Monday, June 29, 2009
President Barack Obama promised during the 2008 campaign to spread the wealth, and so far he’s doing just that, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation. In its latest of a series of special reports on Obama’s fiscal policies, the foundation claims that by 2012 the federal government will have redistributed an extra $71 billion from the country’s top 1% of American families. The new study (“How Much Does President Obama’s Budget Redistribute Income?”) took into account not only changes in the tax code but also shifts in spending that affect high-income earners.
Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, said that the average family in the top percentile will lose an additional $64,000 from Obama’s policies. This comes on top of the $368,000 they are already likely to lose as a result of federal decisions made before Obama took office.
According to economists Thomas Pikerty and Emmanuel Saez, between 2002 and 2006, the average inflation-adjusted income for the top 1% of households rose 42%, while the income for the bottom 90% rose only 4.7%. This gave the richest 1% their largest share of the nation’s income since 1928.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Income Redistribution Set to Increase Under Obama’s Budget (Tax Foundation press release)
Special Report: How Much Does President Obama’s Budget Redistribute Income? (by Gerald Prante and Patrick Fleenor, Tax Foundation)
Average Income in 2006 Up $60,000 for Top 1 Percent of Households, Just $430 for Bottom 90 Percent (by Chye-Ching Huang and Chad Stone, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) (PDF)
Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States (by Emmanuel Saez, University of California-Berkeley) (PDF)
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