, and giving it to poor people who desperately need it. Sue me.'”

For eight years, President Obama endlessly talked about "middle class" economics. All the while, middle-class family incomes were stagnant. Now they are on the rise. Could Trumponomics be the reason? In April, real median household income reached $59,361, according to the latest report from Sentier Research. That's up 2% since January, and is as high as it's been since February 2002. Expressed as an index, median household income was 100.9 in April, which is the first time this index has topped 100 since December 2008. By comparison, this index was also lower when Obama left office than when he came...

Finland has started a radical experiment: It's giving 2,000 citizens a guaranteed income, with funds that keep flowing whether participants work or not. The program, which kicks off this month, is one of the first efforts to test a "universal basic income." Participants will receive €560 ($587) a month -- money that is guaranteed regardless of income, wealth or employment status. The idea is that a universal income offers workers greater security, especially as technological advances reduce the need for human labor. It will also allow unemployed people to pick up odd jobs without losing their benefits. The initial program...

Recent Michigan legislatures have taken more from regular people with new tax hikes while giving more to politically well-connected interests through municipal bailouts and corporate giveaways. It’s the people’s turn for something positive, and this is the right time and environment for a substantial state income tax cut. Legislators are sympathetic, and want you to know it: In every recent legislative session, bills have been introduced to lower the income tax rate. But they never move. The excuse is always the same: “Budget pressures are growing; we might have to cut spending if citizens get to keep more.” The excuse...

The Census Bureau reported that median income jumped 5.2% last year. As I pointed out last week, that's a solid increase, but still leaves us short of the record in 1999. Still, something about the gains struck me as wrong. Even with cities, states and some businesses bumping up their minimum wage, 5.2% seemed like a lot. So I went digging. And the more I dug, the more disappointed and frustrated I became. As usual, the source of my angst was the federal government. Long-time readers know my ongoing annoyance with the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) when it comes...

President Obama´s economic advisers boasted Friday that he has presided over a "historic" lowering of income inequality, and presented a paper saying that Obamacare and higher taxes on the rich have reduced inequality. "Over the last eight years, President Obama has overseen the largest increase in federal investment to reduce inequality since the Great Society," the White House Council of Economic Advisers concluded in the paper. Jason Furman, the head of the council, also published an op-ed in the Washington Post making the same case. Taking into account all of Obama´s tax hikes for high earners, tax cuts for poor...

While touting the new Census report on income and poverty in America, Barack Obama took credit for $2 a gallon gasoline, and immodestly shouted to his crowd of supporters: “Thank you, Obama.” I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but given that for eight years your administration has done everything to decapitate the oil and gas industry that gave us low gas prices, sorry, no thanks are in order Mr. President. Even more amazing was Mr. Obama’s victory lap on the income numbers. Yes, incomes for middle class families rose by an impressive 5 percent in 2015. And poverty fell. Thank...

Americans got a raise in 2015 -- their first significant pay hike in eight years -- as the U.S. median household income rose 5.2% to $56,516, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. But income of the typical U.S. home still remained below that of 2007, the year before the most recent recession, when median household income was $57,423. That was the last year that U.S. homes saw a significant annual increase, the bureau said. In 2014, the median income was $53,718, the bureau said in its report Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015, released Tuesday....

Mark Twain famously said that there were three kinds of lies — "lies, damned lies, and statistics." Since this is an election year, we can expect to hear plenty of all three kinds. Even if the statistics themselves are absolutely accurate, the words that describe what they are measuring can be grossly misleading. Household income statistics are an obvious example. When we hear about how much more income the top 20 percent of households make, compared to the bottom 20 percent of households, one key fact is usually left out. There are millions more people in the top 20 percent...

What economists call an ability to make "compensating differences" is a valuable tool in everyone's arsenal. If people are prohibited from doing so, they are always worse off. You say, "Williams, I never heard of compensating differences. What are they?" Jimmy Soul's 1963 hit song, "If You Wanna Be Happy," explained the concept of compensating differences. His lyrics went: "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. So from my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you." His point was that an ugly woman would...

