Taxes really, really matter for inequality. In fact, differences in tax and spending policies are the only reason the US has substantially greater inequality than countries like Sweden, Norway, Finland, or Germany. And in the US, we tend to do a lot of our spending through the tax code, making taxes in particular even more crucial.
These Legos make depressingly clear just how much money the top 1 percent has
Dylan Matthews was a senior correspondent and head writer for Vox’s Future Perfect section. He is particularly interested in global health and pandemic prevention, anti-poverty efforts, economic policy and theory, and conflicts about the right way to do philanthropy.
In the above video, veteran economic reporter David Wessel, now director of the Hutchins Center at the Brookings Institution, explains how federal taxes — income, payroll, etc. — alter the distribution of income. Overall, the tax code reduces inequality, but a big gap still remains.
The most striking thing is that the video can’t even depict the top 1 percent: they’re just too rich. Each brick is $10,000, and the average one-percenter makes over $2 million before taxes, meaning you’d need 200 Lego bricks to show their income — way more than will fit on the screen. Even after taxes, you’d need 130 bricks.
The rich are different from you and me. They get more Legos.
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