Ari Fleischer: How to Fight Income Inequality: Get Married

[liberal N proud]

These opinions are solely Ari Fleischer's and not those of the above DU member.

In an attack on The President, the Mayor of New York and a Massachusetts Senator and on women.

"Marriage inequality" should be at the center of any discussion of why some Americans prosper and others don't. According to Census Bureau information analyzed by the Beverly LaHaye Institute, among families headed by two married parents in 2012, just 7.5% lived in poverty. By contrast, when families are headed by a single mother the poverty level jumps to 33.9%.

And the number of children raised in female-headed families is growing throughout America. A 2012 study by the Heritage Foundation found that 28.6% of children born to a white mother were out of wedlock. For Hispanics, the figure was 52.5% and for African-Americans 72.3%. In 1964, when the war on poverty began, almost everyone was born in a family with two married parents: only 7% were not.

Rather than focusing on initiatives that might address this issue, President Obama, as well as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and New York City's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, believe that the income gap can be closed by increasing taxes on the better-off and transferring the money to the poor.

Good luck with that. The tax code is already extremely progressive, as a December study by the Congressional Budget Office makes clear, yet poverty remains a significant problem. According to CBO, the top 40% of wage earners, those who make more than $51,100 a year, paid 86.4% of all federal taxes in 2010, the most recent data available. The bottom 40% of earners paid just 4.2% of all taxes. The top 40% paid virtually all of the income tax collected, while the bottom 40% paid a negative 9.1% of all income taxes. Paying "negative" taxes is possible because of the earned-income tax credit and other public-assistance measures that give the bottom 40% refunds for taxes they didn't pay.

Given how deep the problem of poverty is, taking even more money from one citizen and handing it to another will only diminish one while doing very little to help the other. A better and more compassionate policy to fight income inequality would be helping the poor realize that the most important decision they can make is to stay in school, get married and have children—in that order.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304325004579296752404877612?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304325004579296752404877612.html


I would bet that the only degree women should be working for in school is their MRS degree.

[exboyfil]

1. Through S.S. into the mix

and our income tax code is very regressive.

My 12th grade daughter is well on her way to being a Mechanical Engineer

My other daughter (a 10th grader) is taking her first college course on her way to eventually being a surgeon.

That is a better approach than marrying them off (according to Phil Robertson my oldest is already an old maid and my youngest is prime marriage material - I don't see her plucking any man's ducks).

The problem is those making over $110K a year - they are not paying enough taxes (especially those with passive income like Mitt Romney).

[liberal N proud]

3. Exactly

We raised our girls to make their own way in life so they didn't have to rely on getting married.

[HughBeaumont]

2. . . . . the Beverly LaHaye Institute.

Aaaaaaaaaaand I stopped taking Ari seriously. Not that I did to begin with, but this just makes it purely comedic.

[infoviro]

4. Bwahahaha! No shit!

Surprised he didn't say that being poor doesn't matter because earth is going to be struck by a meteor.

[hfojvt]

5. here's a clue for him

this nonsense about how "the tax code is already extremely progressive".

It has become far less so because of Bush and now Obama.

ATRA made about 85% of the Bush tax cuts permanent. That's $3.7 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade.

Of that amount,
$3 trillion goes to the top 40%
$370 billion goes to the bottom 40%.

Clearly the tax code would be more progressive without either the Bush tax cuts, or the Obama permanent extension of most of the Bush tax cuts.

And, of course, the making work pay tax credit was allowed to die after just two years. First, Republicans reduced it from $500 per adult to just $400 per adult.

Even the making work pay credit gave more benefits to the top 40% than it did to the bottom 40%, BUT it gave 29% of its benefits to the bottom 40% and only 1.4% of its benefits to the top 5% and only 7.8% to the top 10%.

So naturally, Congress and Obama had to replace it with the accursed payroll tax cut which gave 27% to the top 10% and only 12.1% to the bottom 40%.

So, gee Ari, those Republican policies that you are paid good money to defend, DO happen to INCREASE inequality by giving far more in benefits to the top 5% than they do to the bottom 40%. And it would decrease inequality to get rid of those policies.

Too bad our Democratic President decided to make 85% of them permanent.

But it's cool, because he will give some more speeches denouncing inequality. Surely THAT will make up for policies which made unequal tax cuts permanent.

Somehow.