A Mockery of the "Barriers"

Let's debunk this income inequality garbage once and for all. Ask yourself, when you see/hear the stats suggesting that the top 20% of Americans are gaining, at the expense of everybody else, are you thinking that the top quintile, or 1% for that matter, is some elite fraternity that allows only a privileged few to join - that essentially sports the same members today as it did thirty years ago?

If you're thinking yes (in fact, if you're at all upset about the CBO's findings, you are indeed thinking yes), you couldn't be more wrong.

So let's disabuse you of that faulty notion. And I promise to move the content of this blog on to bigger and better things (maybe) going forward.

The fact of the matter is, in this great country, a great number of people move up and down the income ladder over time; per the following summarized results of a study (which covers only 7 years) from The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis:

*Of the households occupying the bottom 20% in 2001, 44% broke into the higher ranks by 2007.

*61% of the 2nd quintile moved either above or below.

*58% of the 3rd quintile moved either above or below.

*55% of the 4th quintile moved either above or below.

*34% of the highest 20% moved into a lower quintile.

And take note, there's no blaming/crediting the "great recession", since the data was compiled pre-2008.

Nobody says it better than Thomas Sowell:

Only by focusing on the income brackets, instead of the actual people moving between those brackets, have the intelligentsia been able to verbally create a “problem” for which a “solution” is necessary. They have created a powerful vision of “classes” with “disparities” and “inequities” in income, caused by “barriers” created by “society.” But the routine rise of millions of people out of the lowest quintile over time makes a mockery of the “barriers” assumed by many, if not most, of the intelligentsia.