scholarly journals The Inequity In The Current Tax System: Does The Alternative Minimum Tax Create Additional Problems In The System?

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance J. Crawford ◽  
Corinne L. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Tax System ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Symbolic Gesture

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 34.2pt 0pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Historically, the Alternative Minimum Tax was enacted to correct the inadequacies and deficiencies in the IRS tax code.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Today it creates unfairness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The AMT is complex and has been recognized as the most serious problem faced by taxpayers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Could this be a consequence of bi-partisan neglect?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The amount of AMT victims may double in 2006 as tax cut solutions expire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>AMT will become the de-facto tax liability for the middle income taxpayer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>AMT was not instituted for revenue generating purposes, but rather as a symbolic gesture denoting fairness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Unfortunately, it has created a social injustice for the working middle class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></span></span></p>

Latin America's wealthiest untouched by redistribution

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Tax System ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The World

Subject Patterns of inequality. Significance Inequality across the world varies significantly, particularly among middle-income countries. Much of this variance is the result of differences in the income shares of the poor and rich since the middle class receives a similar level of income in most cases. Latin America occupies a peculiar position in these comparisons: it is the most unequal region in the world because the wealthy are able to control more income than anywhere else. Impacts Effective measures to tackle inequality would require politically difficult reforms of the income tax system. Pressures to redistribute resources to the poor will squeeze the middle classes in times of muted growth. Elite power will be particularly significant in countries such as Colombia and Brazil, if less so in Argentina and Uruguay.

Limits of the current implementation of incremental housing

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Goran Ivo Marinovic
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Housing Policy ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Bank Loans ◽  
Housing Project ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Specific Location ◽  
Current Implementation ◽  
Incremental Housing

In the case of conventional public housing, urban planners and policymakers design the layout of a housing project in a specific location and then estimate how many households can afford a home. This housing policy has been pursued as a legitimate solution for housing low- and middle-income households where the houses are individually financed by bank loans or mortgages raised by the occupants. John Turner criticised conventional housing solutions by affirming that ‘developing governments take the perspective of the elite and act as if the process of low-income houses were the same as in high-income countries and the same as for the small upper-middle class of their own countries’. Bruce Ferguson and Jesus Navarrete extend this argument with their critique of distributing finished houses to low-income populations and then requiring long-term payments, which are harmful to the beneficiaries. They note that ‘governments think of housing as complete units built by developers that households must purchase with a long-term loan rather than as a progressive process’.

An Empirical Investigation of the income share of the middle class

2019 ◽  
pp. 50-65
Author(s):  
Francesco Farina ◽  
Chiara Assunta Ricci
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Income Group ◽  
Reverse Causality ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Income Share ◽  
Redistributive Policies ◽  
Directional Relation ◽  
Middle Income Group ◽  
Income Dispersion

The scientific evaluation of the relationship between growth, redistribution, and the income share of the middle class is still in its infancy. This article aims to investigate how the drivers of economic growth impinge on market income distribution and how the middle class has a role in deciding the level of redistribution. Our strategy is to dodge the reverse causality problem, stemming from the bi-directional relation between income distribution and growth, by exploiting the peculiar feature of different indicators of income dispersion focused on the middle income group. The findings reveal that market forces and redistributive policies are both pivotal in shaping the evolution of income dispersion and in particular the income share of the middle class, over the growth process. The ability of redistributive policies to counteract the ongoing increase in income inequality seems to depend not only on the political pressure exerted by an impoverishing median voter but also on the expansion of fiscal revenues after sustained Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth.

What Happened to Polarization and Inequality Between 2008 and 2018 in Spain?

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 209-222
Author(s):  
Rosa María García-Fernández ◽  
Candela Ruiz Tobar
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Gini Index ◽  
Upward Trend ◽  
Middle Income

The main objective of this paper is to empirically examine the dynamics of income distribution in Spain between 2008 and 2018 using SILC data. We consider the concepts of polarization and inequality as different aspects of the income distribution. To compute both aspects, we use the measures of Palacios-González and García-Fernández (2012) and the Gini index respectively. Findings indicate that polarization and inequality fluctuate around an upward trend during these years in Spain. Furthermore, the lower and middle income households have been more adversely affected than those with higher incomes, and the middle class has not benefited from the economic growth in Spain.

