Redistribution of Wealth in America
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/redistribution-of-wealth-in-america/
The fact is that redistributive government policy — mainly through benefits-in-kind programs, agricultural policy and the like — has been very much a characteristic of American life, just as it has been in every economically developed nation, albeit at different levels.
Start at the local level. Through property taxes, local governments all over the United States routinely take from high-income Americans living in expensive houses to subsidize the education of children from lower-income families. It is the American way, based on the widespread belief that doing so will make society as a whole better off. Is there a significantly large constituency for abolishing this form of redistribution at the local level and instead letting every family fend for itself, with its own budget, in a private market for education?
The same can be said, at the local level, for fire and police protection. One could imagine a world in which every family cuts a deal with private contractors to provide fire and police protection — leaving poor neighborhoods to fend for themselves — but that is just not an American characteristic. Is there a sizable constituency in America for completely privatizing local fire and police protection?
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At the federal level, Social Security and Medicare were deliberately structured by their designers to be in part redistributive. As Eugene Steuerle and Adam Carasso of the Urban Institute’s Retirement Project have reported, both programs redistribute from retirees who had been high-income earners in their work years to those who had been low-income earners.
Would elimination of this redistributive feature inherent in Social Security and especially in Medicare have much of a political constituency today? Would any politician dare propose openly — and I stress openly — that Medicare beneficiaries who had been high-income earners in their work years should have a health care experience superior to those who had low incomes in their work years? Would that proposal be a winner this year?
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