Why has inequality increased more under Obama? Elizabeth Warren answers (video)

[applegrove]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/30/elizabeth-warren-income-inequality_n_4697560.html

[frazzled]

1. But more importantly, the Bush tax cuts

Which Obama has not been able to reverse (but through clever additions to things like the ACA, has done so marginally).

Look at this interesting chart and explanation from a useful article in the New Yorker on inequality:

One striking thing about this chart is that the U.S. figure for pre-tax inequality (0.57) doesn’t really stand out. In fact, according to this metric, the United States has pretty much the same level of pre-tax inequality as Sweden and Denmark, two countries that are usually thought of as highly egalitarian. The United Kingdom, Ireland, and several other countries have pre-tax levels of inequality that are considerably higher than the level seen in the United States.

Where the United States does stand out is in the level of inequality after taxes and transfers. Judged by this metric, the United States is the most unequal of all the twenty-two countries. As Gornick said at the conference, what this means is that, contrary to popular perception, our system of taxes and transfers does less to ameliorate inequality than the systems other countries have. Take Ireland, for example, where government interventions reduce the level of inequality from 0.63 to 0.35, a reduction of 0.28. In the United States, the comparable figures are 0.57 and 0.42, a reduction of just 0.15.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/11/inequality-and-growth-what-do-we-know.html

[applegrove]

2. Yes.