One of the topics I discuss on this blog is income inequality (here, here, and here).  An interesting article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Upper Middle Class Sees Big Gains, Research Finds,” is highly pertinent to the inequality issue.
As can be seen in the above chart, the percentage of people in the middle class or above has greatly expanded between 1979 and 2014.  Furthermore, the basic research on this issue,by Stephen Rose at the Urban Institute, shows very clearly (in the chart below) what is happening: the higher is a family income, the faster it is increasing.
The best policy response to this phenomenon should be clear.  Rather than trying to decrease inequality with higher taxes on the wealthy, we should be trying to boost the less wealthy into higher income classes. The way to accomplish this is to:

• Grow the economy faster with broad-based tax reform (lower tax rates paid for by shrinking deductions), immigration (guest worker) reform, (fair) trade expansion, and regulation reform (to help more small businesses get started). This will create more jobs and better paying jobs.
• Improve education with early childhood education (to get minorities off to a better start in school), boosting high school graduation rates above the current 80% average (with better career and vocational education) and making college more affordable by putting more resources into community colleges and scholarships for low-income students.
• Combat social inequality. The fraction of children with a single parent is the best predictor of upward economic mobility. The lower-income class marriage rate has dropped from 84% in 1960 to 48% in 2010. Policy should therefore focus on removing the marriage penalty in all government programs.

The basic forces of globalization and growing technology use are driving this societal change. The best way to respond is to enable more people to benefit from these basic trends.

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