Title: Ten ways to reduce inequality without raising tax rates - The Washington Post
Headings: Ten ways to reduce inequality without raising tax rates
Ten ways to reduce inequality without raising tax rates
1. Make it easier to start and join unions.
2. Weaken the dollar.
3. Promote trade in highly-skilled professions
4. Force the Fed to get serious about unemployment.
5. Reform IP law — especially for medicine.
6. Relax licensing rules.
7. Ease up on zoning restrictions.
8. Increase transfers.
9. Fund early childhood education.
10. Get the lead out
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Content: That hurts low-skilled textile workers in North Carolina, increasing inequality in the U.S. on the margin, but helps low-skilled Chinese workers, decreasing inequality there on the margin. That suggests that one way to reduce inequality in the U.S. would be to discourage imports from countries with cheap unskilled labor, such as China. Perhaps the best way to do that is to devalue the dollar, which makes U.S. exports cheaper and imports more expensive. Dean Baker, a notable advocate of a weaker dollar on these grounds, has suggested doing this by penalizing countries that buy up U.S. currency, by trading in futures for other currencies, or by paying higher than the asking price for foreign currencies. All of these moves would make the dollar less expensive, and promote U.S. exports. On the flip side, those moves would likely increase poverty in the developing world by hurting countries with export-heavy industries. For example, the Chinese manufacturing sector would likely suffer considerably, greatly increasing extreme poverty in that country. 3. Promote trade in highly-skilled professions
Discussion of the effects of trade and immigration tends to focus on the impact of low-skilled workers who either produce goods abroad for the U.S. market or come to the U.S. and provide services for less than the wages demanded by native-born workers. That impact is, as one would expect, largely negative, insofar as Chinese workers can manufacture goods for less than U.S. workers, and low-skilled immigrants can provide cheaper farm and household labor than U.S. workers can.