Guest Post by Bill O’Brien

So in their effort to divide us and motivate the takers to overwhelm the makers, all to the goal of a permanent socialist state, the Democrats have adopted this meme that inequality of income is huge and growing.

Leftist organizations such as Obama’s thoroughly corrupted Census Bureau and the NY Times have taken up this clamor and now they are claiming that New York City is the worst of the worse. Inequality there, they say, is so extreme that 5 percent of households earned an average of $864,394, or 88 times as much as the poorest 20 percent.  In order to reach this conclusion, they set the average income of a family in the bottom 20 percent at approximately $10,000 a year, thereby claiming the top 5% earn an astounding 88 times the average of the bottom 20%.

Makes you want to vote for the Revolution, doesn’t it?

The Dems certainly hope so. They also hope you don’t find out it is a crock.  In order to get to that 88 times figure, here’s what they don’t tell you. The family of four earning $864,394 in Manhattan doesn’t have anywhere near that kind of income because they pay about $400,000 in taxes. By contrast, those in the bottom 20% have much more income than $10,000. The NY Times / Census Bureau figures exclude all income that comes from government benefits.

What does a family of four in the bottom 20%, those “in poverty,” really get in income in NYC? What is their actual income (all post-tax, of course, because they pay no income taxes)? Let’s look at a few basic items people in that grouping receive:

• $5000 to $10,000 from the Earned Income Tax Credit;
• $36,000 per year per average family in the value of public housing.
• $40,000 for a family of four for Medicaid.
• $8000 per year for a family of four Food stamps (SNAP).
• $3000 per year for free cell phones a/k/a ObamaPhones.

Now the “published” average income, plus those welfare payments alone, add up to over $100,000 per year for the average family pegged as being in the lowest 20% and we haven’t considered other assistance they receive, such as child care, transportation assistance, WIC payments, TANF assistance, cash benefits (EBT cards), targeted education assistance, or the 69 federal programs for cash, food, and income assistance to the supposed poor.

But just that average of over $100,000 in income for the poorest 20% means the disparity with the top 5% is not 88 times. It is more like a 4 to 5 times difference.

Now perhaps even a 5 times difference is intolerable or perhaps it’s not, but there is one disparity between the top of the income scale and the bottom that the left never points out:

Those at the top are most often working and those at the bottom are most often not.

See here  for a more complete treatment of this issue.  See here  for the propaganda.

Bill O’Brien is a current NH State Representative and the former NH Speaker of the House