Slate has an amazing series on economic inequality in America – The United States of Inequality.  Beyond the interesting and clear examination of economic stratification in the United States over time, the reporting has a few visuals that are absolutely stunning demonstrations of the importance of economic policy on income equality/inequality.  Some may call it social engineering or wealth redistribution.  It most certainly is the latter, and could be the former – if one assumes that poor people in fact like seeing rich people’s incomes grow faster than their own, and would not want to change that circumstance.  And please, please don’t throw trickle down arguments at me – they have been empirically refuted repeatedly since the 70s.  How long does a failed theory get in the face of empirics, anyway?
An example of what I am talking about is this graphic (found here):

I first saw a version of this in a talk by Dick Peet – though I believe he was operating with the top 1% (see below).  My household actually fits into the decile in this figure, according to how they have defined it.  We arrived relatively recently.  As happy as I am to be here, I am not sure that I need any more tax cuts.  Even with three kids, massive daycare bills, etc.  At some point, we just have to pay for stuff like roads, schools and fire departments, and giving me a tax cut is not going to really stimulate the economy – I’m going to save the money for my kid’s college funds.
This figure is stunning (found here)

The top 1% of earners in America earned roughly 8% of all income in the US around when I was born.  Today, they earn 18%.  Where, exactly, is the justification for further tax cuts for this section of the population – their share of total income grew dramatically under Clinton, which is where the tax rate will return to if the Bush cuts expire . . . so how exactly can anyone argue that a return to slightly higher taxes (still very low by historical standards) for the top 1% will hurt even the top 1%, let alone the whole economy?
Why am I writing about this on a blog about development and the environment?  One of the big indicators of development is the GINI coefficient, which measures the distribution of incomes in an economy.  We tend to worry about countries with high or rising GINI coefficients, as it suggests that economic opportunity and development are not reaching a wide portion of the population.  This is even more acute in my current job, where we are tasked with worrying about the situations of the most poor and vulnerable.  Yet here we are in the US, with a clearly rising GINI coefficient. Sustainablemiddleclass.com has an interesting graphic on this:

We are headed in the wrong direction here, even as we chide countries on the same path.  Robs us of our standing to make this argument elsewhere, no?