Inequality in the distribution of income is an inevitable result of an economic system that rewards the households with the highest skills, best education and most access to capital with higher wages and incomes in the marketplace.
The existence of poverty, both relative and absolute, poses several obstacles to the improvement of well-being for a nation’s people. Social unrest among the poorest members of society can lead to political and economic instability for a nation as a whole. The hardships experienced by society’s poorest members are ultimately felt by the rest of society as the needs of the poor must be met in one way or another, and in extreme circumstances may lead to a violent struggle between economic classes.
The existence of absolute poverty poses the greatest obstacle to national economies and society as those who experience it are unlikely to contribute whatsoever to national output and economic growth given the desperate state of their health and education. Without promoting some degree of equality in the distribution of income, governments run the risk of undermining their accomplishment of other social and economic objectives. So how do governments achieve more equal income distribution? Before we look at the modern mechanisms by which this objective is achieved, it is important to examine the historical ideology that frames modern economic policy.
For centuries the role of government has been debated among economists. The extent to which it is the government’s job to assure equality in the distribution of income has never been fully agreed upon by policymakers, whose opinions differ depending on the school of economic ideology to which they prescribe. On the far left of the economic spectrum is Marxist/socialist ideology, which believes that households’ money incomes should be made obsolete and each household’s level of consumption should instead be based on the “use-value” of the output which it produces. In a pure Marxist or socialist economy, money incomes do not matter since the output of the nation will be shared equally among all those who contribute to its production. Private ownership of resources and the output those resources produce is wholly abolished in a socialist economy and the ownership and allocation of resources, goods and services is in the hands of the state and production and consumption is undertaken based on the principle of equality.
The slogan “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, made populate by Karl Marx, summarized the view that a household’s consumption should be based on its level of need. To take this idea to its logical conclusion, all households in a nation have essentially the same basic needs therefore household incomes should be equal across the nation.
On the other extreme of the economic spectrum is the laissez faire, free market model which argues that the only role the government should play in the market economy is in the protection of private property rights, which assures that the private owners of resources, including land, labor and capital, are able to pursue their own self-interest in an unregulated marketplace where their money incomes are determined by the “exchange-value” of the resources they control. In a laissez-faire market economy, the level of income and consumption of households varies greatly across society as the exchange-value of the resources owned by households determines income, rather than the principle of equality underlying socialism. Each individual in society is free to pursue his monetary objectives through the improvement of his human capital and the subsequent increase in its exchange-value in the labor market.
In today’s world, there exists neither a purely socialist economy nor a purely laissez fair free market economy. In reality, all modern national economies are mixed economies in which governments do much more than simply protect property rights, but do not go so far as to own and allocate all factors of production. The role of government in the distribution of income in today’s economies is relegated to the collection of taxes and the provision of public goods and services and transfer payments.
A tax is simply a fee charged by a government on a person’s income, property, or consumption of goods and services. Taxes can be broken into two main categories: direct and indirect.
Direct taxes: These are taxes paid directly to the government by those on whom they are imposed. An income tax is a direct tax because it is taken directly out of a worker’s earned income. Corporate and business taxes are also direct taxes based on the revenues or profits of firms. Direct taxes cannot be legally avoided since they are based on the earned income of each individual. The burden of direct taxes is born entirely by the households or firms paying them.
Indirect taxes: These are the taxes paid by households through an intermediary such as a retail store. The consumer pays the tax at the time of his purchase of a good or service and the amount of the tax is usually calculated by adding a percentage rate to the price of the item being purchased. Indirect taxes include sales taxes, value added taxes (VAT), goods and services tax (GST) as well as ad valorem taxes (or excise taxes) which are placed on specific goods such as cigarettes, alcohol or petrol. Indirect taxes can be avoided simply by not consuming certain products or by consuming less of all products. The burden of indirect taxes is born by both households and firms, the proportion born by each is determined by the price elasticities of demand and supply (as demonstrated in chapter 4).
Taxes can be either progressive, regressive or proportional in nature, meaning that different taxes place different burdens on the rich and the poor.
