Several research projects are establishing that poorer households have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 recession, while wealthier households have spent less and been able to save. Both spending and saving initially rebounded faster for lower-income households during the pandemic in spring 2020, and some were even able to pay off debt. However, Sufi notes that the decline in household debt and the rise in savings in the middle and lower part of the income distribution can be attributed at least in part to massive government stimulus measures, and are likely temporary. Indeed, in August, the rise in saving by people who received unemployment checks began to reverse, according to research by University of Chicago Harris School’s Peter Ganong; JP Morgan Chase’s Fiona Greig, Max Liebeskind, and Daniel M. Sullivan; and Booth’s Pascal Noel and Joseph S. Vavra.
Meanwhile, people at the very top of the wealth distribution have grown richer through the pandemic, thanks in part to a poststimulus stock market surge. A March 2021 report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies finds that the collective wealth of America’s billionaires shot up by $1.3 trillion since the start of the pandemic, to a total of about $4.2 trillion. At the same time, more than one in four families with children are experiencing food insecurity, according to estimates from Northwestern’s Diane Schanzenbach. Mian, Straub, and Sufi see in the data a widening wealth gap and more saving by the rich, thus more money being turned into loans and lent out to consumers.
Is tax reform the answer?
To the researchers, the savings glut is a result of rising inequality, yet they also suggest that policy actions could encourage the rich to put their money toward more productive uses. Their proposed solutions involve taxation—either a more progressive tax system or a wealth tax—through which the government can finance spending and investment, or redistribution programs that benefit lower-income households.
Such suggestions are controversial. Among the critics, Booth’s Steve Kaplan argues that proposals such as a wealth tax seek to emulate what has already been tried and proven ineffective in Western Europe. As of 1990, there were 12 countries in Europe taxing net wealth, but now that is down to Norway, Spain, and Switzerland. When France did away with its version in 2018, the prime minister said it had caused many millionaires to flee.
Kaplan also notes that income inequality had actually been decreasing in the US in recent years, as the fortunes of the lower 90 percent improved. He points to the Gini index, which measures income inequality on a scale from 0 to 1 percent. From 2017 to 2019, the US Gini index fell 0.005 percentage points, from 0.489 to 0.484 percent, while the share of income held by the top 20 percent fell by 0.4 percent. Meanwhile, median household income rose to a record $68,700 in 2019, driven by an increase in the number of workers, particularly women.
“If you go back to December 2019, the economy was strong and the inequality data were improving while the country was following tax policies the opposite of what they [Mian, Straub, and Sufi] are recommending,” Kaplan says, although he acknowledges that the trajectory has “likely been upended by the pandemic.”
Implementing some of the more progressive tax policies, however, is “only likely to make things worse,” he says.
Data from the Fed’s Survey of Consumer Finances also indicate that between 2016 and 2019 both wealth and income inequality fell modestly. However, Sufi and others focus on the longer trajectory. The rate of inequality may have slowed or even fallen prior to the pandemic for some groups, but inequality remains at historically high levels, and economists are debating what the “right” level of inequality should be and how to achieve it.
“Any decline in inequality from 2017 to 2019 was tiny compared with the rise in inequality since the 1980s, and the COVID-19 crisis will almost assuredly amplify inequality going forward,” says Sufi. “Policies tried in the US to stem the rise in inequality have not worked.”
Research by Booth’s Eric Zwick and Princeton’s Owen Zidar suggests that reforms such as rolling back special deductions for pass-through businesses, which they say collectively generate more taxable income for the top 1 percent than do big C corporations, could be a key part of a tax plan that raises up to $5 trillion over the first decade of implementation. Pass-through businesses typically include medical and law practices and other types of consultancies.
When it comes to the billionaire class, a better-designed corporate income tax may be more effective than a wealth tax, Zwick says. A corporate tax that does a better job of aligning the rates on foreign versus domestic income, as the current system gives large companies many incentives to move income offshore, could also be part of the solution, he says.
Billionaires are “not a huge share of wealth—perhaps 3–5 percent of household wealth in the US,” Zwick says. “And if you look at them individually, their investments are incredibly concentrated. They’re invested in their companies. If you’re taxing Amazon, you’re taxing Jeff Bezos.”
Mian says the most important thing regarding policy is to have the end goal be a healthy economic balance. “We need both investments and a competitive landscape that makes the economy work for everyone so the economic output is more inclusively distributed,” he says.
This may be especially the case as the wealthiest in the US continue to grow their financial portfolios during a health and financial crisis that has intensified the gap between the 1 percent and the bottom 90 percent. If Mian, Straub, and Sufi are correct, as the savings of the rich grow, so do their investments in unproductive debt. This leads to more household debt and less household savings, and a savings gap that grows ever larger.