Environmental Health

2019 ◽  
pp. 363-386
Author(s):  
Barry S. Levy
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Health ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Marginalized Populations ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
The Impact

This chapter describes the adverse impact of social injustice on environmental health. Environmental pollution is a social injustice for all people, with a disproportionate impact on low- and middle-income countries and, within countries, low-income people, minority groups, and other marginalized populations. The chapter describes the evolution of the environmental justice movement and the studies that have demonstrated disproportionate exposures and the disproportionate occurrence of pollution-related diseases among low-income people, minority groups, and other marginalized populations. A separate section describes the environmental and health consequences of global climate change. Three text boxes focus on childhood lead poisoning, the impact of natural disasters on social justice, and on the new interdiscipilinary field of planetary health.

Between Arcadia and Suburbia: Dachas in Late Imperial Russia

Slavic Review ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Lovell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Culture ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
Country Life ◽  
History Of ◽  
Middle Strata ◽  
Urban Civilization

In the last few prerevolutionary decades, dachas (summer houses) became an amenity accessible to wide sections of the population of Russia’s two main cities. Dachas offered middle-income urbanites unprecedented scope to free themselves from the workplace, cultivate new lifestyles, and create new communities and subcultures. Dachas thus constitute an important element in the history of late imperial leisure, entertainment, consumption, everyday life, and urban development. They also illustrate the complexity and hybridity of urban culture in this period. The dacha public was diverse in its tastes and sociocultural allegiances; it blended the intelligentsia’s commitment to the simple country life with a more “petit bourgeois” interest in diversion and domestic comfort. As an isolated bridgehead of urban civilization in an undercivilized rural hinterland, the dacha provides an important focus for discussing the middle strata of Moscow and St. Petersburg. If the tag “middle-class” could be applied to anyone in late imperial Russia, it was to the dachniki.

Risiko und HIV / Aids in Botswana

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Astrid Bochow
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Economic Opportunities ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Social Discourses ◽  
The World ◽  
Experience Of Illness ◽  
Hiv Aids

Botswana, one of the few middle-income countries in Africa, has one of the highest HIV rates in the world. In her book Astrid Bochow deals with the Botswana middle class, which has formed since the 1980s: How do these privileged groups handle the permanent threat of infection and the experience of illness and loss? How does their everyday life in family and partnership look like? And what new social and economic opportunities open up for them in the crisis? The author analyzes the resulting political, medical and social discourses on family and health.

scholarly journals Ukrainian Middle Class in the New Millennium: Trends and Prospects

2020 ◽  
pp. 71-92
Author(s):  
L. M. CHERENKO
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Income Distribution ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Income Group ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The Past ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Middle Income Group ◽  
The Impact

Ukrainian society has undergone various transformations over the past twenty years. Adverse economic conditions and ineffi cient income distribution policies deterred the for mation of a large middle-income group, which should become the basis of the middle class. Developed countries, which in the last century reached the peak growth of the number and importance of the middle class, today indicate the process of “blurring” of this social group against the background of growing inequality. Against the background of global trends, Ukraine is facing a double blow — the income distribution, which is already shift ed towards low incomes, leaves no chance for positive changes in the social structure of society. Th e a im of the article is to establish trends in the formation of the middle-income group in Ukraine over a twenty-year period and assess the prospects for the formation of the middle class in the future, taking into account today’s Ukrainian realities and global trends. Th e novelty of the work is the analysis of a long series of dynamics to establish the trends of the middleincome group according to the classical approaches for international comparisons and according to the purely Ukrainian approach. In addition, micromodeling of incomes (expenditures) for 2020, taking into account the macroeconomic situation, allows us to assess the impact of the coronavirus crisis and quarantine measures on changes in the number of middle-income groups and the prospects of the middle class in Ukraine. Within the article classical methods of analysis of long series of data, in particular, the index method (basic and chain indices) are used for studying the dynamic changes in the formation of midd leincome groups. In order to assess the size of the middle-income group in 2020, the method of micromodeling is used: the 2020 microdata is modeled on the basis of the 2019 microdata (microfi le of the household living condition survey) and macro forecast data for the current year. Analysis of the dynamics of incomes, expenditures and various property character istics of the middle-income group over the past twenty years does not show positive trends. Quite the contrary, in Ukraine there is an impact of the global trend of “blurring” of the middle-income group as the basis of the middle class, with its specifi c features in consumer and investment behavior. Th e events of the last year also do not inspire optimism — by the end of the year the general decline in living standards and the growth of poverty is expected. In such conditions, the main burden of the crisis is expected to fall on the middle-income group. Th e article also considers the problem of the importance of forming the middle class for society and the feasibility of forming politics to this goal.

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