USA! USA! We rule! We are the champions! (of poverty and stinginess)
There are a lot of great things about this country, but we can stand a little more fairness in how the government affects incomes. We'd still avoid joining the ranks of the countries such as Ireland where, according to the Governor of Alaska, "the people are not free."
The picture below says it all.
Redistribution is a universal feature of capitalist economies. It is not class warfare, but is the way that all of these countries have moderated and prevented open class warfare. Every capitalist system has found it necessary, for its very survival, to keep inequality from getting too out of hand. But among them, the US in the early 21st century is remarkable for keeping its redistribution to a bare minimum (if that).
Take a look at the graph below. The vertical axis measures the degree to which government tax and transfer policies reduce income inequality, and the horizontal axis is the poverty rate. I don't know where Obama's policies will put us on this graph, but I suspect they will move us closer than to the UK, Canada, and Australia, so we'll have company among the stingiest nations, rather than being in a class of our own.
Reprinted from:
Prasad, N. 2008. Policies for Redistribution: The Use of Taxes and Social Transfers. Geneva: International Institute for Labor Studies
http://www.oit.org/...
Another finding: most of the redistribution that does go on in the US is due to Social Security!