Proportional tax: A tax for which the percentage of income taxed remains constant as income increases is a proportional tax. The rich will pay more tax than the poor in absolute terms, but the burden of the tax will be no greater on the rich than it is on the poor. A household earning 20,000 euros may pay 10% tax to the government, totaling 2,000 euros. A rich household in the same country pays 10% on its income of 200,000 euros, totaling 20,000 euros in taxes, but the burden is the same on the rich household as it is on the poor household. Proportional taxes are uncommon in advanced economies, although some “payroll taxes”, which are those collected to support social security or welfare programs, are payed by employers based on a percentage of employees’ incomes up to a certain level. For instance, the US social security tax is 6.2% of gross income up to $108,000. Regardless of a person’s income below $108,000, he or she will pay 6.2% to the government to support the country’s social security program.
Regressive tax: A tax that decreases in percentage as income increases is said to be regressive. Such a tax places a larger burden on lower income households than it does higher income earners since a greater percentage of a poor household’s income is used to pay the tax than a rich household’s. You may be wondering what kind of government would levy a tax that harms the poor more than it does the rich, but in fact almost every national government uses regressive taxes to raise a significant portion of its tax revenues. Most indirect taxes are actually regressive, which may not make sense at first, since a sales tax is a percentage of the price of products consumed consumed. The regressiveness is apparent when the amount of the tax is compared to the income of the consumer, however.
To demonstrate how a sales tax is regressive, imagine three different consumers who purchase an identical laptop computer for 1,000€ in a country with a value added tax of 10% added to the price of the computer.
Income of buyer Amount of tax paid % of income taxed
10,000€ 100€ 1%
50,000€ 100€ 0.2%
100,000€ 100€ 0.1%
The higher income consumer pays the same amount of tax as the lower income consumer, but the the tax makes up a lower percentage of her income than it did the lower income consumer’s. Although they appear to be fair since everyone pays the same percentage of the price of the the goods they consume, indirect taxes such as VAT, GST and sales taxes are in fact regressive taxes, placing a larger burden on those whose ability to pay is lower and a smaller burden on the higher income earners whose ability to pay is greater.
Progressive tax: This is a tax for which the percentage of income taxed increases as income increases. The principle underlying a progressive tax is that those with the ability to pay the most tax (the rich) should bear a larger burden of the nation’s total tax receipts than those whose ability to pay is less. Lower income households not only pay less tax, but they pay a smaller percentage of their income in tax as well. Most nation’s income tax systems are progressive, the most progressive being those in the Northern European countries which, not surprisingly, also demonstrate the most equal distributions of income. Of the various types of taxes, a progressive income tax aligns most with the macroeconomic objective of increased income equality.
A progressive income tax typically consists of a marginal tax bracket in which the increasing tax rates apply to marginal income, rather than to total income. In such a system, the average tax a household pays increases less rapidly than the marginal tax, since the higher marginal rate only applies to additional income beyond the upper range of the previous bracket.
United States marginal tax rateshttp://www.moneychimp.com/features/tax_brackets.htm
Income range Marginal tax rate Tax paid by someone
at top of bracket Average tax rate
$0-$8,375 10%
$837.5 10.00%
$8,375-$34,000 15% $4,681.25 13.77%
$34,000-$82,400 25% $16,781.25 20.37%
$82,400-$171,850 28% $41,827.25 24.34%
$171,850-$373,650 33% $108421.25 29.02%
$373,850 -$500,000
(and above) 35% $152,643.75
(on $500,000) 30.53%
Notice in the table above that the total tax paid by Americans at the top of each income bracket is NOT the simply the tax rate times income. Rather, the tax rate for each income bracket only applies to income earned above and beyond the upper boundary of the previous bracket. An American worker earning $8,000, for instance, will pay $800 in income tax. But if his income increases to $10,000 he will NOT pay 15% of the full $10,000, or $1,500. Rather, he will pay 15% on the income earned above $8,375. Such a worker would therefore pay 10% of his first $8,375 ($837.50) plus 15% on the additional $1,625 he earned, which is another $243.75. The marginal rate of taxation (MRT) is the change in tax (t) divided by the change in gross income (yg). His total tax would therefore equal $1,081.25.
The marginal rate of taxation between the first and second income brackets above is found using the equation:
The average rate of taxation (ART) is equal to the tax paid (t) divided by the gross income (yg):
The average rate for workers who fall in the second income bracket above can be found using the equation:
For workers in each of the income brackets above, the average rate of taxation is always lower than the marginal rate of taxation, since tax increases only apply to additional income earned beyond the previous bracket. The graph below shows the marginal (in blue) and the average (in red) rates of taxation for individuals earning between $0 and $500,000 in the United States in 2010.
Deflation 
