White House claims 'historic' lowering of income inequality

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

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 families, and the effects of Obamacare, the share of income received by the top 1 percent will decrease by 1.2 percentage points in 2017, according to the paper. The share of income accruing to the bottom 99 percent will increase by a corresponding 1.2 percentage points, they said.

 

Those policies, the advisers write, only partially offset a significant ramp-up in inequality that took place over the years 1979-2007, a timeline that compares business cycle peak to business cycle peak.

[Valin]

@Geee

 

OTOH....

 

Income Inequality Between White And Black Americans Is Worse Today Than In 1979

 

Back in 1979, white Americans earned an average hourly real wage of $19.62 compared to $16.07 for blacks, making for an 18.1 percent wage gap. While the gap narrowed in the late 1990s, it began to expand again in 2000. According to new research by the Economic Policy Institute, in 2015, the racial wage gap stood at 26.7 percent, with whites taking home an hourly real wage of $25.22 on average, compared to $18.49 for blacks. The gap is especially wide for young black women and black male college graduates, both of whom trail their white counterparts’ earnings by a significant distance.

 

EPI’s report cited discrimination and growing earnings inequality in general as the primary reasons for America’s huge racial gap in pay. It recommended implementing a range of measures to close the gap, including the enforcement of antidiscrimination laws in the workplace, holding a summit to address the issue of black college graduate’s salaries and raising the federal minimum wage in order to address the broader problem of stagnant pay levels.

 

(Snip)