I am going to answer this a different way ...What is the ideal redistribution of income because the ideal distribution is easy ,,it should be as close to equal as possible ,This question is too difficult for Americans or those living in the USA or people of a latin background to answer...in my opinion . That is because there is no real tradition of social equality or for the rich to act in a maganimous way .
In the USA , there appears to be more of a jungle outlook of the weak falling by the wayside and the strong propering .
For my mind there 1 Those who want to work but can not find work
2 those who are handicapped by age or a disability
3 Those who are quite content to do nothing and to just seek handouts

For those in the first 2 categories , there needs to be a social benefit programme that permits such people to live off taxpayers money to a certain level of comfort ...this may be means tested .For the third category , there is no need to pay anything butthere are probably exceptions.
The distribution of wealth in a country is never equal and there has to be ways to get the poor closer to the equal line and the easiest way is by progressive taxation that is applied in a way that does not overly reduce incentives to invest or work . Flat taxes do not do this job .
I have no trouble with this myself as I pay property tax here in the DR where some of my poorer neighbours do not . It is really a bit of a mind game ..I rejoice to see my poor friends receiving extra govt benefits that I , as a wealthier person do not receive and I think this is an attitude shared by many Scandanavians and older Britains but there are those who dislike to see their taxes going to the poor and so you see tennis players earning millions seeking to have a tax residence in Monte Carlo etc ,
The current protest against greed has great merit but will be contaminated by those who have their own agendas that are based on solely on envy /

WOW.....Your argument and personal insults is a glaring example of your ignorance of basic human nature let alone how the free market works.

Here is a bit of free advice for you.......Ignorance, jealousy mix with a sanctimonious attitude doesn't make you appear superior.

ignorant remarks make you appear inferior. at least, from an intellectual standpoint.

Thanks for proving my point!!!

Census shows net worth of older Americans is 47 times that of young adults, widest gap ever




View Photo Gallery — ?For the 18th straight year, Bill Gates tops Forbes’s list of the wealthiest Americans. Despite the economic woes plaguing many Americans, the net worth of many of the top 10 richest on Forbes’ list grew in 2011.

By Associated Press, Published: November 6 | Updated: Monday, November 7, 2:26 PM

WASHINGTON — The wealth gap between younger and older Americans has stretched to the widest on record, worsened by a prolonged economic downturn that has wiped out job opportunities for young adults and saddled them with housing and college debt.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday.

?The 25 members of Congress with the highest net worth in 2009, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics based on disclosures filed by the lawmakers.


While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation.

The analysis by the Pew Research Center reflects the impact of the economic downturn, which has hit young adults particularly hard. More are pursuing college or advanced degrees, taking on debt as they wait for the job market to recover. Others are struggling to pay mortgage costs on homes now worth less than when they were bought in the housing boom.

The report, coming out before the Nov. 23 deadline for a special congressional committee to propose $1.2 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years, casts a spotlight on a government safety net that has buoyed older Americans on Social Security and Medicare amid wider cuts to education and other programs. Complaints about wealth inequality, high unemployment and student debt also have been front and center at Occupy Wall Street protests around the country.

“It makes us wonder whether the extraordinary amount of resources we spend on retirees and their health care should be at least partially reallocated to those who are hurting worse than them,” said Harry Holzer, a labor economist and public policy professor at Georgetown University who called the magnitude of the gap “striking.”

The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494. That is 42 percent more than in 1984, when the Census Bureau first began measuring such data broken down by age. The median net worth for the younger-age households was $3,662, down by 68 percent from a quarter-century ago, according to the Pew analysis.

Net worth includes the value of a person’s home, possessions and savings accumulated over the years, including stocks, bank accounts, real estate, cars, boats or other property, minus any debt such as mortgages, college loans and credit card bills. Older Americans tend to have higher net worth because they are more likely to have paid off their mortgages and built up more savings over time.