Data showing that the average man with a full time job makes less today than he did in 1973 was discounted as “an unfair and misleading statistic” by the Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Jason Furman this week. “First of all, the premise that a full time job is desirable is debatable,” Furman maintained. “In 1973 many were forced to work because of the inadequacy of the social safety net. Today, many in a similar situation have been liberated from this tiresome fate by a more generous package of government benefits that enables them to work part...

What’s the most important economic statistic to gauge a society’s prosperity? I often use per-capita economic output when comparing nations. But for ordinary people, what probably matters most is household income. And if you look at the median household income numbers for the United States, Obamanomics is a failure. According to the Census Bureau’s latest numbers, the average family today has less income (after adjusting for inflation) than when Obama took office. In an amazing feat of chutzpah, however, the President is actually arguing that he’s done a good job with the economy. His main talking point is that the...

The phrase Income Inequality has become a standard battle cry for politicians these days, with the implicit assumption that inequality is a bad thing, but is the basic concept of inequality truly a bad thing? ... We hear a lot of lip service from various politicians about the ills of income inequality, so letÂ’s look at actual recent track records. The U.S. Census Bureau uses four measures of income inequality, Gini, Theil, Mean Logarithmic Deviation of Income (MLD) and Atkinson Measure. â—¾Since the financial crisis, income inequality (as measured by the US Census Bureau using 3 different types of metrics)...

More than four-fifths of America’s metropolitan areas have seen household incomes decline this century, according to new research that exposes the politically charged reality of middle-class decline at the heart of this year’s presidential election. The research on urban centres that are home to three-quarters of the US population shows that median household incomes, adjusted for the cost of living in the area, grew in just 39 out of 229 metro areas between 1999 and 2014.

Imagine if everyone was guaranteed healthcare and an income floor. People would still pursue their calling in life. In fact, they could do so more freely with more creativity and daring without the fear of not making ends meet. It would unleash the enormous creative potential that lays dormant within the hearts and minds of so many office workers, toiling away as their best ideas and dreams wither away.

New York Magazine's Annie Lowrey excitedly writes "that there's a welfare-policy idea that is very in vogue. That idea is just giving everybody enough money to live on, rich or poor, old or young, working or not working. It is called a universal basic income." She adds that the idea has captured the imagination of Silicon Valley technologists, European socialists, U.S. policymakers on the left and right, and seemingly everyone in between. And while Lowrey is hedging herself as to whether a universal basic income or guaranteed income will succeed, it doesn't take much casual analysis to see that what...

President Barack Obama’s income fell to just over $436,000 in 2015, the lowest of his presidency, and he and first lady Michelle Obama paid nearly $81,500 in taxes, according to tax returns the White House released on Friday. The president’s more modest adjusted gross income reflected book sales that have continued to fall off in the years since he last published in 2006. The first family paid an effective tax rate of 18.7 percent. The Obamas also reported donating $64,000 to charity, or about 15 percent of their income. Their largest charitable donation, $9,000, went to the Fisher House Foundation,...

Bernie Sanders reportedly earned just over $200,000 in 2014. That same year, Hillary Clinton, Sanders's top Democratic rival, gave about 45 paid speeches, many of which paid her more in a single hour than Sanders made the entire year.

Last night, President Obama held a fundraiser in the San Francisco Bay area, where he told presumably wealthy donors to be concerned about inequality and the wave of populism that's sweeping the nation. Oh, and did I forget to mention that one ticket to this event cost $33,400 (via the Hill): Obama has previously expressed surprise by the enthusiasm generated by Trump and Sanders. But he urged donors attending the $33,400-per-ticket fundraiser to understand that populist candidates in both parties are tapping into something real. "Despite all the progress we've made ... what is true is that people are anxious,”...