I had to read to the fourth paragraph of yesterday’s New York Times editorial to find the point. It was about homelessness in Hawaii. The editorial implores officials in that state to solve its particularly acute homelessness problem by doing something about income inequality:
We are told often nowadays — although not by this editorial — that the solution to income inequality is higher taxes on the wealthy. The rich, we are told, aren’t paying their fair share, and somehow (huge leap here) this causes the poor to make less.
Except that Hawaii has the nation’s highest top income tax rate. Also noteworthy: High-tax states (like New York and Massachusetts) and low-tax states (like Florida and Texas) stand side-by-side when you look at a list of the states with the highest rates of increase in income inequality. (See the table on page 20 of this report by the left-wing Economic Policy Institute.) You’d almost get the impression that taxes have nothing to do with it at all.
Presumably, states are supposed to keep raising income tax rates on the rich every year until this fad of blaming all social problems on income inequality, and income inequality on low tax rates, ends.