Because the Pew report examines households at the midpoint of the economic scale, it does not delve deeply into changes occurring at the top and bottom of the distribution. A new census measure released Monday shows the poverty rate to be higher than previously known — about 15.9 percent for Americans 65 or older, compared to the official 9 percent rate reported in September. Working-age adults ages 18-64 also saw increases in poverty — from 13.7 percent to 15.2 percent.

Nancy LeaMond, an executive vice president of AARP, noted that older Americans spend a disproportionate share of their income on out-of-pocket medical care, compared to other groups. “Millions of older Americans today continue to struggle to make ends meet,” she said. “Many older Americans do own their homes, but plummeting housing values — along with dwindling savings, stagnant pensions and prolonged periods of unemployment — have taken their toll.”

We're All the 1 Percent

The U.S. middle class is still incredibly wealthy by international standards.

BY CHARLES KENNY | MARCH/APRIL 2012

After 30 years of greed being good and rising tides lifting all boats, inequality -- or "class warfare," if you prefer -- is back on the political agenda.


The Occupiers who camped out in central squares from Melbourne to Oakland, denouncing the "1 percent" for its supposedly ill-gotten gains, have a point: Inequality is out of control. But these mainly middle-class complainers are an incredibly coddled bunch by any international reckoning. This is good news, because we're going to need to tax them more if we're ever going to solve the world's real inequality problem: the estimated 900 million people who live on less than $1.25 a day.

The Poverty Line

First things first: America's rich are really, really rich. U.S. Census data suggest every man, woman, and child in the top 1 percent of U.S. households gets about $1,500 to live on each day, every day. By contrast, the average U.S. household is scraping by on around $55 per person per day. But the global average is about a fifth of that.

So by global standards, America's middle class is also really, really rich. To make it into the richest 1 percent globally, all you need is an income of around $34,000, according to World Bank economist Branko Milanovic. The average family in the United States has more than three times the income of those living in poverty in America, and nearly 50 times that of the world's poorest. Many of America's 99 percenters, and the West's, are really 1 percenters on a global level.

Nor did the Western 99 percent "earn" most of their wealth, any more than the top 1 percent "earned" theirs. It's the luck of where you're born, according to the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon, who estimated that the benefits of living in a well-functioning economy probably account for 90 percent of individual income. "On moral grounds," he wrote, "we could argue for a flat income tax of 90 percent to return that wealth to its real owners" -- i.e., everyone else in the country. That radical suggestion makes the Occupy Wall Street crowd look like a bunch of free-market libertarians.

Western middle classes actually get back a good deal more from government than they pay in. Political scientists Vincent Mahler, David Jesuit, and Piotr Paradowski examined the benefits -- from pensions to child welfare payments -- that taxpayers, rich and poor, in 12 European countries and the United States received. They found that the middle 60 percent of the population had a larger income share after taxes and transfers than before. Thanks to the good folks at the Internal Revenue Service, the broad slice of the U.S. middle class gets 3 percent more of the income pie after taxes and transfers. And that doesn't account for a range of state subsidies for public goods like colleges and universities that disproportionately benefit the middle classes.

Billionaire investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett thinks he has a plan to right the ship: tax people making $1 million a year at 30 percent and those making $10 million at 35 percent. But that's not going to cut it. A 30 percent income tax for 2008's top 1 percent would have raked in $281 billion for the U.S. government -- still not enough to plug the $400 billion-plus deficit that year. Plus, taxing the West's obscenely rich to help a Western middle class that is merely very rich doesn't seem like the highest of priorities, frankly. We need to deal with inequality all the way down to the bottom of the income pyramid, for everyone's sake.

IMF research suggests that countries with high levels of inequality are far more likely to fall into financial crisis and far less likely to sustain economic growth. But this is not just about taxing the richest 1 percent to help the middle 60. It's about taxing the middle 60 to help the bottom 20. And ensuring that rich and poor alike worldwide have access to basic health care and education, with their well-documented effects on income and productivity, will work to the benefit of the Western middle class. If Americans and Europeans want to export their way out of recession, they need rich consumers elsewhere.

So stop whining, Occupiers. It is high time for the richest 1 percent to help the rest catch up. But don't fool yourself -- if you live in the West, you probably are that 1 percent.