MOST Americans are unenthusiastic approximately Republicans’ efforts to reward the richest with the biggest tax cuts. In polls taken on the eve of a vote on the government's tax bill in the Senate on December 2nd only between a quarter and a third of voters supported the plan. But in general Americans seem more willing than the inhabitants of other wealthy countries to tolerate inequality.
Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggests that America is a relatively unequal country and that the government does comparatively little to redress the balance. The most common degree of inequality,the gini coefficient, takes a value between zero (whether everyone earned exactly the same) and one (whether all income were earned by one person). America’s gini before taxes and transfers was 0.47 compared with the OECD average of 0.43. After taxes and transfers, or America’s gini falls to 0.39. The OECD average is 0.31. In 2014,taxes and transfers reduced American inequality by a mere 18%; this compares with 25% in Britain, 29% in...
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Source: economist.com