[cube]

For example it is a fact that rich people have more of their money tied into *investments*. The stock market is a good example.
Therefore if the stock market goes up then the rich will benefit more and Income inequality increases.
If the stock market crashes the rich losses more so therefore Income inequality decreases.

You noticed that I picked the New Deal as my start point? The point where the stock market had been pummelled and had pretty much no where to go but up? So, from that point on income inequality should have increased, as the well-to-do saw gains. (Albeit slow and faltering ones, it wasn't until the early fifties that the DOW crossed it's 1929 high again. ) Yet income inequality decreased until the late 60's/early 70's.

This may seem like a technicality but this is an important difference. If the average man were to move up 2 steps and a rich man only 1, then that would mean the distance between the two is decreasing. Or in other words income inequality is decreasing.
That is not the same thing as making a rich man take 1 step down and redistributing the money to everybody else so they can move 1 step up which is the entire premise of my original statement.
//
here's another Q:
How come there is no such thing as a nation that has French social welfare and Hong Kong tax rates? Countries that have generous social welfare also have very high tax rates on the middle class. I thought the whole point of "income redistribution" was to put a tax on a rich man not the middle class!
Compare the USA and France. Yes the French have things like universal health care but the tax rates on the middle class is also higher.
They certainly aren't better off then Americans.
The French seem to be simply receiving more government services at the expense of paying higher taxes.
But again like I said, I thought the whole point of "income redistribution" was to put a tax on a rich man!
*interesting huh*

The stock market tends to go up when the economy is good and down when it is bad so an argument can be made that the financial fortunes of the average man tends to also follow the rich.
Both move up together and both move down together.

It appears to me as though the fortunes of the rich are following the fortunes of the average man at the moment.

thank you

[oiless]

This may seem like a technicality but this is an important difference. If the average man were to move up 2 steps and a rich man only 1, then that would mean the distance between the two is decreasing. Or in other words income inequality is decreasing.
That is not the same thing as making a rich man take 1 step down and redistributing the money to everybody else so they can move 1 step up which is the entire premise of my original statement.

I think we're arguing here about whether the horse is pulling the cart or the cart is pushing the horse.
Preventing the rich man from taking two steps up to every one of the poor man is the same thing as letting him take two steps and then pushing him down one. The result is the same.

Also, we seem to be stuck in this rich man/poor man thing, and I think it clouds the issue, which should be corporate tax rates and corporate welfare.

Yes, the middle class does tend to get hammered by taxes in "socialist" countries. Canada, and France, are not socialist countries, however much you want to see them that way. They are coporatocracies, like the USA, except with a veneer of social consciousness overlaid. I do like my nearly "free" medical care though, and I don't mind paying for the people that need it more than I do, even though I hardly ever use it.
(There was that time as young man working in a camp up north when I got that severe lung infection and had to be medivaced by helicopter and spent a week in hospital. Guess I used a few bucks there.)