How Unequal? America's Invisible Policy Choices

In Fischer and friends' article on America's policies, the authors focus on a few specific policy choices that our nation has adopted and how those policies have led to such inequality in our country. The authors introduce the subject and liken our current situation to a baseball pitcher on a heightened mound, as that advantage favors some over others when it comes to marketplace laws and regulations. They then pinpoint the problem by stating that the United States has the greatest disparity in earnings among full-time workers in world, and it has been increasing since 1970.

The first aspect tackled in the article deals with visible policy, and reducing poverty through redistribution. The authors talk about how our government has done things to help the poor in our country, with public health programs, food stamps, survivor benefits etc. However, it's quick to see that Americans fall short when compared to government spending of other countries on similar endeavors, while at the same time cutting more and more programs. While most emphasis these days is put on the poverty of the elderly, with reduced proportions of up to 40 percentage points due to government programs, it leaves children and young adults behind, with drops of only seven and five points respectively. In 1992, over 14% of Americans, and 21% of American children remained below the poverty level, which begs the question: what are our government leaders doing to help protect the future of our country and it's young people?

The rest of the article focused on the "invisible" policies, including subsidizing the middle class, subsidizing the wealthy and regulating the labor market. The authors explain the subsidizing of the middle class by talking about while the middle class indirectly and less visibly benefit from the government, there is a decreasing inequality between the middle class and wealthy but at the same time an increasing disparity between middle-class and low-income Americans. The authors talk of tax expenditures, or deductions in things like mortgage interest, as things that may benefit some taxpayers more than others. Whatever one person receives as a tax break, another person might have to make up for because government spending relies on taxpayer money. As middle-class home ownership increased, thus decreasing the inequality between the middle-class and wealthy, many black Americans were denied these opportunities with new policies. It appears that the government sees black neighborhoods as a poor "business investment", proving the continuous discrimination of low-income Americans in housing policies.

The authors then go on to talk about how wealthy people in the United States have benefited from some of these policies, such as tax changes of the Reagan administration that provided "tax cuts" that actually increased the median American family's rates from 23.7 to 24.6 percent in 1990, all while the highest-earning 1% of Americans fell from 35.5 to 26.7 in 1989. Once again we can see how our country's elected officials protect their own interests and those in power while suppressing those without it. It's how capitalism works in this country and it's the policies kept in place that create the inequalities here, both those that are easily seen and those strategically hidden to keep the average American in the dark.