While the Occupy Wall Streeters main beefs is that of crony capitalism – the unholy alliance of Big Government and Big Biz. The second major complaint is of Income Inequality – the whine from the Urban Camping Crew is that the wealth owned by the 1% is:
- just plain "unfair" and unjustly gotten because they all stole it
- they continue this injustice by using their "power" to stay in that top 1%.
Problem is for these folks, there IS data (from the IRS) that says that mobility between the quintiles (the 5 slices of 20% that economists and researchers slice the income levels). And in the case of "the 1%" during this recession, it has been downward:
In the context of current popular sentiments about the rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, it is interesting to look at how long millionaires actually stay in that category…A look at the data suggests that it isn’t — that, in fact, most millionaires are not millionaires for long.
The opposite is not true – the folks in the lowest quintiles do move up:
Interestingly, things look rosier at the bottom of the income distribution. That same Tax Foundation study also shows that about 60 percent of households that were in the lowest income quintile in 1999 were in a higher quintile in 2007, and about a third of those in the lowest quintile moved to the middle quintile or higher. In other words, while it is difficult for one to rise from rags to riches, and while it may be harder now than it was in the past, there is still real upward economic mobility in the United States.
The US is still the land of opportunity. The key is not, as the OWSers say, is for Government to operate from an equal outcome mentality and become larger by becoming more intrusive; we are seeing the effects of the loss of freedom from an ideological basis right now. The key to conquering Income Inequality is by diminishing the role of government from being one of Chooser to being one of Umpire and by enhancing economic freedom.
(H/T: The Corner)
